“A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used.” – May Sarton
We had an interesting Family Facetime call with our four adult children yesterday. I was reminded of my latest addition to my inspirational journals (see above) when my eldest son asked my daughter when she thought she was at the height of her tennis game. Without a beat, she answered that it was her junior and senior years of high school, because she averaged playing tennis four hours a day during that time period.
Our middle son is the one of us seemingly most interested in artificial intelligence and so he shared a really sobering article with us, written by a man named Matt Shumer, who is in the AI field of business:
https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening
I highly recommend reading this article. I didn’t read it until this morning and it really got my wheels turning (and admittedly, my stomach churning). Yes, it’s another article telling us that our vocations are all going to be replaced by AI, much sooner than we think. The article makes logical sense. It also brought me around to this whole idea of “talent” again.
What if our natural talents are what AI is best at? What if AI makes our natural talents look like child’s play? What if what we are talented at isn’t really where our hearts lie? That seems to be one of life’s cruelties sometimes. People who would die to play the guitar masterfully, can’t seem to keep their chords straight and those who play by ear, would rather be basketball stars. And do we sometimes look at our own talents too broadly? For example is my daughter’s real talent playing tennis or is it her hand/eye coordination and natural athletic ability? Does she just apply her talent to what she likes to do? Do we think we are not talented because we have considered the idea of “talent” too broadly? Isn’t there talent in being particularly dogged or having a sharp eye for detail or listening to understand? Our talents are actually the nuances that people notice about us. Our talents are the traits of ours that stand out as different and appreciable and notable, no matter how subtle these differences may be.
I’ll be pondering a lot about “talent” this next week. The dictionary says that “talent” is our natural aptitude or skills. But we don’t always find ourselves interested in our own aptitudes and skills, do we? And are our talents more specific than we realize and thus can be applicable to a lot more actions than we realize? For instance, a lot of these Olympian figure skaters that we have been watching recently, could obviously choose to be fine dancers or gymnasts instead. The figure skaters have chosen to apply their natural abilities to a singular focus of ice skating.
It seems to me, that at the dawn of this AI revolution, we must be adaptable and curious, as the author emphatically states in his article, but we also must be curious about our own selves and our own talents, besides what AI is capable of doing. We must be curious about how we can adapt ourselves and our talents to this new era of working right along with machines. We must ask ourselves which of our talents are worth honing and putting the time in, for our own sense of purpose and meaning and satisfaction. We mustn’t fear AI. It’s too late for that – the wheels are already turning quickly. (as Byron Katie says, “When you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100 percent of the time.”) Perhaps the strongest among us, will hone in on and sharpen our most human qualities, traits, talents and also our flaws. These things might become the most quaint, beautiful, treasured, appreciable, distinguishable lost relics of a time period which we all might have already walked out of, with the door behind us closing more quickly than we ever expected.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.