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Calgary Herald

Ford: A sign of the times that AI replaces much of human work

My father did not live long enough to experience a machine taking over his job. Article content When he died 50 years ago, the most advanced equipment in his office was a tape recorder. Article content Article content Perhaps, in a sense, he was lucky not to face the march of machines toward world dominance. Artificial intelligence is mining the brains and hard work of humans to build its own encyclopedia of knowledge, actions and decisions. Article content Article content In doing so, it will eventually take jobs from people. It's too late to stop it, although one can wish the creators of all that knowledge could be compensated for having their brains stolen and mined. Article content Article content Robert Evans Ford had one of those 'essential' jobs — he was a court reporter. He was necessary, yet largely invisible to the public. Nobody notices the court reporter in any courtroom television drama. But without him and the other men — they were all men at the time — the various courts and their proceedings could not function. Article content What he did was simple, but essential: Every word spoken in any court or any official hearing was taken down using a fountain pen in precise shorthand and subsequently transcribed into a Dictaphone and then typed by a phalanx of secretaries. In a sense, the job is still the same, the requirements for precision are no less, but it now seems prophetic that no human need be involved in the process. Article content Article content That the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology is suspending its captioning and court reporting program (among many others) is a sign of the times. Some don't believe it's a sign of progress. A concerned letter writer wrote that the role of a court reporter 'is critical to the integrity of the Canadian judicial system. Article content 'This is the only program of its kind in Canada . . . NAIT's decision to suspend the program threatens our ability to access . . . justice.' Article content That may be slightly over the top, but to be expected. Article content No one wants to see AI taking over Canadian courts. People don't want to see their job degraded. But consider that the 19th century Luddites couldn't stop the continuing advance of the Industrial Revolution — which began with the introduction of the steam engine — even as textile workers destroyed machinery they believed would take over their jobs in woollen mills. Their modern counterparts who oppose new technology are still called by that name.