Artificial

I'm having reservations. 

At the risk of sounding old-ish, technophobic, or even wallowing in grumpiness, I'm hesitant about embracing artificial intelligence. But it's not for any particular Hollywood reason: I have no reason to think humankind is about to be used as batteries, or that computers will take over the world, or AI will don a maroon, Spandex outfit and float off with the rest of the Avengers. I believe that AI's greatest threat to humanity is not in the destruction of civilization, but destruction of creativity. New technology like ChatGPT offers an incredible opportunity to save time, but at what cost?

Isn't that the question of every new technology invented? When the car was invented, travel became faster. When electricity was harnessed, heating and cooling became easier. When the computer was invented, almost limitless amounts of information and data could be crunched. But what did we lose?

To go slower meant we spent more time together in conversation. Now we are solo drivers in cars, or ear-phone-stuffed commuters, or video-watching flyers who struggle to connect verbally.

To have no central air (not that I'm complaining now), meant that we were more adaptable to the elements and able to survive in difficult conditions. We were fitter, quicker, more aware of our surroundings.

To have search engines rather than the Encyclopedia Britannica, means that we can find things out faster, but we don't retain (maybe even learn) anything. 

And now we have the ultimate laziness tech barreling down the digital highway on a collision course with our creativity, the very thing that makes us human. Over the last thirty years, during the evolution of music, we've seen how computers have (in some ways) enhanced music, but we also found a genericking of music. One no longer even needs to be able to play an instrument. One can push a button on a keyboard and the rhythmic crashing of drums can be recorded, or a looped guitar riff, maybe even the vocals! Processed sounds, combined with generally inane lyrics, have undermined the music industry and reduced it to a (and I'm vastly generalizing here) talentless pool of bass beats and thumping drums. And now, with AI, we have come to a place where computers will not only help us with music, they will actually write it. Barry Manilow can no longer claim to write the songs that make the young girls sing. Albert Indigo can now be credited.

And what does this do to us as a species?

We'll be even lazier than we already are.

We'll be even more sedated by the vivid colors that computers create, the sounds that AI manipulates, and the words that no longer mean anything at all. Suddenly, I'll receive a letter from someone I care about and consciously wonder if they wrote it. And the only way I'll be able to tell for sure is if that person hand writes it.

But that won't happen. Because we don't really teach handwriting anymore.

We'll be even more dependent on the digital world for everything, until eventually, we forget what a spring breeze smells like; what snowflakes on our eyelashes feels like; what a lemon tastes like; what the enmeshed fingers of a lover feel like; what the voice of the ocean sounds like before and after a storm. 

AI will not destroy our humanity, but it may destroy what's best about who we are as humans: our ability to sing, to paint, to dance, to cook, to speak, to love, to sigh.

These are my reservations, and it has nothing to do with saving time writing a formal letter or take the MCATs.

I want to retain my ability to feel.

And so I will be careful and watch where my digital footsteps take me.

I want you to know that I did not use ChatGPT to write this blog post. But can you be sure?