The AI Rapture

AI is changing every day. I remember back in 1996 when one of my friends brought out a new toy on one of our motorcycle rides to Vermont. He had been a Naval Officer in the past and considered himself quite the navigator. This gadget he had acquired was something he called a Global Positioning System and it was about the size of an old Nokia cellphone. On it, on a dimly lit screen was a small crosshairs and geographic coordinates of latitude and longitude. He said it would revolutionize our lives, but all we could see was another gadget that might inform the navigator in him about his whereabouts, but which seemed largely irrelevant unless we found ourselves stuck somewhere in the north woods needing to find our way to a logging road. I recall saying that if it had a map it might be more useful. Obviously, as I step into our 2026 Mercedes and turn on the navigation system, I see the full evolution of that idea, complete with detailed map, driving instructions and options, traffic indicators, weather indicators, nearby gas stations or charging stations and just about anything else I want to locate and drive to. We all have these technological advancement stories to remind ourselves how much better technology is making our lives every day.

I have often spoken about my history with the spreadsheet and how revolutionary I feel it has been in the development of practical finance and business in general. The truth is that we all use spreadsheets for many reasons and like any technological advancement, we are only sometimes fully aware of all the magic that hides under the hood of these wonderful technologies. I am very aware of those aspects of spreadsheets because I grew up with them and spent hours and hours on them. I can not only read a spreadsheet and maneuver within one, but I can build models in the spreadsheet to accomplish things in seconds that would have taken days or simply been undoable in the not too distant past. Spreadsheets have turbocharged finance in ways that many of us could wax eloquent about for hours. I always used to say that word processors made producing the written word much easier and more convenient…perhaps even faster (though the human brain does introduce a serious constraint on speed of production). That is quite different from what spreadsheets did. Spreadsheets certainly made numerical work easier, more convenient and faster (particularly since iteration is such a valuable aspect of mathematics…especially when dealing contingencies as modern math and statistics tend to do). But spreadsheets also changed the way we think about math and calculations. It added a degree of dimensionality that hadn’t existed before, or at least was only possessed by a few great minds, and now made that all possible for the masses.

I still use spreadsheets all the time, but I use them far less for finance and more for general organization in my retired life. I now spend far more time at the keyboard of my iPad writing than I do creating algorithms. I write every day, multiple times per day. I do that both in what work I do (expert witness consultation) and certainly in my preferred form of leisure. As such, my research is done less in the “old-fashioned” way of digging into research and note-taking as a precursor to writing, and more on-the-fly as I write. I have been using Google for that for years (approximately 20 years since Google came into my and everyone’s life). I’m sure its not coincidental that the corporate powers that be at Google chose to call their parent company Alphabet since Google had become as essential a primary color tool for day-to-day work as the alphabet was when written language first came about. But now enter AI. AI has a broad reach in terms of means of use. You can use it to write something, read and analyze or summarize something, produce or modify a graphic and even doctor photos and videos. It’s strength is in its Big Data utilization, both in terms of its research reach, but also in terms of its application of data to producing more valuable outcomes for the user. As we know from all the money and energy being thrown at advanced data centers, its all about processing power and that takes electrical power and computational power. The thinking is that we can take minimal human thoughts and amplify them through the use of AI. But is that all?

Rapture is a word to which most people have a visceral reaction. I think of what it might be like to take the drug Ecstasy. There is supposed to be a euphoria and feelings of well-being along with increased empathy and emotional openness, enhanced sensory perception (touch, sound, colors), increased energy and sociability, and even reduced anxiety and fear. The technical definition of rapture is a belief held by some Christians that Jesus Christ will return and suddenly take believers up to heaven, removing them from Earth before a period of tribulation or at the end times. The concept is that believers will be “caught up” to meet Christ in the air, either before, during, or after a period of great suffering on Earth. This event would happen instantaneously. It is sort of an out-of-body experience. That is what made me think about AI in terms of being a form of rapture. Obviously, I am less prone to thinking about formal religious connotations, but AI is a force unto itself and is both outside our body and mind, and yet increasing being connected to our minds and bodies based on the manner in which we use it.

I recently had an expert witness epiphany or sorts that AI is a wonderful tool for the preparation process of expert witness work. It’s important to specify that there is a great deal of controversy about overusing or improperly using AI in formulating and expressing expert opinions, but this was not that use. I am referring to the expert testimony process of preparing for a deposition or actual hearing or trial testimony. There is a great deal of material that needs to be reviewed and committed to memory for recall during that process. It may be the ultimate cramming exercise, not unlike the process of preparing for an exam in higher education. I found that use of AI to be similar to discussing the merits of word processing. It made things easier, more convenient and faster. And then my AI engine of choice, Claude by Anthropic evolved.

As I was writing one of my stories, I realized that Claude was giving me more robust answers to the questions I was asking it. Those answers were far more involved in the latest version of Claude (Sonnet 4.5). Claude is a Large Language Model (LLM), and while that is just one of many types of AI (ASR, TTS, Generative, Predictive, NLP, Anomoly Detection, Swarm Intelligence, AutoML, Neuromorphic, etc……don’t ask me to explain them all), it just keeps getting better and better. I noticed that its answers now spur my thinking and cause me to ask it follow-on questions, which are sometimes even prompted by Claude. I have realized that this iterative and collaborative approach between me and Claude is what they are calling the 5th Industrial Revolution (Industry 5.0), which is all about human-machine collaboration. My writing now actually reflects that collaboration and I must admit I find it energizing to the extreme. I feel I am more creative and am taking my stories to more and more interesting places…and finding more and more to write about. It’s a wonderful feeling and sure beats sitting around looking out the window thinking of what I can write about next. Just the other night, I came up with six new story topics which I preserved by putting a template up with a working title to capture the concept and several copied Claude posts to prompt me when I start to write them. I suddenly feel like Bradley Cooper in Limitless, where AI (not a magic pill) is making my mind more fertile and more able to access its greater capacity. That is what I am calling my AI rapture.