Artificial Intelligence
Humanity’s Existential Struggle Against Real Witlessness
The simple stylus. The pencil. Progenitors of AI?
Centuries ago, Socrates feared the reed pen and parchment. He argued that writing would destroy memory; people would “not practice using their memory because they [would] put their trust in writing.” Written argument, he claimed, is not conducive to discourse or expanding wisdom.
Thank goodness someone wrote his words down.
Such is my love/fear relationship with Artificial Intelligence. Life without innovation would be deadly, but unbridled creativity has archetypically proven to unleash unwitting monsters upon the landscape.
My ambivalence goes as far back as the year a Chatty Cathy doll showed up under the tree. I hugged her, kissed her, then pulled her string. She may as well have been named “Chatty Chucky” when she chirped, “Let’s play school!” I promptly wet my pants alongside Betsy Wetsy, and banished Chatty to the back of the closet from which vantage point she continued her eerie invitations. (It may have been my sisters sneaking back there to pull the string—yank my chain.)
On the love-of-progress side: who doesn’t prefer the washer/dryer to rocks by the river, the refrigerator to salting our perishables, and transportation that runs on gas or plug-in rather than hay and oats? What’s not to love about a palm-sized device that can answer questions we didn’t even know we had, or apps that guide us to our destinations? (I, of course, rely on googlemaps-lady’s dependable voice and the reliable blue line, though I am bereft of my windshield-sized folding maps.)
Fear creeps in for me when the refrigerator starts creating my grocery lists for me. Or what if “Baby Born Olivia” accidentally crawls herself into the smart washer which tragically senses a light load and spins itself into action? One day, my car might become so “intelligent” that it forcibly prohibits me from veering into another lane to avoid that pothole. Or, my GPS, which already thinks it knows where I’m going as soon as I get in my car, might become so intrusive that it won’t let me drive to a doctor’s appointment scheduled on food-shopping Friday. “I said,” googlemaps-lady will say with a sudden edge, “that in 11 minutes, you will be at Shoprite via Main Street where traffic is light.” Unfathomable!?
As machines have shifted from mechanical to electronic, our hands have become more idle while our potential has become seemingly godlike. Can we continue to expand the technology that brings lifesaving and planet-saving devices without making Faustian deals along the way?
I suspect that:
our fit bit data is being intercepted by HHS and that one day in the not-so-distant future, if our heart rate is funky or we haven’t reached our steps or our cholesterol is high, we will be denied potato chips in the checkout line, denied health care coverage, or maybe even euthanized if we’re deemed in bad enough shape.
those labyrinthine QR codes we are required to scan for a restaurant menu, or to find the sale price of dishware in that remaining bricks-and-mortar store, are actually full of byte-sized spies.
we will become virtually controlled by robots that (who?) are now able to reproduce themselves. Who (what?) needs humans any more?
(Just because I’m paranoid does not mean that AI is not out to get me.)
Sometimes I just want to watch mindless TV, but can’t figure out which of the five remotes to use. If my husband isn’t around to help me (usually without rolling his eyes), I just walk away and tell that smart TV that I actually wanted to read anyway.
We are in the last season of our latest Netflix binge and I hope the algorithm recommends something soon for next-up to take my mind off it all—to take my mind.
Been thinking so much about this topic, especially in my career in the manufacturing industry with my own focus on programming and automation.
I think that grey line you mention that we've been crossing is the human element. On one side, we have a refrigerator that will send us an alert if it has been left open, or if our milk is going bad - a convenience, and sometimes a necessary accomodation, for a human mind to act. On the other side, we have a refrigerator that will predict our purchasing patterns and preemptively order food for us, schedule our meals this week.
And for me, ChatGPT and the last few years of Google's "convenience" shifts and Amazon's current position represent a weird facet of that. Chatting with a LLM is *literally* replacing human conversation and connection. Gone is researching at a library or spending time to acquire knowledge - now it's available in a brief, usually inaccurate and always un-nuanced, summary at the top of a google search page. Amazon learns when we're going to buy things, preps it at a local warehouse, and waits patiently for us to press order on the cheapest available product, rather than speak with an expert who may have a better sense of what we're actually looking for, who could provide us with a more intentional and holistic solution.
These are all just weird ways in which we willingly isolate ourselves and dismantle the community and togetherness that I think we as people need, and that I think the world needs for the propagation of good.
And I have no idea what to do about all of that!
As other commenters have echoed, this too has been on my mind ( comforting that is is on everyone else's mind too).
I'm easily overstimulated by my phone, tv .. action scenes in marvel movies put me to sleep ( perhaps as a defense mechanism?), the algorithm showing me in one blink human suffering and then a soothing animal video the next ... I tell myself that my brain, and perhaps all our brains, have not built the evolutionary capacity to process information like this ... yet (?)..
I admit I'm in the dark more than others, but Ive been frankly quite shocked when I hear how often people use chat gbt. A coworker said today, " oh yes, I use it daily !" He talked about how he knows how to manipulate it to get the right information ( " I know it's not real, and I ask it ' prove your sources') and offered an even romantic antidote about how he is using it to help him build a native garden.
Most forward on my mind is the upcoming teenage years for my son- how will I navigate the existential conversations around communicating with AI, future manipulations of images and videos that are so lifelike but not real, boundaries around use - but more than anything, I foresee an conversation where he says " mom, this is important to me, why don't you get it ??" Finding a place of acceptance beyond full understanding, like all parents have done , to help your child feel accepted in their interests, but also protecting them?
On the drive home, I drove behind a truck that had cave like drawings and writings on it- tactile fingers , and irresistible dust on the back of the truck, innocent smile faces and messages of who was there written on the back, untouched/ wiped away.
While our brains can and will begin to process so much, I do wonder, and hope, whether our primal modes of expression and play will continue to be a part of our human hardwiring.