10 August 2026

I woke up this morning wanting to write something, so I came to my long-forgotten blog.

I could write a review of the Odyssey, but I will just tell everyone to go see it in IMAX if possible.

I could write a review of Spider-Man A New Day, but I will just say see it if you like these types of movies. I was happily entertained. However, the post-credit scene was hardly worth it.

AI

Since I last wrote, AI has infected the world like a helpful virus—a virtual Trojan Horse of technology that we are using with no real understanding of where this will all lead. I know, it’s a deep pool, but I want to just dive in.

First, I want to address the most dangerous issue with AI for right now. I don’t think it isn’t going to take over and kill us all like in the Terminator movies, but it is going to deeply affect us. I can already see it happening to me. I read the phrase above, “I want to just dive in,” and I thought, maybe I should write, “I just want to dive in.” Or I could change the wording completely to get my meaning across in a different way, and, without much of a thought, I had the urge to ask ChatGPT what it thought. I did not ask, and I am going to write this post without any AI assistance at all, but I was tempted. The idea that an English teacher with years of writing experience is doubting himself and thinking that maybe AI could improve one what I have written should be alarming.

I find that AI already replaces some of my thinking. If I have a question, like “what is the most popular car in Latvia,” I can just check it out on ChatGPT and get an answer. And I know we used to be able to “google” these things, but for some reason, it is so much more satisfying to have a virtual conversation on these topics and to ask follow up questions. ChatGPT can continue the narrative and follow through from idea to idea. For someone with a wondering mind and endless curiosities, this is a dangerous technology.

I am thankful that I am not a classroom English teacher who has to deal with students hooked on AI. I imagine this must be a source of frustration and self-doubt. I can see us starting to question our usefulness when AI can do things for us, and seemingly do them better than we ever could.

This doesn’t mean that AI will rise up and create super robots to destroy humanity (although I wouldn’t put it past it), but it does mean that we will willingly give up some of our sovereignty to the machines—even more than we already have.

On the plus side, ChatGPT saves me time. I work as an English editor, and sometimes I have redundant tasks that take a long time and are relatively boring. It might take me several hours to comb through a manuscript to find errors, and even then, I may miss some. But ChatGPT seems to do this very well. I can have it look over a manuscript and have it identify issues. I still make the final decision as to what we change and what we don’t change because it isn’t perfect, but this is a bit time saver.

But you may already see the problem here. If I trust AI to make the changes, I can’t be sure that these changes will be correct, so I still have to see what it wants to do and execute the final steps myself. I don’t know how long it will be before I trust AI to do the job fully. I heard a lecturer say that no one should be studying to be a radiologist anymore because AI will make them obsolete. But on the flip side, I heard an interview with Cory Doctorow explaining that AI will basically give the corporate overlords a reason to hire fewer people and give AI duties, but it will keep enough people employed to check the AI, and take responsibility for any mistakes. For example, if a hospital currently employs 10 radiologists, they may end up firing 9 of them, but they will need to keep 1 to check the AI results. So that one person will have so much more work and not get any more benefits, and also take the blame if the AI makes a mistake. That doesn’t sound like a very fun world, does it?

The other issue will be that our metric for quality and value is going to be upended. Just like McDonald’s convinced a billion kids that their food was tasty, AI will convince us that what it is doing is good. It will create movies, music, books, etc. and many people who know better will try to tell everyone else how awful these things are, but like a kid with a sugar addiction, the masses will eat it up, and quality will be moved to the margins while the AI slop takes over. The scary part is when people start doubting their own value when they compare what they are doing to what AI can do (as I illustrated above with my own self-doubt about my word choice).

Within 2 generations, those who lived before AI (BAI?) will die out, screaming at the clouds warnings of what will be, but their children and grand children will simply accept that “this is how it is now” just as we have accepted so many changes in our lifetimes without much resistance. Our pliability is both a blessing and a curse. We adopt and adapt with very little reflection or deliberation. And despite all the warnings from science fiction over the decades, we are willingly heading toward this singularity—full-steam ahead!

Another advantage of AI will hopefully be the eventual ability for anyone to live forever in some digital form—uploading our psyches into a mainframe and existing in an infinite universe without form or mortality. I remember reading that this is how humans will eventually explore the universe because, in that form, we won’t have to worry about slowly traveling through the galaxy. We won’t age or go space crazy or be affected by radiation or a lack of food or atmosphere. Our meat bodies are a liability for any type of space travel, so this just makes sense. Tiny chips on little nuclear rockets zipping from one end of the universe to the other, exploring, learning, exploiting. Eventually replicating and making more of whatever we are by then. This is the exciting future we can hope for! Like Star Trek, but all virtual. Sterile. Perfection.

I guess it is fun to just speculate and try to guess where this is all headed. Some people will become enormously wealthy, while the rest of us drudge on in our weary existences, trying to extract the final bit of meaning from humanity before it is overshadowed by whatever comes next. So let’s celebrate what we have now, while we still have it with our eyes to see, ears to hear, and flesh to feel. Taste everything you can and don’t believe anything that seems too good or bad to be true!

Hold on for dear life, and enjoy the ride while it lasts!

Picture Gallery

Finally, some pictures of my trip to Ireland and other fun photos from Latvia and beyond!

In May, I met with my good friend Dan Boster from Omaha by way of Texas, and we spent two wonderful weeks exploring Ireland and playing cribbage.

In June, my sister visited with her family and my daughter Maija. We celebrated Jāni together with our cousins near Ķekava. It was magical. Another teacher friend from Omaha also came through Riga on a bike tour of the Baltics! It was good to see Linda and her people! Paul was here to run a marathon with his people. It has been a really cool summer when I look back at things. We also saw Moby in Tartu!