Chapter 1
Dad, You Can Talk to the Internet
I called my dad last week.
We spoke for an hour about how the world is changing and fast. I asked him if he had been following the news stories about artificial intelligence. He said that he read about Microsoft's #AI capabilities but didn't know what exactly it was.
It didn't take long before I said, "You need to start using ChatGPT and tell me what you think. I'm pretty sure that it's the future of the #Internet."
My dad paused for a moment. Then, he said, "OK."
First, I have written about disruptive technology for nearly 15 years. I have never called home and told my dad to download anything on his phone.
Second, my dad has been online since Polar Communications offered dial-up on the farm. That is why I always had access to a computer and the web.
One of my earliest memories of my dad and I involves searching for photos of Navy Seals on the search engine Web Crawler.
I'm pretty sure I asked him to print out that image, too. I'm told that it nearly used up an entire color ink cartridge.
Let me be frank: telling my dad about artificial intelligence isn't exactly a new idea to anyone paying attention right now.
It's like a California kid calling home and telling their parents about wildfires.
Everyone knows California is on fire. No one needs to Google wildfires. It's almost a fact of life that it's always on fire.
The same is true about artificial intelligence right now.
It's spreading so quickly and rapidly that it's evident to people that something big is happening. The California wildfire is spreading.
The future of the Internet and search is coming. It's already here.
I told my dad he could converse with the Internet. He could ask ChatGPT about John Deere, the history of North Dakota's glaciers, or how to fix machinery.
He could learn anything that he ever wanted in seconds.
I'm sure my dad wants to understand how to make money from farming during a historic drought. That is the real pain point that he is currently experiencing.
But my dad is auto-didactic like me. He is in a human encyclopedia with many volumes. He is known among his friends as the first person who will tell you about a county's geological formations and how the glaciers shaped the land.
In theory, it has nothing to do with farming, but to him, it's everything.
It's the entire story of how the land he harvests was formed and why there are different peaks and valleys. It's why he has to pull so many rocks out of the ground because a giant glacier dragged across the landscape for miles.
Thus, he cannot farm without thinking about the geology of North Dakota.
Maybe no one else was curious, but my dad wanted to know and decided to look the information up. As a result, I know more about geology than most kids.
And it's a fascinating topic because my dad is fascinated. That's the real power of curiosity. You ask a question and let it take you wherever it leads.