Can you be sued for negligence for doing something right? 

Silly question. Of course you can. From the ads I see on TV, the courtroom is sort of a great big ATM machine that spits out cash if you can push the right buttons. If a jury can be talked into thinking someone was victimized, however unintentionally, it’s a big payday.   

What if one of that crowd of Morgan and Morgans and Newlins and such was to ask one of my clients, “Have you been injured?”  

My clients, by the way, are students. In addition to having taught fourth grade for a decade or so, I sometimes tutor high schoolers for the SAT, and I work with them on college admission essays.   

Parents have told me, “You helped get my child into college.” So far, that has not been put in the form of an accusation, let alone a lawsuit, but on down the road, who knows?  

This thought came to mind when I met a potential Exhibit A and Exhibit B for just such a lawsuit. Both were staying at the same hotel with me while doing work for the U.S. Open golf tournament.  

One went to college, which I know because when we were in the elevator he liked to talk about literature, which was his major.  

While his conversation wasn’t very interesting, his job was – he was part of a crew that parked cars. This was thought-provoking. Since when do people who park cars for a living stay in hotels? And how does all the knowledge this guy has about Chaucer, Faulkner, Camusand Proust qualify him to stand in a field and point at parking spaces? 

Then again, what else does it qualify him to do? 

Exhibit B was a man who works with the drones providing security for the golf tournament. He used words like electro-optical infrared UAVs and seemed a lot more interested in his job than the people in the parking van were in theirs. His life is sort of like a big video game that comes with a company car.  

When I asked if the job called for an engineering degree, he laughed.  “College? Oh heck no. Never even thought about it. I’m just a nerd. I worked in building maintenance and started messing around with the technology and this company saw that I could do what they wanted, so they hired me.”   

He thought for a second, then added: “I don’t think they teach what I do in college… at least not yet. Heck, we’re still figuring some of it out.” 

Doesn’t it seem like that’s what the world is doing right now, “figuring out” how things are going to be done? Artificial intelligence seems to have a finger in just about every occupational pie out there, from banking and finance, to designing a house, creating a marketing plan,and handling administrative duties. You can even use it to write and illustrate an essay or a poem.  

This begs a couple of questions for the future. With so many of the things that used to be done by college graduates now being done by algorithms, what are all the next graduates going to do for a living? 

Also, there is the comparison of a formal education that comes with a degree to knowledge that was figured out and comes with a future. Which of those forms of intelligence ought to be called artificial? 

Meanwhile, more realistically, if I get sued for ruining someone’s life because I helped get them into college, I just hope I get a good robot for a lawyer.