blog blog blog     

‹ Back

The problem with blogging is that I don't have all that much to say. The first ten posts or so, I have an interesting story or perspective; but after that, most of the things I think about are already on paper. Or pixels, I guess.

But seeing as every Google search I make now gets streamlined straight to an AI bot without my request, I think it's important to keep throwing nonsense onto the internet - as long as it is human, it is valuable. Our brains are unbelievable networks that I don't think can ever be recreated by a machine. I love a good database, but some things are just out of that realm. 

I used to not believe that, at all. But I used to not believe a lot of things.

I remember being asked, when I was twelve or so, to talk about AI in a room with adults holding clipboards. That happened a lot to me as a kid, to be honest. If I got abducted by aliens, I doubt I would think anything weird of it now. 

Anyway - they were asking a bunch of us about how we thought AI would impact our future. Looking back, they were probably some technology company that wanted quotes from kids about how awesome and smart AI were getting to place in a report or two. But as a kid, getting asked that made me feel like a tenured professor speaking with such vigour and confidence that can only be achieved by a once teenage reject with unrestricted Dewey Decimal access.

I don't remember most of what I said to the adults with the clipboards. Something about how AI is scary - although at that time, all I really knew about AI came from The Terminator or War Games (God, what a cool twelve year old I was...) 

I do remember one thing I said. I commented that, since creative industries require so much human nature, passion, and insight, they will never be replaced by AI.

It's funny looking back, seeing as the arts are pretty much the first thing being replaced. I guess that makes sense, though.

Manual labour (which is what we should be aiming to replace, really - "Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." as says the ever missed Robin Williams - anyway, manual labour) would be a harder thing to program a computer to do. Not only would you need to program the movements and connect them to the physical world, you'd have to introduce a sense of context for the machines - after all, an AI surgeon can't slash someone's jugular because the scalpel was an inch to the left of where their program said it would be.

I don't like AI, but I hardly think they'll bring an end to the world.

Every generation thinks they'll be the last. There'll be a plague, or an Ice Age, or a nuclear war, and we'll declare humanity's days limited to the double digit - then wake up ten years later, no more red faced than indignant. 

I find that in my life a lot. I'll have something happen - some minor failure, or rejection, and decide there's no tomorrow. And yet, I'll always roll out of bed the next day. And in a week, I'll have forgotten what even happened. 

So when we say AI could be the end of us, I think it's an overreaction. We'll get used to it - we always do.

There is always something to be said for human survival. Every disaster in humankind has been moved past. Every disaster in your life has been withstood. 

I need a nice ending line here, but I can't really think of one. Let's see how ChatGPT does:

"So maybe the point isn’t to outsmart the machine, or outrun the end—but just to keep showing up, quietly, stubbornly human."

Eh. It's alright. Cute and relevant, though a bit meaningless when you get down to it. I still think Robin Williams could've done it better.