Is AI Causing Us to Lose Critical Knowledge? with Keith Schafer

Learn more and get started at FractionAIO.com. Now, Keith, I'm so excited to have you here because you're part of multi-generations of something that's really critical to infrastructure, and especially in America.

And I know your grandfather started in the gas industry over 100 years ago, and your father was in the industry, and you've been doing it a long time now.

Your son is in the industry.

Of all these generations of natural gas, what do you think has made your family stick with this? Because I know, there's one thing I know, it's my kids want to do something, but it's anything other than what I do.

So how do you kind of have that consistency in your family? That's amazing to me.

Well, like I said, I grew up on the pipeline with my dad, me and my brother.

We'd always be with dad when he could take us out on the right-of-way where they was laying pipe across the hills.

And I always thought that was interesting and loved to see, be out there in the outside working and enjoying the environment and seeing that done.

And knowing that the natural gas business has always been a steady business.

If you're good at what you do, you're always going to have a job.

Grandpa started when he got home from World War I and my dad after World War II.

And they spent their whole careers in the business.

And I was lucky enough to spend 50 years in the business now with the company and through contract work now that I'm doing now.

So I retired four years ago and retired.

Doing a little contract work, training, consulting, just on my spare time last four years.

So still enjoy it.

Now, when you started out, all the calculations were done on paper with paper and pencil.

And I think that we have started to move away from trusting our ability to do math in our heads.

And then it was calculators.

And now it's having an AI do the math for you.

And we're kind of shifting away.

And this is kind of how I feel like I know how to read a map.

Whereas people five years younger than me have never even seen a map, because they've grown up with GPS, and first time I used GPS, it literally told me to drive off the side of a bridge, and I was like, I don't think I'm gonna trust you.

So I have this paranoia about it, but we move to newer and newer tools, and we kind of forget that foundational thing.

And how are you able to have trust in your calculations? What do you think is happening where people are shifting away from trusting their own ability to do math in their heads? Even now, in a lot of places, you can't even make your own change.