Let’s Ask the Right Questions

This past Sunday at St. David’s Episcopal Church in downtown Austin during adult class, I heard J. Douglas Harrison, an ethicist and technology expert, talk about Artificial Intelligence.  He raised questions about the impact the coming switch-over to automated transportation will have on the economic future of many people:  over the next fifteen years people who drive for a living will lose their jobs. I thought for the first time about how the President is addressing the wrong question as he works to roll back emission standards.  Certainly, why he would do that or why Congress or a State Legislature would abdicate the facilitating role they should be undertaking with industry, scientific experts and economic experts is a question for our time, impacting all time on our planet.  Around us record wild fires rage.  However, in putting the focus on car emissions, we root ourselves in the past.  We’ve got new and bigger problems.  Going back to previous standards doesn’t help.  To arrive at useful answers, we have to begin with the right questions.  Then we need to get informed people, from many sectors, at the table to discuss and implement workable transitions.  If we just jerk from left to right political postures and back again, we aren’t problem solving or dilemma managing.