How to Be Smarter Than AI
My son and I, probably talking about The Office
“Cordray!” I shouted, punching my fist into the air.
“Danny!” my son shouted, meeting me in the middle for a celebratory high-five over our iced teas and root beer.
Do you get it? Neither did anyone else in the restaurant.
Let me explain.
Three nights ago my son wandered downstairs where my husband and I were watching Fargo.
“Hey, that’s that guy,” he said.
“Timothy Olypant,” I offered.
“No, that guy.”
“Yeah,” I said “‘I could swear that guy was a male model…’”
Fargo side note: Season 1 is top-of-the-line incredible, Martin Freeman is a (horrific) treasure, so good, no notes. Season 2 is good, it’s smart, it’s catchy, Kirsten Dunst is a terrible human in the most magical way. Season 3 is the most despicable showing of humanity on record (IMO), it made me wildly uncomfortable. Ewan McGregor is brilliant but I am now forever haunted by the bleakness of that storyline. Season 4 (which we have not yet completed) is kind of meh - but Timothy Olyphant was a welcome addition… until he wasn’t. Season 5 - check back later - but really… where could they possibly take this story?
If you spent more than an hour in our house, you’d be hard-pressed not to hear us talk about or quote The Office. It is ingrained into our family culture. It goes deep. (That’s what she said.) And that guy had a small character arc in Season Seven.
You know that feeling when something is right on the tip of your tongue, or just out of reach in your brain, and even though you know you know it, you can’t quite grab hold of it? That’s where we found ourselves. We knew we knew, but we didn’t know what we knew.
“It’ll pop into my brain in like an hour,” I declared.
But it did not.
In fact, for almost forty-eight hours I felt the weight of it hanging there—the thing you know you know but don’t actually know is very heavy… you know?
I could have easily pulled up Google on my phone and learned the answer in a matter of minutes, but because I knew I knew it, I wanted my brain to do the Googling.
I checked in with my son to see if he’d cracked it first. Nothing. Just dead air for both of us. Excruciatingly frustrating, yet I was doggedly determined that I WOULD NOT SUCCUMB TO THE gOD OF GOOGLE. I challenged him to do the same.
“I could swear that guy was a male model.”
I spent two days with the centrifuge of my brain spitting out scene after Office scene that featured Timothy Olyphant. I knew where his name fit, I just didn’t know what it was.
Except I did know.
Because after my son’s girlfriend’s volleyball game, after we ordered our dinner, after three firetrucks pulled up outside because the neighbouring table’s fajitas set off the fire alarms, after I gently told the waiter that the sautéed onions and mushrooms had been forgotten on my burger, the name landed in my brain with a healthy KA-CHUNK and I punched the sky while I hollered my answer.
“Cordray!”
Danny Could-Have-Sworn-He-Was-A-Male-Model Cordray.
And if Google had feelings, the rich satisfaction of doing something all by itself would wrap it in a sweet Saran of triumph, resulting in a five-alarm fire that would destroy the whole network. When the Rolling Stones sing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” that probably just means they’ve never actually done something on their own. (Roadies, drivers, stage-hands, oh my!) Why would you ask ChatGPWhatever ‘who’s that guy they think is a male model on The Office’ when instead you can experience the exquisite yoga of remembrance…
Is this getting out of hand?
All I wanted to share was that little mental challenges like this are so good for us, they exercise pieces of our minds that are getting lazy. Technology can be good, but not at the expense of our own intelligence. Our brains will atrophy if we don’t wake them up from time to time.
No matter what any of the bros tell you, we are still smarter than the machines, and we will be as long as we exercise our right to use our brains first and employ their help only as a secondary protocol.
A few months ago I was sitting in the library pouring over a grammar book. The librarian approached, hand-over-her-heart. “Are you reading the Dictionary?” she asked. And that right there tells you just about everything you need to know about who we are as a society.
So-sigh-ety.
So my challenge to you is this: the next time something you know you know feels just out of reach, don’t immediately grab for your phone or power up the old PC — why not try to trust yourself? Yes, perhaps googlechatwhatsimicallit can return an answer in a millisecond, but you can love and laugh and cry and fear and… wait for it… think for yourself. What you know is there, you just have to remember how to look for it.
