I Ain’t Afraid of No AI

Writing a Book 2 Minutes

The interweb is drenched with horror stories about the looming prospect that our brains and very livelihoods as writers will be overtaken by AI (artificial intelligence), accelerated by the recent release (November 2022) of user-friendly ChatGPT.

One short hop – the horror-struck assert – to total world domination by HAL’s (of A Space Odyssey fame) technological descendants. “Humans will be replaced.” “Writers will lose their jobs.” “Humans and writers will become redundant.” Great sci-fi plot drivers but, in reality, I’m not so sure.

I’m heartened by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s take. “Fear of new technologies is always driven by scenarios of the worst that can happen, without anticipating the countermeasures that would arise in the real world.” Ref: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/02/will-chatgpt-replace-human-writers-pinker-weighs-in/

Ego-driven, self-preservation-mandated lot that humans are, Pinker doesn’t think the worst-case scenarios currently being bandied about will happen. Neither do I. We are famous for bringing ourselves to the edge of crises without actually going over the falls to eradicate humankind. Ergo, saber-rattling around World War III. As objectionable as Vladimir Putin is, I doubt he is seriously inclined to wipe out the world as we know it in order to reclaim sovereignty over a small piece of Ukraine. That would be the most unfortunate Catch-22 ever.

Unfortunately, this does mean I won’t rely on AI to write the book I have committed to this year. Sigh. Pinker anticipates considerable pushback from our collective ego and common sense to allow that to happen. He cites this example: “Another pushback will come from the forehead-slapping blunders, like the fact that crushed glass is gaining popularity as a dietary supplement or that nine women can make a baby in one month.”

The speed at which technology can do damn near anything better than humans since it arrived in popular culture some thirty years ago has hornswoggled us all. Quantity trumps quality. Bling trumps class. Speed of output has won out over deliberation and thought. Technology is so pervasive we struggle to define or even remember what it is to be human.

So we suffer. En masse. And self-help book publishers, therapists, and a great swath of pill pushers reap the rewards. Even if there was no other argument to make for the value of writing, what matters is that it captures for us what is essential for us as humans. There is a crucial role – and one might argue an essential role – for humans that focus on human stories and issues now more than ever.

So, AI, honey. Hold my beer.

Published by MaggyMac

First published at 6 years old (The Daily Gleaner, Fredericton, NB, Canada). Have written something every single day of my life, if only a To-Do list. Bearing down on writing THAT book for me and myself alone. If it resonates, reaches, inspires, disgusts, bores, or otherwise affects external readers, I have achieved all I wished to achieve on this planet.

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One thought on “I Ain’t Afraid of No AI”

  1. As a fan of Star Trek and the character Data the android that got deemed sentient, and like the Tin Man wanted a heart, as Star Trek seems to have done consistently, the prophesies continue. As AI develops I hope there’s a way to use Mabel Roddenberry’s voice for it. That was the computer voice for all three Star Trek series I believe. HAL was really creepy.

    In the tv series “Person of Interest” the AI pros and cons was well explored as the dualistic battle between good and evil was played out AI style.

    Best case abd worst case scenarios play out. The service of science fiction helps us see our human dilemma continue to put us on that brink. I was among those kids who had to have a drill where we hid under our desks for when the nuclear bomb hit. Interestingly we were the only country that used them. Children began drawing pictures of bombing scenarios that frightened them. Now even schools aren’t safe anymore. Few places are.

    We are a species that makes a fatal mistake of misidentification that no matter the technology will by dominated by separationism, fear, scarcity, duality and all the attendant fall out from being a species at war with itself — both within us, and all around us.

    AI will not fix this problem. No matter how sophisticated it can’t. We may ask the really good questions of the vast data banks of how can peace come to our world; how can we live in harmony. It’ll give us answers drawing from all kinds of areas of human endeavors.

    We’ve already been given them. That’s why AI might be able to do so. We just don’t take that pathway. We entranced by the world’s dominating economic paradigm, so busy making ends meet or getting ahead, living I’ve and via our devices that we have no lives. Watching these amazing marvels unfold and affect a still young species so profoundly without great careful consideration for the wholesome ethics nor recognition of unscrupulous domination tactics being employed throughout the world is typical of us.

    From one expressive compulsive to another, we’ll keep on writing with LightHearted inspiration and Love coming through us directly from the creative life impulse of holy origin. We’ll be increasingly at play interdimensionally with the quantum field of infinite potential. I ain’t afraid of no AI. It’s like everything we make in dualistic consciousness — it’ll be used for good or ill. It’s definately a discussion we need to have.

    Thanks for this post. This was fun to get into!

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