The Future of Climbing Part III

The race to perfecting a digital assistant is one of the hottest races in all of tech.  It’s not necessarily the company that gets there first, but the company that does it best.

We have been dependent on our phones for everything from memory extension (think reminders, alarms, photos, open tabs, and bookmarks for example) to navigation for nearly two decades.  Over the last 20 years we’ve moved from basic apps like Yahoo News to advanced cameras and editing software capable of creating award winning films like Tangerine.  

People used to have maps in their glovebox.  If someone wanted to go to a nice restaurant, they would need to ask for recommendations and directions.  Similarly, people used to depend on introductions to meet a potential romantic partner, they’d peruse a card catalogue to help them find a book, listen to a radio station and just wait…until a song they enjoy happened to come on.  This was a time when for some strange reason food delivery was limited to pizza.  If you think finding crags on Mountain Project is challenging, imagine a time when finding crags included nothing but a rumor, a machete, and a pile of hope.

20 years later all of these things can be found on the mini super-computer just sitting in your pocket.  It doesn’t stop at maps and romance though!  We have access to almost all of the information throughout the history of the world in our pockets at all times.  Therein lies the problem.  It’s too much.  Who has time to filter through all the information?  None of us, and so it has become typical for modern humans to get caught in a loop of effortless scrolling through highly addictive, attention drawing, time sucking, algorithmically supercharged apps.

And NOW from the same companies that brought you those apps comes an all new algorithmically super-duper charged personal assistant to help you navigate all the information that you never knew you never wanted!

AI personal assistants will be so ingrained in our personal lives that one day soon, we will literally be lost without them.  We are already at the point where we can have generative intelligence help us draw up legal contracts, give us stock advice, create workable business plans, hold philosophical discussions, plan the details of a road trip, write a love letter, and nearly any other thing we can imagine.  The one thing these generated responses have in common is that we ask for them.

With the coming personal assistants, they will be so well trained on our personal data, that they will be able to preemptively predict what we are going to ask.

It happens to be the third Thursday in August, you had a nice day that included climbing some routes at the local gym.  While there, someone in the background mentioned basil, it has been two months since you’ve had pesto, your body is craving carbs, “basil” is floating around in your brain, you are a little dehydrated and need some salt.  Based on an exact average of calories burned and time of day, your personal assistant mentions at 5:49 that Papa Luigi’s is having ½ off on pasta dishes until 6.

“Carrot, pesto pasta may be something you’d like to try for dinner tonight, I can see you have nothing planned on your calendar for this evening, and if we order now, we can get ½ off and free delivery from Papa Luigi’s.”

Done and done.  It was never a question about if I would want pasta, in this case my personal assistant AI (PAI) could have ordered the pasta a month in advance, and it would have been exactly what I wanted.

From dinners to doctors our PAIs will know exactly what we want and when we want it.  Forget grocery shopping, all of our goods and sundries will be in place at all times.  The perfect date night, the perfect movie, the perfect book, whatever you want, it will be ready for you ten steps before you are ready for it.

PAIs are life changing advancements that some predict will be ready by the end of 2025.  The exact release and proliferation remains to be seen, but it is coming.  And, with that, it’s not a bad time to start thinking about how this technology could affect us as rock climbers.

To start off, why not build a healthy diet and training regimen organized by an omniscient program.  A program that can teach you how to train based on your desired goals and timeline as well as your bank account.  You want to be a 5.13 climber, PAI has you covered.  You might as well toss in a personal editor/publisher to record your personal history, and check that autobiography off the list.  Protein shake schmotein shake, with your personal chef guiding your micros and macros, you’ll being eating Michelin level feasts at every meal!  Playlists to keep you going, films, shorts, and books to keep you motivated.  You’ll be eating like Gordon Ramsey and climbing like Adam Ondra.

There is a break in your schedule 7.5 months from now, the temps are expected to be lower than average for that time of year, there is a great deal on an Airbnb that includes great views, a pool, and sleeps 6.  Road construction on the Interstate will be slowing things down, so we better set a route through the mountains.  That’s okay because you like the mountain views more than the views from the expressway anyway.  A quick glance at your friends’ schedules shows that they will be available for a trip at the exact same time.  Your gear all looks pretty good, but you may need a new 60-meter rope and some extra quick-draws if you are going to be climbing in that crag you’ve been talking about for years.  Better to wait on meal planning since tomatoes are supposed to be blooming late that season, but we can just have groceries delivered to the house once we arrive rather than packing all that extra food.  In a few months, we can adjust your personal algorithms so that you are prompted to watch videos of climbs in the area, we should probably add a few pictures of the last trip with your friends as well since you’re the type who needs to be reminded how much fun a trip like this can be.  The packing list is set, the budget adjusted, and the new guidebook is already on the way.

All this can be done before you even know that a climbing trip is a possibility.

It doesn’t stop at climbing, that same personal assistant will have access and be able to engineer the life you’ve always wanted despite never knowing what it is you want.  For better or worse, whether optimal or not, the world of PAIs is on the way, and probably much closer than almost anyone expects.