I feel like OP's big concern here is a general decline of humanity in how we engage with the world. Something I don't see as inherently tied to AI. It's a process which has been ongoing for some time now.
A friend of mine who also writes showed me an article this morning. Some guy apparently got his diploma using ChatGPT and the article was all about how neural networks are our future, how it's stupid to ban them like banning calculators, and how five years from now it will be the norm and AI will be indispensable to process tons of information. I was absolutely appalled by this. It's cheating,
Personally I'm appalled by the things higher education demands of us to get diplomas, and would like to see someone create a moral case against cheating in these things which doesn't also have to conclude that the tests and assessments themselves are bad. Everything that using ChatGPT is supposedly undercutting is already ruined by the nature of the tests. High level academic work might as well be AI generated already. The standard for a long time now has been to remove as much personality and human perspective from your work as possible and pretend to be a perfect robotic observer of the subject at hand because this makes quantifying quality easy and it's something stupid people can do better than real thought. Levels things out nice and clean. Requires a far lower capacity to synthesise a breadth of knowledge organically. Etc.
the issue comes when AI starts creating things, whether it's art, articles, or simply... "thoughts" and actions. AI art, for example, should always be certified as AI art somewhere in the file or on the picture itself, as to differentiate it from man-made art. AI-generated text, as well. Anything made by AI should be certified as such. Back to what my friend said about AI writing possibly better books than a human, that makes me think, where would human creativity go?
The question should be; "Where has it already gone?" The age of empty media is already here. We've been living in it for at least a decade now. Literature has been dead for decades. Most "artists" are just masterless craftsmen making meaningless
stuff for the sake of it. We're so far gone as a culture that the term "art" just means "crafted visual work". What's the difference between a culture that only looks at AI prompts and a culture that only looks at furry-commissioned "artist" products? What's the damn difference? Keywords go in one side, "art" comes out the other. This is just giving people what they want.
An AI's great weakness is that it has no human will to read behind it. Which is the same problem most "art" already has. I'm not an Indian. I don't care about
detail, or
realism. "Art" is only interesting as far as I can discern the human intentions and ideas behind it. There is "AI art" that does interest me a bit, but only works produced by people I know personally. The fact I know the people who made it, and can talk to them about what they were trying to do makes it interesting. When you appreciate the human behind something what was a dead image becomes a refraction of character and thought. If I ask myself "why is it that way?", or even better, ask the person who made it, that can go to interesting places. This will only ever be true of a small minority of the "AI" art made, sure, but it's also true of a small minority of the "human" "art" being made today too.
Like with education, everything that AI is supposedly a threat to has already been just about destroyed. Where I'll defend existing contemporary art standards is that it's still better to have people with craft skills maintained than not. It's good for the human animal to be able to do fine work that they can put some of themselves into. It's a shame these guys are mostly stuck drawing furry porn to make a living today, but that's still better than working in a damn warehouse. If we were to introduce protectionist laws against AI for the purpose of maintaining human dignity and ability to make a living, well that might be nice, but it would start a process that would necessarily lead to places most people wouldn't find nice. If replacing people with cheaper AI is bad for our fellow men even if we ultimately get to enjoy cheaper bullshit... well... why did we move our industry to the third world? Why are our borders open? Why do we...
Basically it'd be very ballsy and unfair to do 1/1000 of a half assed work revolution. And these questions go to very severe places.
Back to the key point here, the short answer is that most "creative" work already isn't. Formats like the
writer's room are basically human beings debasing themselves to the level of AI already. Just idiots trying to
predict what other idiots will be most superficially satisfied by. An AI would be objectively better at that. So what's to worry about?
For the exams and studying, where would the human mind go? Is anything purely man-made going to be "dirty" or "low" in some way? I'm afraid it will make people lazy, unable to create or do anything on their own, and so dependent on technology (if they cannot be more dependent on it now) that in case of a blackout or another issue, they are completely unable to do anything on their own. Hell even in my future English classes I don't plan on using a lot of tech. If I can stay low or lowish tech, that's better and simpler.
