To Err is Human, To Forgive is Not Part of the Program

Despite my repeated warnings, the world seems to be moving toward a future powered through artificial intelligence. It’s almost as if no one is really listening to me.

Over the past half year or so, we’ve been assaulted by the news that AI is now here and that companies like Microsoft and Google are going all-in with AI. The good news is that some people are legitimately concerned about this. One company, ChatGPT, released its open AI chatbot back in November to essentially have a computer mimic human conversations. Writers and journalists have been putting it through its paces, asking questions and having the program complete tasks.

I’m sure there are already content providers that are already putting ChatGPT to work creating click bait. I’ve read stories about high school and college students using it to write their essays and term papers. In the tech industry, there is talk that these AI programs will soon be able to write code.

I have not and I do not plan to ever use such a thing. I’m a writer and, in the simplest of terms, this is nothing but theft and cheating, and like Nick Cave said, AI is “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human.”

Navajo weavers are well known for the quality and beauty of the blankets they weave, but even the most masterful weaver with purposely make a mistake in everything they make. This is due to a belief that nothing is perfect, except for the Gods. In order to honor the gods, weavers deliberately incorporate an imperfection.

So, I guess, even though AI is far from perfect, it perhaps offends the gods. It is not much of a stretch to think, regardless of your God, that anything that mocks our humanity is maybe something we should pause and think about it for a moment before blundering forward like human beings have been wont to do. We are close to a point in our future history where no one will be able to believe anything that comes to them from a screen. What is really scary is that there are people out there who will believe.

We live in a world where soon we won’t need any actors, or writers, or artists, or musicians. We will be fed those things by our creative groupthink, consumed by machines and reduced to numbers, producing the results we want instead of what we need. We will literally become like the evolved humans in that Pixar movie WALL-E, where we have evolved into a race that can’t do anything for ourselves, even think. Our thinkers, our Jiminy Crickets, are the artists and those who aspire to art.

As humans, though, we love to exploit. You can’t criticize capitalism or socialism or whatever you want, but there has so far not been a social system in which everyone wins and it’s all peaches and cream. Someone will always want power, and those folks convince the rest of us sheep to follow, usually through violence. And if we don’t have someone to exult, we’ll find someone.

The most you can truly do is to try and find a little joy and contentment in your life knowing that the world is shit and it will always be shit. The best you can do to find that contentment is enjoy your humanness, to gather in comradery and celebration with friends and family, to see a beautiful sunrise, or perhaps seeing them in many different places. We need to take pleasure in that first tentative sip of coffee or tea or hot chocolate, and running your fingers through the hair of a lover and interacting with you environment. There are many beautiful things to see and do, don’t pass them by.

You should do what you enjoy doing, and don’t hurt anyone in the course or your enjoyments. Me? I enjoy taking a ride on my motorcycle. I like traveling to different places and taking photos. I enjoy the company of my sons and my friends. (At least one friend is a bit more special than the others)

I like to write. It is a process of which elements I think about constantly. It’s not just about the use of words, but the use of my imagination – my brain always churning, thinking about characters, and plots and staring at a sentence for hours knowing there is a better way to say something.

And in my writing I have a voice. If it helps you to think of it as a style, it’s there. The reason that Stephen King couldn’t hide from his Richard Bachman pseudonym is because he has a strong voice.

And that voice, no matter the artist? It’s a human voice. It is the result of a humans imbuing Art with a parts of their souls. It is through our art that we express our best. Every single human being has the capacity for art.

The understanding about current AI is that it scours the internet and reads everything stored in its database, which is linked to a lot of information, some of it with copyrights. The information is pulled together, processed, and recombined in a way its instructions tell it.

There is no denying that this is amazing technology. It’s obvious that we are in for an interesting technological future, and I know I can’t stop it or that it should be stopped. I’m not that concerned about “the future of mankind.” We’ll figure something out, if not, the human species is pretty resilient.

Regardless of what happens, Pandora is out of her box, and we all know from that story that we can’t get her back in. The AI revolution will be a game changer, but I hope we are able to figure out how to make sure everyone benefits.

And while I say I won’t use AI to help me write, I will never say never. While the Text Predictions in Word is turned off because it drives me nuts, I do love many of the tools in the program. It’s kind of nice not to have to worry about “i” before “e” to try and how to spell “pseudonym.”

Besides, maybe if I write and I post it online and let any ol’ AI use it, maybe I will find some sort of immortality. So, if some kid 500 years from now runs into this, I hope things have worked out okay and that you guys at least have flying cars.