Disconnecting to Reconnect-How Artificial Intelligence and the Digital World Remind Us of Who We Are

The digital age has been upon us for some time. I wanted to take a moment to address the recent AI push and possibly offer a slightly different perspective. Artificial intelligence has prompted a varied response. Some are excited about the new ways that AI can make us more efficient in basic tasks, others see it as a way to create safer workspaces by having AI do dangerous jobs. For all the positive advocations, we also see a rising concern that people will lose their jobs to technology, there are environmental costs to expanding data centers, and some fear that AI will harm humanity in more direct ways.

For myself, I am cautiously optimistic. I visit with many people during my day-to-day work. I hear their concerns, I visit them in their homes, see what stresses them. Then I pan out and watch the world as it moves and changes. The people in their homes are a microcosm of the world at large. Their individual stresses are part of the collective stress of the greater world. Everything big and small is connected.

You may be saying to yourself, “Well yes, we’re all busy, we’re all stressed, and the world is crazy. What does AI, the digital world, and all of this household stress have to do with dog training?”

The further we disconnect ourselves from what we are made of the more we will long to return to our natural home. Change is constant and inevitable. However, what we are made of and where we come from does not change. We are organically from the earth, we are from the natural environment. Yes, us people who build super computers, scroll away on our cell phones, snap, chat, insta, social, feed. Yes, the people who work away for hours a day behind a screen in a cubicle farm. Designers, writers, engineers, teachers, and dog trainers; all of us interface with technology every day. It’s a largely if not totally unavoidable part of our existence.

What we lack is balance. I think that a big reason why people have pets is to reconnect with the natural self. It’s why people put plants in their homes. It’s why we visit parks, walk outside, enjoy sunrises and sunsets, are drawn to water, and delight in the sight of a happy dog.

Below is a Robert Frost poem that speaks to eternal natural change. Frost speaks to the preciousness of the Spring and how it is fleeting. That some sorrow comes with the loss of the spring hue. Just like I believe we feel a sense of sorrow when the other seasons in our lives change. As AI brings about change just like the digital transformations of the past have, we feel a desire to cling to what we have, the way things are. But all is not lost. Unlike digital transformations, nature and the seasons are revolving. We can look forward to the Spring coming back whereas most digital movements will pass on never to return. Instead of worrying about the latest craze I think we’d all be better served to unplug and address our natural longings more. Even if they’ve been suppressed for a very long time, it doesn’t take much to reawaken that which has always been and will always be. It is within us. It is within our dogs. It’s within the earth, and amongst the stars. The great Carl Sagan once said, “We are star stuff.” There is nothing digital that will ever usurp that. When I think of it in this way, it becomes much easier to put the devices down, take the dog for a walk, breathe the air, train with my dog, and connect with the people around me.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower.

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

-Robert Frost-