The Luddite

Luddite: (modern usage)

A term broadly describing anyone who dislikes, avoids or resists new technology, computers, automation, or artificial intelligence.

My friend Gina likes to throw fancy dinner parties. Like grownup dinner parties. Parties where people arrive on time, dress nicely, and on the whole act civilized. At my age I should start considering myself a grownup but still, when I arrive at these dinners I always feel like I should be the one collecting coats - or passing out drinks, the way I used to do when I was a teenager to make a few extra bucks on the weekends.

And yet…time marches on (sadly) and now I am a guest. A mature adult at a gathering of other mature adults. Will wonders never cease? Recently I attended one of these dinner parties. As I arrived at Gina’s gorgeous home the girl who met me at the door took my coat and then added my hostess gift to a hefty pile on the front hall table. This young girl reminded me of myself…decades ago. She was probably a sophomore or junior in high school by the looks of her, just trying to make some extra spending money. In my day when I took those gigs it was to earn some cash to buy weed for the weekend - but this girl did not look like her payout at night’s end would go toward anything like that. Hers would probably go toward some high-performance sneakers to do something healthy like take up a new sport or run a marathon. But I digress.

A young and handsome waiter (another high school kid from the area no doubt) approached me with a tray and offered me champagne or sparkling water - both in beautiful grownup glasses (no red solo cups tonight). As I took a water, Gina came up to me. “Hello Darling,” she greeted me with her usual graciousness and warmth. She took my elbow and steered me into the living room where the other guests were assembled, sipping cocktails and making small talk. Conspiratorially she whispered in my ear .“You’re going to love your dinner companion tonight. I’m sitting you next to Ivan Kaminsky (not his real name). He’s absolutely brilliant. Harvard man. Ph.D in physics. Started some gazillion dollar tech company out in Silicon Valley ages ago and now he’s down in Washington. He’s been recruited by “the firm” (my friend’s name for our government) to run some top secret AI thing. He’s like their AI czar now. Knows everything there is to know about it and more. You’ll have an interesting night.” My friend then waltzed away in a fabulous cloud of Chanel Number 5 and billowing orange chiffon as I walked over to say hello to her husband and another person I knew.

After about 45 minutes of chit-chat it was announced that dinner was going to be served.

Gina, after successfully herding us from the living room to the dining room, got us all to our assigned seats and settled in. As I gazed at the table, beautifully adorned with flowers and candles and crystal and china, I once again had that feeling. This whole affair was so elegant. So sophisticated. So grown up. How did I get here? How had time passed at such warp speed?

There were about twenty of us. I glanced at the empty place to my right where I assumed Ivan would soon sit. I looked outside to the terrace and saw someone yammering away on his cellphone. Ivan, I assumed. He seemed agitated. Angry. I could tell that he was yelling. I wondered if he was on the phone with Washington. Soon a gorgeous shrimp appetizer was placed in front of me by a waiter so silent and invisible my plate could have been set down by a soft summer breeze, not a hand. I introduced myself to the man on my left and learned that we both have sons at the same school. We discussed the school and some upcoming changes to the faculty for about five minutes until Ivan arrived and crashed into his chair.

“Sorry,” he mouthed to Gina while at the same time signaling for a waiter. When the waiter arrived he ordered a vodka on ice (although he looked like he already had a half-full glass of vodka in his hand) and turned to me and introduced himself. Ivan, I soon learned, is from Russia. He has that gorgeous, worldly (and also somewhat underworld-y) Russian accent that I have always loved. We chatted a bit about Moscow and St. Petersburg (both places I have never been, have always longed to see, and now fear that I never will). By this time Ivan had finished the glass he had brought to the table and was halfway through his next vodka. He was literally drinking it like water and I realized as he waved his hands around dramatically and spoke louder and louder that he was already a little bit drunk.

“Should Washington’s AI czar be getting drunk in public?” I wondered. But then, because he was interesting and sort of funny and had that charming Boris Badanov accent I let it go.

After our appetizer plates had been magically and silently replaced with our entrees I turned to Ivan, who was noisily chomping his way through his very rare steak (I had chosen the miso cod) and said “Gina tells me you are involved in AI. I’m so curious about it. But I’m also scared. Freaked out actually.”

