John Henry is a figure in American folklore, rather like Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill. Unlike those other larger-than-life characters, John Henry is believed to be based on a real person who lived in the nineteenth century. According to legend, John Henry was an African American “Steel Drivin’ Man” who worked for the railroads. His job was to hammer a steel drill into rock, making holes that explosives could be inserted into to blast a tunnel. It was hard work, but one where John Henry could take pride in a job well done.
One day, the railroad brought a new steam-powered driller to the site. It looked like John Henry was out of a job. But John Henry did not give up so easily. He was sure he could do a better job drilling holes than any machine. He challenged the operator of the steam drill to a competition. Whoever made the best holes would get the job.
So the two set to work drilling holes. It was man versus machine. The machine worked faster and made more holes in the rock face, but John Henry’s holes were deeper and smoother. Unfortunately, the exertion of racing against the machine proved to be too much for John Henry. The strain proved too much for him—his heart burst from the effort, and he died.
There are a lot of ways this story has been interpreted over the years. It could be taken as a tale of exploited labor contending with a greedy management out to save costs. It has sometimes been seen as a metaphor for race relations. John Henry often stands for the dignity of the working man, especially the Black working man. The legend of John Henry is most often seen as a contest between man and machine, with the subtext of the threat that the machine will replace the man.
This wasn’t something that anyone feared before the nineteenth century. Before the steam engine came into use, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the only machines people used were simple tools and machines. No one feared being replaced by his ax or hammer, or even her spinning wheel. The most complicated machines were water wheels and windmills. For the most part, the tools people used were extensions of themselves and required continuous human or animal effort to operate. They supplement human strength rather than replace it.
This began to change with the Industrial Revolution. Steam-powered engines could operate to some degree independently. As technology improved, such machines required less human effort to operate. A machine could do the work of many men, often more efficiently, and with greater precision. Machines began to replace human strength. It seemed that they would replace humans altogether. We may look down on the Luddites as obstacles to progress, but they were fighting for their livelihoods and ultimately their lives.
It is some consolation, however, that man did have an advantage over the machine. Human beings think. Machines do not. The human advantage over nature has never been our muscles. The horse and the ox, along with many wild animals, outmatch us there. The human advantage has been our brains. The machines that relieve us of labor give us the freedom and leisure to think. A man who isn’t breaking his back can create. And in fact, advancing technology has created far more jobs than it has destroyed. John Henry may have been out of a job, but his grandchildren didn’t have to burst their hearts drilling holes in rocks. In the end, industrial machines have supplemented rather than replaced human beings
The development of computers and the electronics industry seemed to belie the optimistic idea that machines couldn’t truly replace human beings. Here, there were machines that seemed to think. A computer could perform mathematical calculations faster and more accurately than any human mathematician. Computers can be programmed to do many wonderful things. Surely computers would replace men.
Yet, a computer cannot truly think. Any computer, no matter how advanced, is not really much more than a glorified abacus. Everything a computer does, from video games to modeling the interior of stars, is nothing more than a series of calculations made very quickly. A computer can do nothing unless a human programs every step. There were white-collar John Henrys, accountants or mid-level managers, who found themselves replaced by computers. Yet, the enormous economic growth made possible by the electronics revolution more than compensated for the job losses.
Now, perhaps the machine has finally caught up with man. Recent developments in artificial intelligence have created systems that seem to be able to think as well as, or perhaps better than, human beings. Recently, an AI chatbot has even managed to pass the Turing test, according to this article in The Independent.
A leading AI chatbot has passed a Turing Test more convincingly than a human, according to a new study.
Participants in a blind test judged OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 model, which powers the latest version of ChatGPT, to be a human “significantly more often than actual humans”.
The Turing Test, first proposed by the British computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950, is meant to be a barometer of whether artificial intelligence can match human intelligence.
The test involves a text-based conversation with a human interrogator, who has to assess whether the interaction is with another human or a machine.
Nearly 300 participants took part in the latest study, which ran tests for various chatbots and large language models (LLMs).
OpenAI’s GPT-4.5 was judged to be a human 73 per cent of the time when instructed to adopt a persona.
“We think this is pretty strong evidence that [AI chatbots] do [pass the Turing Test],” Dr Cameron Jones, a postdoc researcher from UC San Diego who led the study, wrote in a post to X. “And 4.5 was even judged to be human significantly more often than actual humans.”
Artificial Intelligence based on a large language model does not actually think. A large language model is designed to place words together in order, rather like an enhanced version of autocorrect. If it is trained on enough text from the internet and other sources, its output can come to resemble human speech, answering questions and giving opinions. A chatbot does not actually reason or know anything, except the information that it has been trained on.
Despite passing the Turing Test, the researchers noted that it does not mean that the AI bots have human-level intelligence, also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI). This is because LLMs are trained on large data sets in order to predict what a correct answer might be, making them essentially an advanced form of pattern recognition.
Nevertheless, it can mimic human cognition remarkably well. I have no doubt that ChatGPT could write this blog post better than I could.
Artificial intelligence will improve over time. Human beings will continue to research and develop better systems. Eventually, artificial intelligence will conduct the research, creating better models that serve human needs better. Artificial intelligence will be able to do anything a human brain AI will be able to do anything the human brain can—only better. The machine will outclass man.
I do not think that artificial intelligence will turn on humanity. There will be no terminators sent into the past to destroy a leader of the resistance as a child. Most likely, any system will incorporate some version of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. Our AI servants will be completely loyal, willing to satisfy our every need.
My fear is that humanity will be simply obsolete. What is there for men to do when the machines can do everything. An AI doctor can diagnose illness and prescribe treatments better than any human. With a robot arm, it can perform surgery with a surer hand than any human. An AI lawyer can cite cases and laws better than any human attorney. Given a voice, it can argue its case before an impartial AI judge. AI can write, create art, and manage governments and businesses better than any mere human. What is left for humans to do? Will we all end up like John Henry? Maybe with AI to do our thinking for us, we will lose the ability to think for ourselves. The human race may end not with a bang but a whimper as we sit on our couches being entertained.
David's Commonplace Book 