In The Age Of AI, We Each Have To Choose How Much Of Our Humanity We Want To Keep
Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley):
Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok has gone full Nazi after changes were made to its programming to give it a heavier right wing bias, sparking international headlines with its tweets praising Adolf Hitler’s treatment of Jews and babbling about Jewish conspiracies to spread anti-white hate.
The official X account for Grok announced that the team is “aware of recent posts made by Grok and are actively working to remove the inappropriate posts,” saying “xAI has taken action to ban hate speech before Grok posts on X.”
So apparently they’re having a hard time teaching their chatbot specifically what kind of right wing bias they want it to have.
Shit’s getting weird, man. The age of AI is weird.
AI is presenting a very interesting dilemma to each of us. We now each have to decide as individuals just how human we wish to keep our experience, because we’re hitting a point where we can become just about as divorced from the things that make us human as we want to be.
We can choose to let AI do our critical thinking for us if we want to. We can choose to let it do our reading and writing for us. We can choose to let it create the art we produce and consume. We can choose to let it formulate arguments for us justifying our opinions and our worldview, or to let it reshape our worldview altogether. We can even choose to anthropomorphize it and have relationships with it if we are lonely.
We all have to choose for ourselves where the line is now. What point we will not cross beyond. What parts of our humanity we are willing and unwilling to trade for convenience or cognitive ease.
Just how far into the guts and gristle of humanity do you want to be?
How deeply do you want to be immersed in the breathing, sweating, pulsing fleshiness of the human adventure?
How fully do you want to feel the erotic ticklings of creativity moving through you, and the frustration you’ll experience on the days when it doesn’t show up?
To what extent do you want to experience the highs and lows of intimate human relationships, and all the unpredictability and insecurity that comes with them?
How much cognitive discomfort are you willing to push through in order to form a new opinion, learn about a new subject, or understand an unfamiliar idea?
How separated are you ready to become from that within us which produces the perfectly imperfect art, music and literature of our species?
How much do you want to feel the earth beneath your feet, the wind in your hair, and the sacred thrum of existence in your veins?
These didn’t used to be questions we needed to answer for ourselves. If we wanted something written, we had to write it. If we didn’t know how to write, we had to learn. If we didn’t put in the work, the thing we wanted to write never got written.
Now it’s a conscious choice for us how far we’re each willing to move into this new AI thing. We all have to decide for ourselves how far is too far, with the understanding that every step we take in that direction is costing us something. Maybe something very dear to us. Maybe something we can never get back.
_________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Click here for links for my mailing list, social media, books, merch, and audio/video versions of each article. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations: 1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
Feature image via Adobe Stock.
For me, the only good AI is no AI. I'll use my own mind, thank you very much.
As many have expressed before me, I want AI to mow my lawn and wash my dishes, not compose my music or my prose. To desire my dehumanization is illogical, thank you Mr. Spock.
And with Francesca Albanese's revelations about the filthy investments of the international corporate world, especially Big Tech, in genocide, I frankly don't want to be anywhere near anything they offer me.