“And maybe that would be a good thing. Humanity is becoming too disconnected and dissociated as it is. We could all benefit from digging our roots into reality a bit deeper.” — this is a good thing!
The more we unplug from the digital world—since we don’t know what’s real—the more we’ll be forced to interact with that in our lives that we KNOW are real (like real world connections and all)
Becoming like the Amish doesn't really work (IMO). It would be like trying to enforce celibacy on everyone because sex can lead to rape. Problem isn't sex itself - it's the misuse and abuse of sex. Technology is the same. Technology can lead to all sorts of good things (MRI machines for example have saved millions) but technology also can be misused and abused.
The name "AI" is unfortunate. We used to mostly refer to this kind of deceptive activity as "photoshop." Lying is lying, no matter what you call it. How about we stop calling this stuff "intelligence?" So far, it's making me angry, not dumber, but I suppose that day will come soon enough.
Good point. AI is just deterministic computer algorithms that have no capacity to reflect upon themselves, or make wholistic judgements like human beings can do naturally (AGI, despite what they say, is far, far from becoming a reality). AI will never, ever be capable of a single feeling or sensation like what we humans experience with our internal consciousness.
AI is a symbolic, exterior machination that will never become the interior semantic space of consciousness. Because consciousness itself is a type of phenomena that has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else.
An excellent book I would recommend on this topic is "Irreducible", by the amazing Frederico Faggin.
Yeah, it’s those fries laced with Formaldehyde, lol. I live across the street from a Mikey D’s, and I know that that ain’t real food but boy oh boy, early in the morning when they’re firing up the grill, the smell of those “fries” SMH.. so yeah, there’s that.
I remember when these deep fakes started in the current president's first term. It was a problem then and it's a problem now. Bots discount real videos of the genocide and other issues as AI. So, it's dangerous from that angle, too. That limit is being tested everyday. AI has more disadvantages than it has advantages.
Thank you Caitlin for taking on a difficult topic. My two cents tells me that the only thing that could save humanity is that humanity overwhelmingly believes that there's only one true morality - a morality founded on the scientific fact that all we humans are the same thing. We are the only extant human species and there's no significant difference among any of us that could justify one group to assert that "we are superior to all others." I call it "The Fundamental Human Principle." Any morality that purports to be above this most basic truth is a false morality. There are many false moralities in the world and the groups that profess such lies are destroying not only our human species, but also the precious ecosystems that Mother Earth has gifted us. Those ecosystems are disappearing now, and many of us humans are also disappearing. The reasons behind such destruction is not only AI and the criminal classes of morality that have taken over world governments, powerful lobbies that bribe our governments and brainwash our people, and many other ways some humans have found to satisfy their selfish desires. Good luck with your most important alerts to urge us all to share our common humanity.
Indeed, we have a fundamental HUMAN RIGHT to remain human if we choose. Why is this fundamental right being denied us? Without this right, we are not free.
""It’s causing people to become divorced from their own humanity in weirder and weirder ways""
Here's a summary of the book "Future Shock" (written back in 1970, by Alvin/Heidi Toffler)... and ironically, it's an AI summary...
Future Shock is a 1970 book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler that argues rapid technological and social change can cause psychological stress and disorientation, a condition they call "future shock". The book explores how this acceleration of change impacts individuals, families, and society, and suggests that people's ability to cope with such rapid shifts is being overwhelmed, leading to a state of societal "adaptational breakdown" if not managed effectively.
Caitlin writes that “people won’t feel like they can find the connection they’re craving in any of the areas that are dominated by artificial intelligence, and they’re going to go looking for it elsewhere. Maybe they’ll start going looking for it in places where there are physical people in physical bodies they can touch and make eye contact with, who they know for a fact are real people with real feelings and hopes and dreams like themselves.”
Well - just wait for the transhumanist era to kick in. Then even physical contact will make it impossible to discern if thoughts and perceptions (your own or the others) are artificial or human.
Humans have been trying to cope with AI for thousands of years. Religion was the first organized
AI, with its crude urge to inflict cognitive distortion on fearful people.
You can see it at work today in the mind traps being built by the creeps and cults of the 21st century. As ever, skepticism is an evolutionary advantage. Your free mind is your ally.
I too also support the separation of religion from government.
