Adapt or get left behind. Well...
While artificial intelligence purports to make everything in the short run "easy, fast and free." (as
the sales pitch would claim), the long run looks bleak if its current-day contributions are any indication.
While the short-term effects may seem delightful, those of the long-term (at the risk of sounding hyperbolic,
and I'm open to being wrong) will be catastrophic, as we're seeing already. I contend that we ought to be
careful what we wish for. Hear me out...
It wants to give us back our leisure time (time we'd naturally spend with our family, wink wink) for the low,
low price of mass-automating ourselves out of the workforce. It is a disruptive piece of technology like no
other before it. As they say, there's no free lunch. It's already causing mass layoffs, affecting
white-collar knowledge workers starting in the tech sector. (If you're already worshipping at the altar of
"vibe coding," you've morally forfeited your title as software engineer.)
Of course, it won't stop there. Most of us will end up with more of that leisure time than we can stand while
accepting paltry UBI cheques from our magnanimous elected officials. And also being
forced to accept the fact that whatever dreams you had, in terms of contributing something meaningful to
society or to the world, has all but vanished if you're not using AI in some way. Although, some companies
that have jumped the gun on this trend (to enhance their already-bloated bottom line), have regretted
replacing their human resources with AI; not because they've suddenly become humanists, but only because the
AI wasn't advanced enough yet.
Meanwhile, "AI slop" (a fitting term) is also making it next to impossible to distinguish between fact and
fakery/fiction/falsity, while also being weaponized in politics. Under-aged individuals are developing
unhealthy and addictive relationships with something called "Character AI," often encouraging deleterious
behaviour, all at the expense of building one's own character IRL via tasks that require some challenge.
Moreover, the value of an AI output is proportional directly to the effort- and inversely to the
ubiquity of its creation process. If our AI overlords can reproduce anything a human can, both exponentially
better and by an order of magnitude more cheaply, then there isn't much value there anymore...if any left at
all, particularly for the would-be human creator. For it's seldom the finished product that matters, but
rather the making thereof, and the skill & toil that that required. And therein lies all the
meaning and value. Less the destination than the journey. The payoff for we humans is in the satisfaction and
the sense of accomplishment derived from the work (both noun and verb).
Inflation and the cheapening of everything has always been a slow function of time as we try to make our lives
easier and more manageable, but there's always a cost: fast food is convenient for the time being, but you'll
become obese with compounding medical issues later; sure, you can take several doses of a modern miracle drug
to lose all that weight (because who has time for diet and exercise?), but once that becomes unsustainable and
you're off the meds, you'll likely gain it all back. Immediate gratification is what we're all used to. If we
can life-hack ourselves towards the slightest convenience gains, we'll take it.
And ignorance is bliss. Nobody wants to see what really goes on behind the scenes: So what if the many massive
data centres are hazardous to the environment, as were those of the crypto scam before it, consuming
incredible amounts of energy?! Let big tech worry about that. Likewise, so what if factory farms are
perpetrating crimes against the animal kingdom?! I just wanna have my fat, juicy burger.
Climate change is already a crisis we can't afford to keep ignoring...and now we
must deal with this new kind of technology that would seem to only exacerbate it. Will we eventually make
these data centres more environmentally friendly? I suppose time and a democratic government will tell.
The continued outsourcing of our intelligence to artifice, i.e., highly advanced computers, is both
individually and collectively making us systematically dumber; and the continued outsourcing of our creativity
to the same artifice is leaving us with fewer competencies all the time as they atrophy into nothing. (For
example, the textification of the English language is getting regressively worse for this
TikTok generation while longform reading becomes scarce as our attention is
regularly hijacked.) I really don't care to become better at writing prompts, by design it's a low skill
already.
Many have already analogized to me about past innovations, saying these advances will never stop (fine) and
that the automobile had once replaced the horse and buggy (also fine...kinda). But, I submit to you, dear
reader, that this is different. Moore's [evidently broken] law dictates that tech tends to double in speed and
efficiency every eighteen months — generative AI has blown that out of the water. We humans simply
cannot keep up with- and are not easily equipped to adapt to such a big change, both psychologically and
professionally. We were simply not evolved to do so. We don't like instability of this gravity (in every sense
of the word), no matter how convenient it seems to us now.
Imagine AI becoming better at even the humanities than we humans! With no regulation or guard rails to
speak of, it has so far been ruining the fabric of the internet far worse than social media already has; such
that the bastion of knowledge it once was- and was created for originally is now a shell of its former glory.
All the world's knowledge at our fingertips, but instead we choose to consume (and create) its fast food
equivalent. The epitome of quantity over quality.
We can no longer rely on Elon Musk, or the other tech billionaires with god complexes — who love
influencing the future with their grandiose prognostications — to save us from our gluttonous selves.
Musk himself has clearly become part of the problem, and whose former altruistic benevolence (pre "X") has
oddly morphed into a kind of self-serving and blatant malevolence.
I'm sure it's clear by now that I feel strongly- even passionately about all of this; such that it's prompted
me to create this tiny side project to help like-minded folks proliferate this message and fight against this
terrible tidal wave. When used in good faith, HUMAN MADE is a small way to help you
let your consumers, customers and clients know that your content is indeed real. Put these small "certified
human" verification badges, in any combination, on your platform. (Customization possible, but not
recommended: depending on buy-in, it should look familiar across the web.)
By all accounts, it seems to me that artificial intelligence is far more peril than promise; which was
hollow to begin with — as hollow and void of value as the tech itself. And if the bubble is going to
burst at some point, I truly hope it'll be sooner than later. I still use
StackOverflow and donate to Wikipedia (thanks for not
selling out), and proud to do so!
