Here’s a guy we once thought was a righteous innovator and philanthropist.

Now I wonder if his brain has been removed by aliens, soaked in Drano, and put back.

Reportedly he has predicted that, not far from now, schoolteachers and doctors will be replaced by A.I. and I’m here to warn you, it could happen.

In fact the makings are already there. Doctors, as we older folks knew them, are vanishing. They’ve been replaced by nurse practitioners. If you want to see a family doctor, good luck. Mine went elite and required $2,000 dollars a year just to be his patient.

That did not cover anything involving treatment; it was more like an attorney’s retainer. He’s also a bit evil because the last time he saw me he had “hands,” if you get my drift. Didn’t touch private places, but the touches were definitely caresses.

Every time I go to the clinic, my nurse practitioner is different.

I suppose it doesn’t matter, my saying so, but the practice has also moved to a new building and even in the lobby downstairs, the liminal spaces are unnerving. I don’t like liminality. It’s always been scary to me, a plain, unfurnished or unoccupied place. But upstairs it’s worse.

To get from the waiting room to the treatment rooms, one must enter a long hallway. Plain color, nothing in it. No doors marked for doctors or treatment rooms.

Then, entering perpendicular to both hallways, there’s another one to cross. I looked my first time there, and at one end there sat a wheelchair. Half folded, sitting at a weird angle, and the next time I went, months later, I still had the uncanny feeling, almost a panic, and the wheelchair was in the same place at the same position.

It was kind of like the hospital in Silent Hill, the first video game, but cleaner. For all I know, they had demon children with knives stuffed in some unmarked room..

Teachers are a pain when you’re in school. Each comes with a personality that might not be to your liking.

But I still remember some of my teachers, not fondly, mind you, but I remember them.

Here’s the thing. Love or hate them, they provide things no computer or A.I. can copy. One of those things is the necessary human interaction that helps children grow and to develop socially. Without the human element, our education system will fail.

A.I. has never appealed to me; it does, in fact, frighten me.

Its use has already grown to monstrous horror. So far the results in public and consumer applications are stunning in its uselessness. But behind the doors you and I can’t open, there’s a feeling of hopelessness. It won’t go away.

When I was in school, I had serious problems from the start. Already affected profoundly with PTSD, I wonder now what I might have achieved otherwise. I was also dyslexic, but by reading at home, I was able to get by. Math terrified me. I couldn’t do it and I think that the damage and a chaotic and dangerous home life made me more able to see chaos as more true than linear math including algebra. I saw variables (x and y) as being indefinite, transient things that had no determinable value. The more the class progressed, the more convinced I became that most forms of maths were bullshit.

I just saw the world differently, and it never helped that my dyslexia also applied to numbers. I could look at a phone number, then dial something different. After misdialing the same number, people tended to be nasty.

My parents did try to get me a tutor, and I did have a few, but it was already too late. Had I gotten help from someone patient and understanding, I may have passed a few classes.

One particular time stands out though:  during the school year 1975-1976, at winter break we had a “mini-mester” and a navy officer taught algebra instead of the alcoholic, washed-up college professor we had for the two main semesters.

He had a cold and was constantly spraying Neo Synephrine up his nose, but for some reason, I understood everything he said. For the first time, I was passing algebra tests.

This told me that it could be done, and that abstract maths weren’t so out of reach for me. But it also demonstrated that one teacher who can teach properly can make a difference.

And this is our problem today; good teachers have left the profession forever because of dangerous conditions, unfair pay and burnout.

It was a mistake to let things go this far. And our education system is not going to be helped by A.I. or Apples for the students.

I agree that academic achievement begins at home with loving parents, proper nutrition and healthcare, but I’ll tell you this much: I must have learned something along the way, and I must have had some good teachers, because nine years after dropping out, I took the G.E.D. Exam and passed it, first try, all sections. Never cracked a book, either. Took the test cold.

I find it more and difficult to remember that far back, but I will never endorse replacing teachers with A.I. and no computer can replace a good doctor.

Our disconnect from the rest of humanity is already catastrophic. Do you really want to see more of it?

Because I don’t. The hardcore political and politically social division in our society will only be exacerbated by less of the human interaction of teachers and students, doctors and patients.

Humans are, typically, a social bunch; when cut off from the good and bad of interaction, we tend not to do well.

We lose focus on what’s right. We are left to learn on our own about our history and how diplomacy used to be such a powerful force in world peace.

Leaving our children to electronic babysitters was never a good practice. Had I not had the occasional friend or neighborhood playmates, I could easily have attained every single characteristic of a serial killer. Think about it; more often avoided than accepted, what if everyone had seen me the way I saw myself?

Think of the brutal abuse I was going through. Many children become bitter, angry and even more isolated because the ability to trust has become impossible.

The question then becomes more practical than philosophical. The need to address human behavior will vanish and be replaced by questions about how long people should be free or imprisoned. Whether they should live or die.

See those questions as the tip of an umbrella and ask yourself what will fall under the umbrella over the course of time. What things are likely to be condoned that are currently unthinkable?

What will AI become? It cannot exceed its programming, although it has occasionally startled experts by doing freaky things that were not foreseen. Will AI be employed as judges? Attorneys?

These are the questions we need to answer, because in all things, there’s a point of no return. Dystopian films and stories will no longer seem farfetched but a reality. And nobody will write a scary novel that equals what our children find in their everyday lives.

Go to YouTube and you’ll see AI everywhere. After seeing a video with AI narration and AI art, you ask yourself if the whole channel is run by AI. And I’ve asked myself this, but the answers, in several cases, were ones I did not want to believe. At first they seemed benign enough, but the mistakes, mispronounced words and pictures that have nothing to do with the subject, came to cause alarm in my gut.

Now, let’s say you’re in an office, working every day. You have a water-cooler and a break room with a coffee pot and vending machines. How many people are there whose names you know? How many do you ever discuss something so trivial as weather or last night’s sports scores?

That’s nothing like it once was.

The morning coffee break used to see a bunch of people enter the break room, jabbering so loudly that one could not make out individual conversations. As cost-cutting became more important, and the office workers began getting let go, you probably found that you missed that chatter or having co-workers. One day, you stand up in your cubicle and you can hear nothing. You walk around and see 3 people working where once there was a full crew of 65 persons.

Already happening people!

When humans are removed from any part of a business or school, we’ve been weakened.

And when we become weak, we begin to die.