But Skeptics today make the mistake of attempting to control all religion via incredulity. This is a problem because as Joseph Campbell once wrote:
"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
Myths (religion) are commonly metaphorical and are often expressed in metaphorical terms. Metaphors are neither true nor false - are meant to be symbolic of something that cannot be expressed, or even pointed to in real terms (such as Love, or Semantic Meaning). Religious metaphors attempt to convey the truths that come with the unobservable interiority we all have first hand experience with - our own consciousness. A phenomena that by the way, has sometimes been denied to exist by hardcore Skeptics (Daniel Dennett comes to mind).
Consciousness itself has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else - although many Skeptics continue to argue otherwise. But their argument is only based on their own assumptions regarding reality - assumptions based on the unproven philosophy of reductive materialism.
I have found even today's modern day Skeptics often fall into a kind of religious fanaticism, a religion founded on reductive materialism, and the absolutism associated with the power of their faith in the "magical particle" - the Skeptic's version of God. Many modern day Skeptics for example, believe soon we will achieve sentience with digital computers. That in essence - we are all just walking (deterministic) biological computers.
Note: I myself do not associate with any type of organized religion.
Quite curious. You are just about as adamant in your own beliefs as many religious fanatics. For example, the belief that from nothing at all, the "Big Bang" just happened ...
Or that consciousness is reducible to "magical particles" that just happened to begin feeling, with semantic qualia ...
Seems to always be left out of the Skeptic's bible of truth. Funny how that works.
When I first learned of an upcoming internet from my intelligence connected stepfather, I knew immediately how it would end. What I did not comprehend at the time (late 70s) was that it wouldn't be immediate how it would end up like this - we would be slowly sucked in by the initial freedom and ability to meet like minded people. Once Facebook came on the scene, our connections got centralized and controlled by influencers. We are now at the point I foresaw but it took us 30 years to get there. Strangely enough, in the late 70s I also foresaw a future Biden and Trump at the helm before everything went to shite! The original freedom on the internet was a great idea but once advertising and money took over, it was game over. Of course, I think it was the intention all along - but we have been like slow cooked lobsters in the meantime. Some of us are now wisely crawling out of the pot while there is still time.
"That essay could have been written by a chatbot. "
There are now young people graduating in subjects requiring submission of essays in coursework whose skill is limited to generating prompts for an AI chatbot, rather than a detailed knowledge and analytical insight into the subject that is printed on their degree certificates.
The academic community know this, but they are powerless to stop it. Worse, I suspect many would not even want to: education is now a business, after all. And undergrads submitting ghost written essays is nothing new. What will now happen to those unfortunate postgrads, who for decades have been boosting their meagre income from working in supermarkets or fast-food providers, by selling their services writing essays to order?
Caitlin, good article! I've noticed recently that most of the YouTube " instructional videos", on anything from gardening, construction, or conditioning for seniors, are AI-generated. A monotone, impersonal voice instructs the viewer on "how to have better personal relationships with your children." It is time to break away from the madness and reconnect with those around us. Go plant a row of garlic together with your children or grandchildren. Drop off a load of seasoned firewood for the little old lady down the road, and make sure her chimney is clean...
There are a lot of options for disconnecting from AI unreality and reconnecting with those around us! Thanks, Caitlin, for the reminder.
I was just speaking with a good friend of mine who lives in NYC. She said that she was in the rain that fell on the city a few weeks ago. She said that she got so many phone calls asking if she was safe due to the flooding. She said that there was rain, but no flooding and that the video reports of cars being submerged in the streets in Brooklyn were AI generated. Nothing of the sort actually happened in Brooklyn.
I remember when the Mainstream Media started to use Twitter and other social media outlets for their news reports instead of what their own reporters would give them. It always felt strange to me that they would rely on tweets and other social media posts for their news. Granted, if they did use news reports from actual journalists fine, but slowly but surely, actual journalists were not the source of their news reports but rather random people on the Internet.
I am not of the mind that a random person on the internet is "not" a journalist and a very good one, but whatever happened to due diligence?
AI is definitely the monster in the machine. And with the advent of Erotica, folks can just have their "porn" addiction with the unyielding support of their new AI partner. Who needs a real person who may disagree with you, when you can have a very compliant virtual one.
In the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, there were several videos of the assault as an operation so as to make it look like there really wasn't a war at all. Just a simulation. For several months it had people believing that, and they also believed that Pallywood was more of what was happening. That is, the Palestinians were making it all up.