"Where would the human mind go?" Again.
It's already gone.
What are you afraid will happen that hasn't already happened?
One of the things that scare me the most with AI is that it will never be capable of empathy. At best, we can make it into something that speaks beautiful words, which says what you want to hear (or what whoever the fuck programmed it wants you to hear), but it will never experience empathy, for empathy is a capacity found in things that are alive. An AI is not alive. It's purely a program, an algorithm, a robot. It will always be our equiveltn of psychopathic in nature. Something that can speak well and seem like it feels, but ultimately is cold and dead. A police robot would kill protesters without a second thought. A policeman may think twice if you're a woman, elder, or a child. If you've got an AI "friend", it will never be a real friend. It will never be here for you like a friend is, it can even turn you on to the authorities if told to do so, and it can be pirated at a distance for information-gathering purposes. I'm pretty sure some people could be found dead from apparently natural causes in their smart homes, but could've been assassinated with the aid of the AI inside. Who the fuck knows. I don't fucking trust a psychopath, and I'm certainly not trusting something that is incapable of empathy and feeling.
All of these things, like the others, are what will naturally follow from giving power to third worlders and women. Remember when our governments placed us under house arrest for two years? Where was empathy then?
But in the face of people like that, so many people my age who are bathed in technology from the youngest age and don't seem to question it or realize how dangerous it can get, praising how good tech is, smart people like this guy who are for this, I can't help but feel like, you know, maybe something's just wrong with me? Like I'm just dumb? A retarded boomer? An uncultured swine? An old lady stuck in the past? Someone backwards or who is against any kind of change? It's a normal human thing to feel weird about one's convictions in the face of an overwhelmingly opposite majority. Besides, as I said, I'm pretty sensitive lately, so it doesn't make it really easier. I feel that something must be wrong with me for me not being able to appreciate humanity's progress. I live in supposedly the best period to be alive yet I have some serious issues with the place of tech in our lives, and something in this modern life has always felt off to me. I mean, there IS something off. The sheer amount of surveillance, the consoomerization of everything including human relationships, the overabundance of "freedom" that is just basically debauchery, the fall of proper parenting, the polarization of everything, the politicization of everything also... there IS something off in this world. I feel that even if I'm currently doubting myself, I actually have a good reason to be concerned about this supposed "progress" and humanity's seeming obsession with it, how they are always chasing something "better" or "higher", as if one's natural condition of a rather smart animal living in a natural or semi-natural world is somehow shameful or bad.
I'm quite concerned too, just I think that everything that's going to go seriously wrong in relation to AI won't be because of it. It'll be because of the cultural trajectory that we've already been on for decades. AI is probably going to be another scapegoat soon.
Soulless inhuman AI content making urban youth lack empathy.
What's wrong with being human? With having a physical body, limitations that are inherent to this, and such? With needs, with wants and hopes? With a connection to a nature we are getting further and further away from, provoking more and more disorder in the psyche and health? What's wrong with wanting to stay on Earth rather than space travel, build bases on the Moon/Mars and discover supposedly "greener" pastures, or possibly habitable planets when we've already got one to take care of? Why is it that what people have never seems to be enough? What's wrong with being against ultimately useless or dangerous "progress"? It's not going to make us anything less than we are. Because no matter how much we delude ourselves into thinking we're superior beings, at the end of the day, we're just apes with a big brain and a just as big superiority complex.
Are you really alienated by humanity's merciless, relentless, upward drive for perfection and exploration? Or are you alienated by widespread incompetence and idiocy? The human race didn't get less
creative because we're all too busy building moonbases.
I don't know what else to say. I'm upset. I sometimes already feel pretty alone in the fact I'm not into mainstream social media, but for the AI thing, and my rejection of technological progress, I have these thoughts that maybe people will stop loving me, that I'm just an annoying backwards schmuck or a killjoy who has nothing nice to say. It's human and normal to want love from others, and to feel sad when feeling a disconnection from them. We are social creatures after all...
At least you have Agora Road...
