Back in ye olde 2019, when rumors of these large language models were filling the halls, a co-worker pulled me over to show me an early model. He got my attention with the claim that "...soon everyone will have a tutor!".

A BOLD claim, indeed!

I scurried to his desk excited and watched him paste in the most convoluted cli call I had ever seen. He hit enter, and after what felt like an awkward eternity, the response came back … and of course exhibiting that classic llm artifact where the model just repeats the same sentence over and over. His terminal filled up quickly and he had to ctrl+c out.

"I'm not sure what happened, it just worked before! WTH?"

I of course gave him some corporate words of assurance, but I quipped privately to myself: a personal tutor for everyone?! I'll believe it when I see it!

Alas, here we are…

That moment now feels like a fitting metaphor for where we are with rsi and intelligence. Regardless of someone's personal p(rsi) or exact timeline, it's clearly going to become reality soon, and it will impact all of our work and how we individually provide value to society and our community. Even with how unhelpful current models can still be at times :-).

However, I'm not really sure anyone can really guarantee anything of real substance about whether it will be good, bad, or what the effects will look like, even if their own efforts are pointed in a certain direction. I think the best we can do is to honestly point to the trend line itself, and that's about it?

For me, I think this is at the heart of why I find it quite unnerving.

It was the summer of '07, and this was Fort Polk, Louisiana. It was a hot, humid, horrible feeling to just exist outside! The area has this type of weather where the air has a soupy texture and where it takes twice as many breaths as it should to extract one satisfying inhale.

A few of us were sitting over by a small military shop on-base, waiting to get picked up. We had finished our final training (JRTC) before getting our final deployment orders and were heading to our stationed base in Kentucky.

There were four of us from the same infantry company, sitting on a bench. We had just gotten word of our Area of Operations (AO) for our upcoming fifteen-month combat rotation. It was to be somewhere in Baghdad.

As you might imagine, some of us were feeling nervous, but didn't want to show it for fear of being seen as weak-minded.

I remember they had some benches and soft-serve ice cream. There were only two flavors, vanilla and chocolate, but that was more than enough for me. I remember wolfing it down; I had opted for the cone and it was glorious (still the way I prefer to enjoy my ice cream).

One of the younger sergeants, Sergeant Craig, came over and checked up on us. Craig couldn't have been older than twenty-one, just barely old enough to drink.

However, he and others had already been on multiple combat deployments and we really looked up to him. He was also goofy, and he had this warm, friendly smirk on his face. He was one of those people who didn't take life too seriously; The net effect of being around him was that he made you feel safe.

He must have noticed our nervousness, perhaps even misguided excitement, about deploying. All of this training and we were going to do this for real!

It was pretty obvious that at least some of us might not be coming back. I guess that it was a real possibility, but it wasn't something that I allowed myself to consider.

Craig sized us up and in his own goofy way wanted to lay some words of wisdom.

"Ohh, it's not going to be a big deal. I bet you we will be on a big FOB with Burger King and all of that," he said. He noted that Baghdad seemed a step down from his previous deployment in the area which, at the time, was lovingly known as the Triangle of Death.

"On our last deployment, we had so much free time that I binge-watched shows and played video games most of the time. When we would patrol, we would just drive up and down this road the entire time," he continued.

One of the guys quipped, "Well what if we get blown up or something? Won't that hurt?"

"If it hurts, then you're likely going to make it; otherwise, you're not going to know what fucking hit you!" Craig quipped back.

I guess it all just fades to black.

"Also, when someone dies, it's totally not a big fucking deal. We will line everybody up and do our ceremony thing. We did our military funeral in shorts and flip-flops during our last deployment!" He said this while holding onto his ice cream cone.

I remember us giving each other incredulous looks, but Craig's words resonated. This deployment just might end up not being a big deal.

Craig's description of the deployment was nothing like what I experienced.

For starters, we had no free time. We were not on a large FOB; we were on a super small base, a COP, where the ~70 or so of us were pulling our own security while doing patrols and raids in between. We were too sleep-deprived and barely had time to play video games or anything of that sort. Most of our meals came in the form of MREs - no Burger King in sight.

If we got lucky, we would get the chance to ferry some captives to the Green Zone, in which case, there was indeed ice cream!

Then, eight months into the deployment, we found ourselves at Craig's funeral.

He had gotten shot in the head. How it happened is a story for another time.

For his funeral, military command decided to make a real dog and pony show out of it. Instead of doing the funeral at our small COP, they dragged our small company out to the main base so that all of the command leadership could attend.

I was told my uniform needed to be clean and crisp, which was a challenge on such short notice given the austere conditions.

It was a traditional military funeral and it was nice, but it was clear from the get-go that there were political undertones. Members of the press were there and so were high-ranking military officers with very little dirt on their uniforms.

As the ceremony was over, we all got into our trucks and headed back to our COP.

I asked my Team Sergeant, Jarden, since we were at FOB Liberty, if we were going to stop somewhere for ice cream before going back.

He turned slowly at me, "What the fuck is wrong with you, Cocu?! Ice cream at a time like this?! You have got to be fucking kidding me!"

He paused for a second before finalizing with "There is something wrong with you!"

He hadn't been there when Craig told us his story. There was simply too much to explain. We left.

It was nighttime by now and I leaned back in the gunner's seat and stared out of the open-air top, looking up at the sky with my night vision goggles on. I expected to spot at least some stars but I couldn't spot any. It must have been overcast.

The truck was silent.

Rest In Peace, Staff Sergeant Clay A. Craig, Sergeant First Class Robert C. Jarden.

Thank you to my wife Mary, friends, and family for encouraging me to write this down.