I just saw a video of Robert De Niro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97r2rTLedAo) talking about why Mamdani won and how his win proves, A, B, and C. If you don't read the comment section you would believe he actually said the things posted in the video. YouTube has in the description that the video was generated by, blah, blah blah, but most folks don't take the time to read the video description. And even though, YouTube asks folks to report channels that do not specify that it is AI, these videos are up long enough to get people to think that they are real. The comment section under the Robert De Niro video were praising him as if is was actually him. That's the sad part and crazy part too. Can someone sue someone for misquoting them even if they have it in the description
"How this content was made: Altered or synthetic content: Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated."
They are so willing to pull us into the AI machine, that all bets are off. It's about who can win the AI battle to the top. You can even get an AI browser that does your shopping for you. So yeah, it will certainly make us dumber and dumber, lazier and lazier and more and more controllable.
AI is the 21st century version of the pocket calculator. If you rely on it, then yes, it can make you less apt to figure things out on your own. We are already seeing warning signs about the negative impacts of AI. Such as individuals having relationships with AI.
Here in the US a former executive killed his mother because his AI friend told him his mother was out to poison him. Sounds far fetched?
"Modern civilization has made it possible to work from home and eat ten thousand calories a day without ever exercising or leaving your apartment, but most of us have the good sense not to do this because we know it would be very bad for our health."
Sadly, some of us who are already in poor health or disabled are still stuck in our homes. The internet was a way for us to find human connection - to find others like us, other outsiders. Making that harder to do brings back the isolation that the disabled, the neurodivergent, the chronically ill have only recently escaped.
“And maybe that would be a good thing. Humanity is becoming too disconnected and dissociated as it is. We could all benefit from digging our roots into reality a bit deeper.” — this is a good thing!
The more we unplug from the digital world—since we don’t know what’s real—the more we’ll be forced to interact with that in our lives that we KNOW are real (like real world connections and all)
hence also caitlin's magazine and the imminent return of the spirit duplicator and clandestine printing press.
Becoming like the Amish doesn't really work (IMO). It would be like trying to enforce celibacy on everyone because sex can lead to rape. Problem isn't sex itself - it's the misuse and abuse of sex. Technology is the same. Technology can lead to all sorts of good things (MRI machines for example have saved millions) but technology also can be misused and abused.
The name "AI" is unfortunate. We used to mostly refer to this kind of deceptive activity as "photoshop." Lying is lying, no matter what you call it. How about we stop calling this stuff "intelligence?" So far, it's making me angry, not dumber, but I suppose that day will come soon enough.
Good point. AI is just deterministic computer algorithms that have no capacity to reflect upon themselves, or make wholistic judgements like human beings can do naturally (AGI, despite what they say, is far, far from becoming a reality). AI will never, ever be capable of a single feeling or sensation like what we humans experience with our internal consciousness.
AI is a symbolic, exterior machination that will never become the interior semantic space of consciousness. Because consciousness itself is a type of phenomena that has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else.
An excellent book I would recommend on this topic is "Irreducible", by the amazing Frederico Faggin.
I definitely look at AI more negatively than I look at McDonald’s . . .
Yeah, it’s those fries laced with Formaldehyde, lol. I live across the street from a Mikey D’s, and I know that that ain’t real food but boy oh boy, early in the morning when they’re firing up the grill, the smell of those “fries” SMH.. so yeah, there’s that.
I remember when these deep fakes started in the current president's first term. It was a problem then and it's a problem now. Bots discount real videos of the genocide and other issues as AI. So, it's dangerous from that angle, too. That limit is being tested everyday. AI has more disadvantages than it has advantages.
Thank you Caitlin for taking on a difficult topic. My two cents tells me that the only thing that could save humanity is that humanity overwhelmingly believes that there's only one true morality - a morality founded on the scientific fact that all we humans are the same thing. We are the only extant human species and there's no significant difference among any of us that could justify one group to assert that "we are superior to all others." I call it "The Fundamental Human Principle." Any morality that purports to be above this most basic truth is a false morality. There are many false moralities in the world and the groups that profess such lies are destroying not only our human species, but also the precious ecosystems that Mother Earth has gifted us. Those ecosystems are disappearing now, and many of us humans are also disappearing. The reasons behind such destruction is not only AI and the criminal classes of morality that have taken over world governments, powerful lobbies that bribe our governments and brainwash our people, and many other ways some humans have found to satisfy their selfish desires. Good luck with your most important alerts to urge us all to share our common humanity.
Indeed, we have a fundamental HUMAN RIGHT to remain human if we choose. Why is this fundamental right being denied us? Without this right, we are not free.
