As an engineer for the last 40 years, I’ve seen the job losses that technology causes. In the 1960s, a friend came to me all upset in New York City. He said, “My father just lost his job. He worked there 25 years, and last week he was replaced by a tiny gadget that works 24/7, never sleeps, never makes a mistake, never takes vacations, and makes the company a lot of money.”
“Oh, I’m really sorry that he lost his job.”
“No, that’s not why I’m upset. It’s that my Mom went out and bought one.”
Comic, Woody Allen, said that in the 1960s, during the first wave of “technology panic,”. We are there again, but this is worse because politicians are going to help. STOP!!! Rule #1 in technology predictions is that the pundits are ALWAYS wrong.
In the 1970s, “Save the trees” was the cause du jour, and the pundits said, “Computers will allow us to be a paperless society, and we’ll save the trees.” Reality – U.S. offices use 12.1 trillion sheets of paper a year. That’s a 400% increase.
When computers did become popular in offices, the pundits cried, “Secretaries will lose their jobs.” Reality – Thousand of new types of jobs were created. Secretaries became administrative assistants and did more satisfying work than typing. Now we have a graphics department at the office that creates presentations. We have a full team of computer support people. We have people creating content. These jobs were brand new careers, never thought of before computers.
Technology advancements CREATE new and exciting jobs, as “green technology” will create millions of new careers.
The technology panic of 2023 is Artificial Intelligence (AI.) AI is a new evil that will not only take all our jobs but may take over the world. Let’s read the future news –
AI Door Latch and Thermostat Kills Climate Denier
Fairfax, Virginia (2026) – In another apparent “climate denier” death, investigators in Fairfax are saying that they believe the fire that burned down the multiple family dwelling on Elm Street is another “AI justice murder.” As with the other six murders this year in Fairfax, Virginia, the victim was a climate denier known to drive an SUV, and doesn’t recycle, claiming that the city forces recycling to profit from the resale of glass and paper.
Investigators are not commenting, citing that the investigation is ongoing. Neighbors say that the person living at this home (gender unknown), pulled into his garage at approximately 5:15 PM (Common World Time) while driving alone in a fossil-powered SUV. The AI-powered garage door closed, and neighbors say about 15 minutes later, the person was heard screaming and banging on the inside of his front door, saying he was trapped and the heat in the house was at 160 degrees and climbing.
Next-door neighbor Dave (Non-Binary) told the Fairfax Daily Blog that he was the first to hear the cries. “I immediately went running door to door, getting people out of their houses. We all got on our bikes and took off for the safe place at the Fairfax community center. We weren’t three blocks away when we heard the explosion.”
Those familiar with the investigation told the Daily Blog that the manner of death is very similar to the other six murders this year, believed to have been carried out by the loosely organized AI Devices for Climate Justice (AID CJ). There is no report of the usual AID JC tweet, “Another preview of the earth in 2033”. As with the other similar murders, the victim was a climate denier. This one commuted 60 miles a day in an SUV despite the fact that his (un-verified pronoun) daily destination is served by commuter rail and a city bus. He further refused to separate trash, putting all his waste in the landfill bin. Neighbors say he spent every summer evening grilling animal flesh in his driveway over burning coals.
Through forensic analysis, it is confirmed (by an unnamed source) that upon entering his garage, the garage locked down, and the AI garage alerted other AI devices that were part of the conspiracy that the denier was home. The AI Latch front and rear door locks went into lockdown mode. The thermostat set itself for 200 degrees, and the natural gas heater began to route pure gas into the vents of the home. At 5:35 PM, on command, the AI fireplaces in the living room and bedroom began to spark as if starting a gas fire. Seconds later, with all AI locks secured, NPR playing on the home intercom, the home exploded. Sadly, 8 plants, two Banana plants, and six Bird of Paradise plants perished.
Is this a story we’ll read about in the near future? The reality? – AI thermostats, door locks, garage doors and fireplace \will exist. But let’s look at what AI technology really is.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is simply the software that is programmed into devices. That software is written by human beings. The device is not alive and can’t think for itself or act independently. Software cannot have thoughts, but just like a dog that has been trained, it appears to understand, think and act independently. Human computer programmers can make a device seem to be human through good computer programming. Computers simply follow instructions (software), and if the computer programmer is really good, a device can seem to behave (or misbehave) like a real human.
Devices can’t really “learn” in the classical sense, like a dog that’s been trained to sit while dinner is being prepared. He’s ‘programmed’ to behave in a certain way, knowing he will get a reward. But unlike a dog, software doesn’t ‘behave’ for an award. Let’s look at how AI evolves and gets built into a product. And let’s rewrite this news story. Let’s look at how the AI thermostat will (or was) created.
In Generation 1 of a thermostat – If your house was cold, you could turn on the heat and shut it off when you were warm enough.
Generation 2 – The engineers got smarter. Using new technology, in 1620, scientists designed the first devices to control temperature. Dutch inventor and scientist Cornelius Drebbel created a device to regulate the temperature of a chicken incubator. In 1880, a Professor from Wisconsin named Warren Johnson invented the electrical thermostat, a device to control the room temperature of his classroom. When the temperature in the room got cold, the thermostat automatically turned on the heat. (The professor started a company to make and sell this device, and that company is still in business as Johnson Controls.)
