To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Holding On
This morning on the coast of southern Maine, I enjoyed looking out from the desk of my father, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 96. He and my mother honeymooned here in a cottage his grandfather bought during the Great Depression.
Family history is part of why I feel grounded and expansive on this beach. Tomorrow Darlene and I will return to Sanibel after a four-day visit centered on the celebration of my grandson Ryan’s ninth birthday.
Grounded, yes. That’s what this timeless view of dunes, ocean, and sky always does for me. But today I am also stirred up by breaking news from the world of AI.
Two days ago at our hotel outside Boston, I signed up for ChatGPT Pro, so I could try Operator. That’s Open AI’s new agent that can search the Internet for an Italian restaurant with a kids’ menu near your hotel and make a reservation.
As Operator opened web pages on my iPhone without my touching the screen, I felt as I were in the driver’s seat of Pebbles, our Tesla Model Y—my hands in my lap, letting Full Self Driving (FSD) operate the car.
I was able to rent a Tesla Model 3 from Hertz at Logan Airport, but it didn’t have FSD.
It was a shock to find myself operating a car on my own after my becoming used to the reliable, human-like driving skill of Pebbles. By comparison, the Hertz Tesla made me think of Jezebel, the Ford Model A that Mom and Dad drove here on their honeymoon.
This morning I downloaded DeepSeek, a new Chinese AI bot which today sent US tech stops tumbling, because its AI prowess rivals that of ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost.
My initial tests of DeepSeek impressed me. I think I’ll name him Panda.
When I asked for a plot summary of Middlemarch, the George Eliot novel I’ve begun reading, Panda tapped out a bookish response, including this:
Throughout the novel, Eliot explores the constraints placed on individuals by society and the often-painful process of personal growth and self-awareness. The characters’ lives intersect in various ways, creating a rich tapestry of human experience.
Not bad. And unlike ChatGPT, which I was happily paying $20 a month for, DeepSeek is free for personal use by individual users.
I sensed the disconnect between my buzzy AI experiments and the serene view out my window. So I sat for 15 minutes.
What occurred to me during that pause was that I was experiencing two rates of change, two measures of the passage of time.
I asked Panda how many years a time traveler would have to go back in order to see a different view of ocean and horizon than the one in front of me. I was thinking in a vague way of plate tectonics, of continents moving away from each other to create oceans.
“What a fascinating question!” my new Chinese friend replied. He noted that the Atlantic began forming around 200 million years ago during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea. Also, sea level has fluctuated. About 20,000 years ago sea levels were about 390 feet lower than today.
Panda got specific about my question this way:
To see a completely different view—one where the ocean horizon might not even exist—you would likely need to go back at least 200 million years, to a time before the Atlantic Ocean formed. For more subtle changes, such as a different shoreline or sea level, you might only need to go back 20,000 years or less.
The beauty of your view lies in its relative stability on a human timescale, but it’s humbling to think about the immense geological forces that have shaped it over millions of years.
Perhaps this timelessness is what makes it so special—a connection to both the past and the present. 🌊
Panda and his kin are arriving awfully fast these days.
My grandson’s changes are slower but equally amazing to me.
In the car coming back to the hotel from our Italian dinner, I joked that the way you can measure how much someone loves you is by counting how much money they spend on you. The next morning, I regretted it. I feared I’d given seriously flawed grandfatherly advice.
“We knew you were kidding,” Ryan said on behalf of himself and his brother Jake when I made my amends. “You should have a podcast. You could call it “Old Guy Who Makes Kids Laugh.”
Where can I turn to stay grounded as AI races to us from the future and the youth of me and everyone I love races toward the past?
It helps to hold onto what moves more slowly, like the Coast of Maine.