You Can't Teach a Robot to Teach Yoga
My existential exploration of market value in an increasingly artificially intelligent world.
I resist for several days, then finally an email about it pops up in my Outlook, and I’m forced to open ChatGPT and have a conversation with a robot.
Naturally, I start with some softballs.
“How do I write a poem?”
“What should I write about in my newsletter?”
“Should I get a puppy?”
“How do I meditate?”
”How can I use Tarot?”
I’m asking the robot questions I feel pretty confident I could help someone answer, that I could speak and write about and even get paid to consult them on, without the help of the Internet.
I want to know how replaceable I am. I am asking the robot an existential question about my value.
Every so often, someone asks me if I've seen the latest AI thing. I work in digital marketing and the answer should usually be “yes” but more often than not it is “no.” No, I haven’t uploaded my photos to Lensa to see AI-generated art of my face and no I didn’t use ChatGPT to write this newsletter to you, and no I don’t know the names of any other AI software without having to google them.
I'm not such a Luddite that I'm under any false illusions that various forms of automation and artificial intelligence don't run the world around me. And sure, sometimes as I check myself out at Sprouts, I wonder how it’s possible the engineers at Big Grocery haven’t figured out how to use cameras to detect that my Gala apple is a Gala apple and I still have to plink seventeen buttons across three menus to tell it so. Sure, I want the robots to do some work. I just don’t want them to take my job.
Several years ago, I helped to build a chatbot for National Geographic while I was working on their audience development team. The bot was designed to help promote their newest Almanac, and give the user a trivia experience that would both teach them some things, but also spark just enough curiosity that they'd want to go ahead and buy the book. I learned a lot, because prior to this, as you can imagine, I had zero experience building a bot, so we hired a small company to program the build, and I managed the content development and project management.
We released the bot into the wild, and it was fine but never had quite the take-off of other activities I'd led on the team over the years. In fact, one of the most successful was a slow news day I decided to ask our travel audience where in the world they had seen the most impressive sunsets. Over two thousand people replied, which was more comments than we had ever received on a post up until then.
We ended up turning it into a series and I started writing articles with tips from our social communities. It started with very minimal effort and became much more impactful because it struck a chord with people. They liked being asked about their experiences and connected with one another once they felt that they had a voice. One of the biggest points of pride for me in managing those communities for two and a half years was how few trolls we had on the pages. The people there were kind to each other, and the people there were, well, real.
There’s this website, Will Robots Take My Job, which uses some kind of algorithm (a word I like to throw out there when I don’t understand something) to tell you how susceptible a given job is to computerization. The other day I started plugging them in one by one.
My full-time job isn’t a real job, apparently. I plug in the next closest thing, and that’s not a real job either so finally settle on calling myself a marketing manager: 18% automation risk. Hey, that’s pretty good. Why so low? Well, you need a few things to be a marketing manager that computers are still pretty bad at, including social perceptiveness, persuasion, negotiation, and originality. Phew. Maybe I should get a job as a marketing manager.
OK, what’s next? Writer! Is ChatGPT coming for us writer folk? I select “Writers and Authors,” and I’m horrified. 49% automation risk. Perhaps it is a bug. So I try, “Poets, Lyricists and Creative Writers,” as surely that will be much better? But my hopes are dashed when I learn that poets, too, have a 44% risk of being replaced by machines. Originality is on our side, fellow creative writers, but evidently, the skill of being able to gaze at the moon for 15 minutes and feel like you are connected to everything everywhere means nothing in the eyes of The Great Algo. Sigh.
What about yoga teachers? Will we be replaced? The website doesn’t have a listing for yoga instructors, so I select, “Exercise Trainers & Group Fitness Instructors” and then squeal with delight, waking up the dog. 1.3% automation risk! Take that Mark Zuckerberg, you won’t be seeing me and MY yoga mat in the Metaverse.
But the reason why so low is what matters. Of course, there is originality needed, as well as social perceptiveness, persuasion, and manual dexterity, or moving your body in fancy ways. But the other thing that these instructors provide that a robot can’t? Assisting and caring for others. When I read this, my eyes start to water. This happens because I’m not a computer, and it hits me right in the heart.
I’ve taken a long break from teaching public yoga classes. I got a puppy, life got busy, and I missed it every single day. I think what I love most about teaching is, yes, that as instructors we do deeply care. But I also love how we show that care by asking questions that students perhaps need to hear, questions that help students understand themselves. What would it feel like to relax your shoulders? How does it feel to spread your toes out? Could you grow taller through your breath? If you could breathe how you want to live, how would that be?
We can ask a robot a question, but I’m not sure a robot would know when to ask us the kind of question we needed to be asked.
And that’s why we have each other, right?
I’m Teaching Again! — Practice Not Perfect
The robots aren’t perfect, and neither are we! Let’s get together for a virtual practice that feels like we are all in the same room together (Note: I do wear a headset that makes me look like a cyborg.). The practice will be one-hour, with 30-40 minutes of movement, followed by guided meditation, then journaling. Days and times will be determined by collective interest. I would love to start as soon as next week if interest allows. If you are interested in joining, learn more and fill out this form. All levels of experience are welcome, classes will be on Zoom and might be recorded, depending on interest.