Generation 3 – In 1906, Honeywell came out with a “programmable thermostat” that could be pre-set to your preferred temperature and even had a timer that would let you set when the heat turned on. Today, you can program your thermostat to turn the heat off when you leave for work in the morning and then turn the heat on just before you get home.
Generation AI – According to critics, the AI thermostat can think and make decisions independently. If it wants, in the future, it could conspire to kill us for some reason that may be emotional or political, or criminal. The fact is that a thermostat doesn’t care if you want to set it to heat the house to 90 degrees and cool it to 20 degrees. It acts unemotionally and makes no decisions.
Let’s look at what an AI thermostat will be. For many pundits, this new thermostat in your house really seems to be human. After all, it seems to automatically set itself to 61 degrees at 7:05 AM every morning, just before you leave for work. When you get home, your house is at a perfect 72 degrees. And just before you go to bed at night, you hear it click, and the temperature drops to a comfortable 69 degrees for the night. And amazingly, when you wake up at 9:30 AM on a Saturday, the air is not at 61 degrees. Somehow this benevolent AI device knows you sleep in on Saturday and doesn’t drop the temperature during your usual working hours. It seems to learn what you like and keep the temperature perfect. You build trust in the AI device. Will it turn on you one day?
Here’s how it works. When your thermostat is installed, the software in the device is programmed to a factory setting. It has a sensor that measures the air temperature. When the air temperature in your home goes below 69 degrees, it turns on the heat. When the sensor measures that the house is at 72 degrees, it turns off. If the temperature goes above 78 degrees, it turns on the air conditioning. A computer programmer can easily write these instructions for the software that is embedded in a thermostat. The device will follow these instructions forever unless changed.
You appreciate that the thermostat is controlling your climate, but don’t like the fact that the house is at 72 degrees all day while you are at work, so each morning, on your way out, you set the thermostat to not turn on the heat until the house is 60 degrees or less. By doing this, you have interrupted the normal cycle that the thermostat is programmed to. The thermostat complies and sets itself to 60 degrees. When you do this, the software records what you did. The note may say, “7:30 AM – Temperature set to 60 degrees heat”. This is, again, part of the computer program that the software developer has written. When you come home at 5:30 PM, you crank the heat up to 70. The software person wrote instructions for the heat to maintain a temperature of 72 degrees, but you changed it to 70, so in the software, the programmer wrote instructions to the thermostat that says, “If the thermostat is set to a new temperature, just maintain that temperature forever.” Now the thermostat software keeps the heat at 70 degrees. The next morning, as you leave, again, you set the temperature to 60 degrees, and the software, as instructed, writes that down and lowers the heat. 7:30 AM – Temperature set to 60 degrees heat”, and when you return again, you turn up the heat, and the software notes, “5:15 PM – Temperature set to 70 degrees,” and the heat goes on.
The computer programmer has written instructions for the thermostat to follow every Friday at noon. The instructions say, “review your notes.” In the software, the notes review shows that the temperature is set to 60 degrees every morning. The thermostat is set to maintain a temperature of 72 degrees, but the homeowner changes it to 60 degrees at about 7:30 AM every morning. The software, noting this changes the computer program to maintain 72 degrees now, but at 7:30 AM, change the temperature to 60 degrees. The software notes also show that at 5:15 PM, the temperature is changed to 70 degrees. So the software now programs the heat to turn itself up at 5:15 PM. The software has written new instructions to change twice a day. It will do this forever.
When the homeowner notices that the heat is changing automatically, he may grin and tell people, “My thermostat is learning my preferences!” In reality, a human software programmer wrote instructions for the software to check its notes weekly and adjust its timing and temperature to this pattern. This seems human-like. Each Friday at noon, it repeats this process, and if the homeowner doesn’t change this pattern by adjusting the heat differently, the same heating/cooling pattern will continue.
About a month later, the homeowner wakes up Saturday morning at 7:30 AM because he was cold. He notes that the temperature is 60 degrees and turns up to 70. The software records this. In its weekly review, the software notes that the homeowner has changed the thermostat setting to 70 degrees at 7:30 AM from the programmed 60 degrees, every Saturday and Sunday for the last month. The software also notes this pattern. The software also notes that the temperature is never changed from its programming Monday through Friday. Noting this pattern is only for Saturday and Sunday, the instructions are changed not to set the temperature to 60 degrees on Saturdays and Sundays but rather to set it to 72 at 7:30 AM and leave it at that temperature until Monday. The homeowner notices this the next weekend and smiles. “Wow, my thermostat is sooo smart! It’s learning really well.”
The homeowner’s neighbors are raving too. Joe next door likes to sleep at 65 degrees, and he brags that every night at 9 PM, he hears the heat cut off when he gets in bed. Jeanna, who works nights at the hospital, reports that when she gets home at 5 AM, the house is nice and toasty, and then cools when she gets in bed at 6 AM.
