The Palm of My Hand

I’d like to talk to you about how AI is going to play out, quite the touchy subject these days. Everyone thinks they know what’s going to happen, but I’ve figured it out. I was driving home in my car today when it suddenly hit me. I mean, after I put on my sunglasses to block out that damned sunset. It always seems to be right in your eyes, right? Actually, let me go off on a bit of a tangent first. We’ve got time.

You know that moment when you realize the sun is beginning to set? You’ve gone about your day taking the sunlight for absolute granted. The ball of liquid fire in the sky? Yep, still there. Still hot. Still bright. It fades into the background, no more tangible than the randomly generated people mindlessly piloting their cars to locations unknown and unimportant – you’ve got things to do. Only now, perhaps thanks to looking out a window at just the wrong moment, you realize that the sun has started to pitch itself downward. Don’t be stingy, the people on the other side of the horizon need attention too. Maybe now you start thinking about how the rest of your day is going to go. The sky has yet to shift hues, there’s still time on the clock – but you probably decide that you don’t quite have enough left to do that thing that yesterday you said you were going to get to tomorrow. Oh well, you’ll get to it tomorrow. After all, it always seems to get here.

A bit later on you look back outside, wondering if the sky was always red or if that’s just your imagination. Doesn’t matter, you’ve done all your things. Now’s the time to relax, or perhaps eat dinner (if you’re that kind of person). Later still, as the ambient light inside the house begins to dim to the point of uselessness, you take one final look outside. The sun isn’t visible anymore, but it’s still light out. The atmosphere is doing its best to make sure it’s bright enough for the kids outside to get home safely, lest their mothers worry themselves to sleep. But even the atmosphere isn’t powerful enough to keep the sun around, the sunset always wins in the end.

And then you have that thought. “Oh, the day is over. I’ve run out of time.” Even if you’re a night owl, you realize that your options are now severely limited. It turns out the life-giver in the sky that you so take for granted is actually necessary for a good many things. Why don’t you remember having this thought yesterday? Will you remember having this one tomorrow? You watch as the final waves of sunlight (or particles if you’re that kind of person) slip beneath the ever-present imaginary horizon that always lies just out of reach. You feel a small tinge of sadness as you realize the time you had today will never come back. There will never be another today, only tomorrow in a trench coat. The certainty of today, the comfort and calm brought to you by a world you can knock on, is about to go away.

You’re not sure what lies ahead. Oh sure, you’ve got plans for tomorrow. Once the sun comes back, you’ll do so many great things. Then maybe once you’re done with those, you’ll do some more things. Who knows? You’ve got a whole day ahead of you! Or, at least, you believe you do. Odds are you won’t die of a heart attack in your sleep, but you never know. Anything could happen. With the sun goes confidence, goes the firmness of the world. Tomorrow isn’t necessarily frightening. After all, you’ve got all those great things you plan to do, but you begin to wonder if it will actually come at all.

There’s nothing you can do about it. Shout and scream as loud as you want. Throw all of your money and worldly possessions into the sky, you cannot hurry the sun. It went away on its own time and it will come back when it’s ready. You cannot change things. All you can do is sit and wait for the tomorrow you believe will come, when you get to do all those great things.

But wait, what happens if tomorrow comes and things go wrong? Even if you don’t die in your sleep or the sun doesn’t explode whilst not within your purview, tomorrow might not go according to plan. Oh god, you could fall down the stairs! You could get hit by a bus! Any number of things might go wrong, even if they’re not quite so drastic. You suddenly long for the sun to return, to bring back the certainty of today, a day that, even if it didn’t go entirely according to plan, still happened. Today happened, but tomorrow might not. In fact, the only thing you know for sure is that tomorrow won’t be like today. I mean, probably, right? It certainly won’t be an exact copy. Even if things go largely the same, there will still be things that you didn’t see coming. Things you couldn’t have planned for. All you can be certain about is that things will be different. Why does the sun do this to us? Does it hate us or something? I asked it to stay but it still left. Why won’t it just do what I’ve asked it to do? I asked nicely!

In truth, the sun does not care about your feelings. It does not care about your worries. And it most certainly does not care about those great things you’re going to do. The sun does what it wants with zero regard for what you might like. This isn’t something it chooses to do. As far as the sun is aware, it’s never set once in its life! To the sun, you are simply one more tiny dot on that blue and green planet that won’t just go away already. The sun does not care about you, but that doesn’t mean it hates you. If it hated you, you wouldn’t live long enough to realize it.

The moment you when you realize the sun is beginning to set gives you pause. Today isn’t quite over but you can see the end coming. Maybe you feel a twinge of nostalgia for today. A weird sense that things were pretty good overall. We had a good day today, didn’t we? We did some great things, even if we didn’t quite get around to all of them. Even though we might like today to last forever, it simply will not. All we can do is watch as the sun goes away and hope that, when it rises, it brings another good day.

Oops, looks like we’re out of time! It seems as though I forgot to talk about how AI’s going to play out. Sorry about that, I do tend to drag on sometimes. Oh well, I’ll get to it tomorrow.

2/4/2024