AI, Training and You

The world is changing at an extremely rapid pace and one of the main drivers is AI.

Now before you think, "Here goes an old guy railing against new tech...", hear me out.

The advances in AI are incredible, and valuable, and useful....and a slippery slope.

What do I mean?

There are so many ways that you can use AI in your daily life, and in our fire service world...especially for Leads and Trainers. It is so easy to jump into Chat or whatever version you downloaded, plug your good idea into the request box, sit back and watch the magic happen. With a few quick edits, you have pretty much a finished product. But here's where the 'slope' comes in.

It's one thing when you are creating a picture or a short quiz. But when you start to delve deeper into AI, you begin to shut down your brain. I know this may sound hyperbolic but stay with me.

It starts as a quick shortcut, or a time-saver, but it starts to creep into dialling down your own creativity, intelligence and wisdom, and replacing it with the "collective intelligence" of the world wide web.

Every time you out-source your brain-work to AI, you miss the opportunity to improve yourself. No one that I know goes to the gym, gets comfortable, and has someone else to lift their weights, rip 20 minutes on the aerodyne bike and then stretch, while they surf instagram. And yet we are quick to let AI do all the "heavy lifting" for our grey matter. Atrophy isn't just for muscles.

In fact, as soon as I began to write this article, AI popped up and asked if I wanted to let 'it' write the arcticle for me. "Describe the topic, set some preferences, and include a title..." and 'it' would take it from there.

I am constantly preaching that we all need to be "Thinking Firefighters". This isn't just on the fireground. The 'sets and reps' we need to be doing are in all aspects of our lives. This certainly includes where AI wants to step in.

Does AI often provide a more polished version of whatever we are trying to create?...sure, but I want the 'human' version.

I want my books to be written by authors who write with their life experince and imagination; my music with real feeling and emotion ( has AI ever really had the blues?! ) and my lessons from firefighters that have studied it, drilled it, and experienced it.

Will it contain some mistakes? Certainly. And that is part of what makes it great.

A Stevie Ray solo will sound differently on the studio album vs. the live version...and both will be amazing.

Is it more work? Without a doubt. And hard work is what we do...or it should be.

If you are a firefighter that wants to "do less", go do it somewhere else.

Human opinions will differ and create conversations, debate, and opportunities for discovery and collaboration. Thinking firefighters create other thinking firefighters. We get better from our interactions, whether it's ideas, conversations or hands-on.

"Ferrum Acuit Ferrum" - "Iron Sharpens Iron"

And the imperfect process is what makes human creativity great!

To quote Leonard Cohen - "Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."

See Ya On The Road

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