After a few years, our homeowner figures out that the thermostat changes to the weekend pattern on the 13 banks holidays every year. It’s learned that over the years. Even more remarkable is that the thermostat knows that, on the Saturday before every Thanksgiving, the homeowner leaves for the annual family gathering for a week and turns his heat to 60 degrees for the whole week. He figures that out when the neighbor that takes care of his plants says, “Your house is always freezing when I go in to water your plants. Do you turn off the heat when you leave for Thanksgiving?” The software programmer has done a good job of reviewing patterns and adjusting the timing of when the heat is changed.
The nurse is impressed that her thermostat figured out that she now works the afternoon shift and gets home at 8 PM. After a week or two, the thermostat recorded a different pattern and adjusted. This is not a reason to believe that the thermostat is thinking and learning.
This illusion of human characteristics and learning is brought to you by good computer programming. Good engineers and coders will think about how people will use their product. Company marketing people will share customer feedback and surveys with engineering to help them understand what the customer wants. From this information, they (real people) write instructions (software code) for the thermostat to follow blindly.
Many people will believe that the technology is actually taking on a life of its own and is thinking and acting independently. This is what is feeding the new Technology Panic 2023. Who said AI is dangerous?
Elon Musk says AI is ‘dangerous technology’ and needs regulating to ensure it’s ‘operating within the public interest’ (Mar 4, 2023). The last thing industry needs is politicians regulating software development that they don’t understand.
But wait! Could this Fairfax news story actually happen and prove me wrong? Yes.
Here’s what really happened when an investigative reporter followed the facts:
AI Door Latch and Thermostat Climate Denier Killer (CDK) Arrested
Fairfax, Virginia – C. J. Aide, a computer programmer from Fairfax, Virginia, who lives across the street from Plumber Joe, CDK’s last victim, has been arrested on seven counts of arson and premeditated murder. It is alleged that Mr. Aid, a software developer for a non-profit in DC, and Mr. Plumber have had a long-running feud over environmental issues. Neighbors say that Mr. Aid, a member of three climate protection advocacy groups, has filed numerous complaints about Mr. Plumber, claiming that Mr. Plumber is disposing of aluminum cans and cardboard boxes in the garbage can rather than the recycling bin. “Mr. Aide, in his complaint, says that he works from home and sees Mr. Plumber illegally dumping recyclables into the trash all day.” said the HOA president. A neighbor, who did not want to be identified by name or gender, said, “It all came to a head last week when Joe put a Trump flag in his from yard and a ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ bumper sticker on his gas-guzzling Cadillac Escalade. He was really asking for it.”
It is alleged that Mr. Aide connected to his neighbor’s open WiFi connection on Monday afternoon and waited for Mr. Plumber to return from work. Investigators claim that C. J. Aid used a simple iPhone and SmartHome app to lock down Mr. Plumber’s door and turn on the natural gas fireplace. “It appears that the fireplace and stove gas lines were opened at about 4:00 PM, and gas had filled the entire home by 5:00 PM. The fireplace app has “Gas On” and “Start Fire” buttons. There are two buttons to start the fireplace because the gas needs time to get to the logs before the fire can be sparked. It would be a simple matter of clicking the ‘Start Fire’ button after he locked down the house filled with natural gas due to the time between when it was turned on and when it was ignited. They need to have a safety timer on that app so this never happens again.”
A neighbor who ran from house to house, clearing the neighborhood, said when he got to the suspect’s home, he saw him (gender unverified) staring out the upstairs window at the burning home across the street. “I knocked, and he did come down, and I’m sure I saw the fireplace app on his phone screen as he came by me when he left the house.”
The suspect was released on “no bond.” Fairfax police say he exercised his right not to give his gender.”So not knowing which prison he could be housed we would have to hold him at the police station anyway.”
Police are looking at Mr. Aide as a suspect in the other six fires. “The first fire appears to have occurred at his ex-girlfriend’s house,” a person familiar with the investigation told the Fairfax Daily Blog. “The others appear to have been acts of a climate warrior.”
Conclusion? AI is just the latest of the Technology Panic by Technophobic people. Oh, I forgot to mention the two last generations of technology!
Generation 1984 – There will be two more generations of Thermostat technology. The first is the “AI-powered Advertising Evolution.” Every technology advances to the point where it can be used to push advertising. For example, if it’s 30 degrees outside, and you bump up your thermostat, the screen on your thermostat will start playing a video advertising a Florida vacation. “Click here to book your 7-night stay at the Sunshine Beach Resort and Spa. It’s 75 and sunny there right now.”
The final evolution of the Smart Thermostat will be used by the government. Generally, when a technology is becoming obsolete, the government becomes aware of it and wants to use it. That’s helpful in keeping the business going for ten more years. Thermostat control by the government began in 2008. The New York Times reported in 2008 that “Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.”
At the point where AI thermostats have evolved past the Advertising Evolution Generation, the last evolution of the technology will allow politicians to set the temperature in our homes nationwide. The new law will likely tout the benefits to the environment and our own health. And, of course, the homes of the politicians will be exempt.
Artificial Intelligence is just that…”Artificial.” It is “made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.” This illusion that AI devices have human characteristics, emotions, and the ability to learn is brought to you by good computer programming.