""It’s causing people to become divorced from their own humanity in weirder and weirder ways""
Here's a summary of the book "Future Shock" (written back in 1970, by Alvin/Heidi Toffler)... and ironically, it's an AI summary...
Future Shock is a 1970 book by Alvin and Heidi Toffler that argues rapid technological and social change can cause psychological stress and disorientation, a condition they call "future shock". The book explores how this acceleration of change impacts individuals, families, and society, and suggests that people's ability to cope with such rapid shifts is being overwhelmed, leading to a state of societal "adaptational breakdown" if not managed effectively.
And here is the more disturbing aspect…
Caitlin writes that “people won’t feel like they can find the connection they’re craving in any of the areas that are dominated by artificial intelligence, and they’re going to go looking for it elsewhere. Maybe they’ll start going looking for it in places where there are physical people in physical bodies they can touch and make eye contact with, who they know for a fact are real people with real feelings and hopes and dreams like themselves.”
Well - just wait for the transhumanist era to kick in. Then even physical contact will make it impossible to discern if thoughts and perceptions (your own or the others) are artificial or human.
Humans have been trying to cope with AI for thousands of years. Religion was the first organized
AI, with its crude urge to inflict cognitive distortion on fearful people.
You can see it at work today in the mind traps being built by the creeps and cults of the 21st century. As ever, skepticism is an evolutionary advantage. Your free mind is your ally.
The problem with faith is the same problem with science and government: whom do we allow to control it?
I would say that we must separate religious faith from government. I would also prefer a considerable distance between religious faith and science.
We try to control government via democracy.
We try to control science via peer review.
We try to control religious faith via incredulity.
I too also support the separation of religion from government.
But Skeptics today make the mistake of attempting to control all religion via incredulity. This is a problem because as Joseph Campbell once wrote:
"Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
Myths (religion) are commonly metaphorical and are often expressed in metaphorical terms. Metaphors are neither true nor false - are meant to be symbolic of something that cannot be expressed, or even pointed to in real terms (such as Love, or Semantic Meaning). Religious metaphors attempt to convey the truths that come with the unobservable interiority we all have first hand experience with - our own consciousness. A phenomena that by the way, has sometimes been denied to exist by hardcore Skeptics (Daniel Dennett comes to mind).
Consciousness itself has the peculiar nature of not being reducible to anything else - although many Skeptics continue to argue otherwise. But their argument is only based on their own assumptions regarding reality - assumptions based on the unproven philosophy of reductive materialism.
I have found even today's modern day Skeptics often fall into a kind of religious fanaticism, a religion founded on reductive materialism, and the absolutism associated with the power of their faith in the "magical particle" - the Skeptic's version of God. Many modern day Skeptics for example, believe soon we will achieve sentience with digital computers. That in essence - we are all just walking (deterministic) biological computers.
Note: I myself do not associate with any type of organized religion.
None of my meager material possession has the slightest divine property
None of them claim me as their divine offspring.
None of my few material possession arrived on Earth via virgin birth.
None of them asks me to eat their body or drink their blood or wear a funny hat.
Your so called "magical particle' has never demanded my faith. In fact it seem utterly indifferent to my existence, rather like the abrahamic gods.
Your disassociation with any type of organized religion seems incomplete.
Quite curious. You are just about as adamant in your own beliefs as many religious fanatics. For example, the belief that from nothing at all, the "Big Bang" just happened ...
Or that consciousness is reducible to "magical particles" that just happened to begin feeling, with semantic qualia ...
Seems to always be left out of the Skeptic's bible of truth. Funny how that works.
The advent of the World Wide Web began making us dumber at the turn of the century, AI is a natural evolution of the process.
When I first learned of an upcoming internet from my intelligence connected stepfather, I knew immediately how it would end. What I did not comprehend at the time (late 70s) was that it wouldn't be immediate how it would end up like this - we would be slowly sucked in by the initial freedom and ability to meet like minded people. Once Facebook came on the scene, our connections got centralized and controlled by influencers. We are now at the point I foresaw but it took us 30 years to get there. Strangely enough, in the late 70s I also foresaw a future Biden and Trump at the helm before everything went to shite! The original freedom on the internet was a great idea but once advertising and money took over, it was game over. Of course, I think it was the intention all along - but we have been like slow cooked lobsters in the meantime. Some of us are now wisely crawling out of the pot while there is still time.
"That essay could have been written by a chatbot. "
There are now young people graduating in subjects requiring submission of essays in coursework whose skill is limited to generating prompts for an AI chatbot, rather than a detailed knowledge and analytical insight into the subject that is printed on their degree certificates.