Ivan stopped dismantling his meat, looked right at me with his hooded bloodshot eyes and said “you should be.”

I laughed at that. Surely he was joking. Surely this was meant to be funny. “No. I’m serious,” I said, setting down my fork and turning to face him. “I’m afraid of AI. I’m afraid the cyborgs are going to take over and enslave the humans. And then, like in all those futuristic sci-fi movies, we will all have to live underground while the robots hunt us down and kill us all. I mean they might keep a few humans around to do experiments on. But other than that we will all be exterminated. I’m scared.”

Ivan put down his fork and turned to face me. As the people on either side of us were involved in other conversations this was not as rude as it sounds. Turning your back fully to someone at a fancy grown-up dinner party is something that even I - non grownup that I am - know is a big no-no.

We sat there looking at each other. Our knees were almost touching. Ivan was drunk. I was stone cold sober. He wiped the grease from his mouth and chin with his fancy linen napkin. (How was Gina going to clean those I wondered?)

“You don’t need to worry,” Ivan told me in what I assumed was his most soothing tone. “It will work itself out. They don’t need us. We are a burden to this planet anyway. Just read the news. We are destroying it. When the time is right they are going to just shake us off the way a dog shakes off its fleas.”

“Wait. What?” I asked. What was he talking about? “Who is going to ‘shake off’ who?” I asked, the panic clear in my voice.

“The robots. The AI. The cyborgs as you called them. Whatever it takes. It’s us or them. They’re smarter than we are. Or they will be soon enough. Humans are primitive. Destructive. Savage even.” At this I glanced down at Ivan’s obviously expensive shirt which was now speckled with grease and even some of the “jus” from his recently devoured steak.

“Well maybe you are,” I laughed, pointing to his plate where the gristle and fat from his dinner sat in a sickening pool of slowly congealing blood. “But I’m not. I had the fish!”

“Acht,” he said, waving his hand around his head and signaling once again for another drink. He was really getting toasted now and I was afraid he would be nonsensical after his next round.

“I’m serious!” I begged him. “Apparently you know more than most about all this AI stuff. I know nothing about it. I’ve never even used Chat GPT. I’m wary of it. Like I’ll use Chat GPT and then I’ll never not use it again!”

“Well, that is a valid concern,” he said.

Just then Gina got up to make a toast and asked all the men at the table to move two seats to their right so that we would have new dinner partners while we ate our dessert.

“Noooo!” I moaned internally. I wanted to sit with Ivan. I wanted him to assure me that I, and my children and grandchildren and great grand children would not have to go underground. Would not be hunted like animals by the artificially intelligent cyborgs and whatever else was coming for us down this terrifying futuristic chute. I wanted Ivan to assure me that us humans would not be exterminated, ‘shaken off’ of Planet Earth like so many meddlesome annoying fleas. I wanted him to tell me not to be scared. I wanted him to tell me to be excited by AI, that we would all live together in non-savage harmony. Helping each other. Thriving together in the glorious, better future. I wanted him to tell me to be thrilled by what was ticking away beneath it all, looming on the horizon. But Ivan had not told me that. He had not told me that at all.

Toward the end of the night I went in search of Ivan and found him snoring on a couch in Gina’s family room. I’d never get to the bottom of this now. On the way home I told my husband everything Ivan had said. How he had not calmed me down at all. How he had in fact freaked me out. How he had assured me that I should be scared. “Don’t listen to him,” my husband told me. “You’re just a luddite. You always have been and always will be.”

“Yes I am a luddite. But this is not about being a luddite! In vino veritas!” I barked. “Maybe Ivan told me the truth because he was drunk! Maybe he told me what everyone in D.C. knows but won’t tell us. Maybe...”

But my husband, sensing that I was working myself into fearful hysterics cut me off. “He was drunk. Just ignore him.”

“Fine. Fine,” I said as I turned away from him to show my displeasure. “But so help me God if we find ourselves living in a cave in a few years, hiding from the terminators in dark dank sewers while the rest of the humans get ‘shaken off’ Planet Earth like so many fleas - don’t say I didn’t warn you. Because I did warn you.

And so did Ivan.”