The academic community know this, but they are powerless to stop it. Worse, I suspect many would not even want to: education is now a business, after all. And undergrads submitting ghost written essays is nothing new. What will now happen to those unfortunate postgrads, who for decades have been boosting their meagre income from working in supermarkets or fast-food providers, by selling their services writing essays to order?
Caitlin, good article! I've noticed recently that most of the YouTube " instructional videos", on anything from gardening, construction, or conditioning for seniors, are AI-generated. A monotone, impersonal voice instructs the viewer on "how to have better personal relationships with your children." It is time to break away from the madness and reconnect with those around us. Go plant a row of garlic together with your children or grandchildren. Drop off a load of seasoned firewood for the little old lady down the road, and make sure her chimney is clean...
There are a lot of options for disconnecting from AI unreality and reconnecting with those around us! Thanks, Caitlin, for the reminder.
AI was deliberately pushed for nefarious purposes.
I was just speaking with a good friend of mine who lives in NYC. She said that she was in the rain that fell on the city a few weeks ago. She said that she got so many phone calls asking if she was safe due to the flooding. She said that there was rain, but no flooding and that the video reports of cars being submerged in the streets in Brooklyn were AI generated. Nothing of the sort actually happened in Brooklyn.
I remember when the Mainstream Media started to use Twitter and other social media outlets for their news reports instead of what their own reporters would give them. It always felt strange to me that they would rely on tweets and other social media posts for their news. Granted, if they did use news reports from actual journalists fine, but slowly but surely, actual journalists were not the source of their news reports but rather random people on the Internet.
I am not of the mind that a random person on the internet is "not" a journalist and a very good one, but whatever happened to due diligence?
AI is definitely the monster in the machine. And with the advent of Erotica, folks can just have their "porn" addiction with the unyielding support of their new AI partner. Who needs a real person who may disagree with you, when you can have a very compliant virtual one.
In the beginning of the Israeli assault on Gaza after Oct. 7, 2023, there were several videos of the assault as an operation so as to make it look like there really wasn't a war at all. Just a simulation. For several months it had people believing that, and they also believed that Pallywood was more of what was happening. That is, the Palestinians were making it all up.
I just saw a video of Robert De Niro (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97r2rTLedAo) talking about why Mamdani won and how his win proves, A, B, and C. If you don't read the comment section you would believe he actually said the things posted in the video. YouTube has in the description that the video was generated by, blah, blah blah, but most folks don't take the time to read the video description. And even though, YouTube asks folks to report channels that do not specify that it is AI, these videos are up long enough to get people to think that they are real. The comment section under the Robert De Niro video were praising him as if is was actually him. That's the sad part and crazy part too. Can someone sue someone for misquoting them even if they have it in the description
"How this content was made: Altered or synthetic content: Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated."
Welcome to the Wild, Wild West!
"Currently, there is no comprehensive federal legislation or regulations in the US that regulate the development of AI or specifically prohibit or restrict their use" https://www.whitecase.com/insight-our-thinking/ai-watch-global-regulatory-tracker-united-states
They are so willing to pull us into the AI machine, that all bets are off. It's about who can win the AI battle to the top. You can even get an AI browser that does your shopping for you. So yeah, it will certainly make us dumber and dumber, lazier and lazier and more and more controllable.
Hi Nana
The best way to disconnect from AI is to avoid websites that employ it.
I have neither a Facebook nor X account.
I will continue to connect with real, actual human beings such as Caitlin. AI is not unavoidable.
I think it might be about three years too late to be noticing this!
AI is the 21st century version of the pocket calculator. If you rely on it, then yes, it can make you less apt to figure things out on your own. We are already seeing warning signs about the negative impacts of AI. Such as individuals having relationships with AI.
Here in the US a former executive killed his mother because his AI friend told him his mother was out to poison him. Sounds far fetched?
https://nypost.com/2025/08/29/business/ex-yahoo-exec-killed-his-mom-after-chatgpt-fed-his-paranoia-report/
People on the edge of dealing with reality should not go anywhere near AI.
"Modern civilization has made it possible to work from home and eat ten thousand calories a day without ever exercising or leaving your apartment, but most of us have the good sense not to do this because we know it would be very bad for our health."
Sadly, some of us who are already in poor health or disabled are still stuck in our homes. The internet was a way for us to find human connection - to find others like us, other outsiders. Making that harder to do brings back the isolation that the disabled, the neurodivergent, the chronically ill have only recently escaped.