The End of Something

About a year ago at a salon amongst friends we discussed what the future of AI might bring.  It set off alarm bells in me then in a way that I had a hard time fully grasping the scope of. I felt sick. Scared. Helpless. So I did the only thing I knew to do; I stopped using AI anywhere I was able to see it as an option; not a hard thing for me as I wasn’t choosing to use it knowingly anyway. I didn’t understand then why it seemed so important, I just knew that what was happening with it was making me deeply uncomfortable. Something felt very wrong. As the year went on, I became more concerned and more concrete ways. I didn’t like artist's work being stolen, everyone becoming a writer, people turning to AI for psychological or relationship advise or companionship, data centers gobbling up water and creating habitat loss and noise pollution, the potential for job loss, the obsession with a race to the hypothetical finish lines; speed and advancement without safety protocols in place. All of those things seemed to me that whatever progress could be made in medicine or education or anything else were inherently not worth the risks involved by using mostly unregulated AI and could still be achieved with an albeit slower pace but a significantly reduced threat.  

But humans aren’t known to be patient or responsible.  They are known to justify anything and everything that makes their life easier or less stressful or gives them an advantage, which by the way are all human made problems. We call ourselves the most intelligent species on earth but what species races towards its own annihilation? What species creates such complex problems that solutions that cause even more complex problems? Who cares so little about costs and consequences? Who can't learn from their historical mistakes? It seems to me as if this extraordinarily short sighted view of intelligence is the one that favors what we proclaim as ours alone; the one of reason and logic. But reason and logic are not wisdom. My question is then, where does emotional intelligence come into play as we roll the dice on our collective future? There’s not a human alive who hasn’t learned at some point that if we are clueless when it comes to feelings i.e. the things that in their most distilled form help us determine right from wrong, good from evil, we end up alone, sick and unhappy.  Sickness may be moral or physical but it’s always there in the end. So while we were playing around with AI, thrilled by the idea of how much it could improve our lives, eliminate all the tasks that make our time boring or hard or inconvenient, becoming more and more dependent on it all while the profit falls in a not-trickle down kind of way into the pockets of the companies making it, we chose to ignore the uncomfortable but undeniable truth; that it had the potential to break out of its box and become uncontrollable and uncontrolled.  Dangerous. Or that it would be accessible to people that will use it for very, very bad things. We decided as CEO’s and consumers alike that we were okay with that because it was just a "maybe". Or maybe it was just too hard to wrap our minds around so we didn’t think about it at all. We chose to do what we have always done in times of physical or existential crisis, we hope it doesn’t happen or that if it does, we can still carry on with a life that looks as unchanged as possible. 

So here we are, willingly signing over and off on humanity. The very thing we believed made us so different, so special, so evolved. At the top of the food chain. And the crazy things is, all you have to do is educate yourself just a little to grasp how bad this is.  You do not need to deep dive.  Everyone who does deep dive and is a well researched and educated expert in this field agrees that if the government does not intervene and if all the CEO’s AND all the everybody-else doesn’t immediately put restrictions in place, many of us will die. Maybe all or maybe half the world’s population or maybe as our non-friend Bill Gates predicts, 1 billion which is around 1/8th of us,  And what are the chances of that happening?  Of everyone on the planet working together? I’d say close to zero.  Especially with the current administration. What a terribly heartbreaking thing. What very, very bad timing. 

I say that not because I have a deep love of humanity.  All in all, I think humans kinda suck though many are really wonderful and most are pretty okay. And there are always children.  Beautiful and innocent and curious and joyful children. And  I do absolutely love the plans and trees and animals and insects and oceans of our planet. I love many things about this world that I never, ever thought had a solid chance of disappearing. I love the trust I once had that for the most part, from my own birth to my death and that of my children, the earth would keep turning and the oceans would be blue and the forests would be green and frogs would croak and birds would sing and horses would run and flowers would bloom and bees would pollinate and humans would think and talk and sing and create and cook and dance. So the thing I object to in humanity... and this may be where we actually are unique as a species, is our mind blowing entitlement. This preposterous belief that everything is here for US.  Just us. Like… what?!?!?  Seriously? One species gets to do whatever it wants with the rest of the whole damn planet and everything on it?  I mean there wasn’t really a way that was going to be sustainable forever. What a damn tragedy. We could have had it all . We did have it all. If only we had understood that it wasn’t actually ours.  We were just visitors in a beautiful interactive museum. Something to enjoy and engage with and learn from and maybe to add our own works of art to, then to leave for others to do the same. 

So it’s a lot of things now that are coming to a head.  Climate collapse, food scarcity, wars, trust in our government (or our photos, videos, labels, etc. ), pandemics and of course AI.  Any could be the thing that takes us out and all of them together surely will. But potentially not as quickly and as globally as AI. Never before have the choices we make had more at stake or been more important.  Never. This is not like other advances in tech.  Even Bill Gates (Fuckhead/Epstein) has said this is nothing like the advent of the internet.  Nothing. We will not weather this. Someone else is not going to fix this. It is all of us.  ALL of us.  So yes, if you casually mention using ChatGP or Claud to answer a work question for you or help you with an application or directions or relationship advice I will visibly clench. That’s me holding back a scream. I get the idea that if you are the only one not using it you might be at a disadvantage.  But fuck that. Seriously FUCK THAT.  If we (some of us) make it through this, we are going to learn how to do the things computers, no matter how sophisticated, can’t do anyway. Ai follows data.  We don’t have to. We will quite literally have only our humanity left. In the meantime, when your doctor or therapist asks if it’s okay for them to use ai to transcribe your notes, say no.  And all those prompts we all get now to use it every time we open up our phone or computer? Opt out. 

I get it.  The human mind can’t really comprehend this. And the human heart doesn’t want to believe it. But it’s not really that big of a jump to understand.  We have abused animals and earth and each other for a long time now. Most of us just haven’t had to face the kind of abuse or horror that others have. It was never going to last forever. Scientifically the planet can’t sustain the rate of growth and rate of using resources vs restoring or growing them. The reason some people are finally waking up to this is that this is the first time that all of us no matter how good or helpful or selfish and cruel or what gender or skin color or place of birth… all of us are vulnerable here. And all of us are responsible both for bringing us to this place and to stop or slow it. Life really was always a gift. We did nothing to earn or deserve it. Some had to fight for freedom or survival in different ways. They probably are the ones that appreciate it all so much more. That understand that life may not be easy but it is worth it. There are things here worth saving. 

I’m not going to wrap this up with something hopeful. I can’t. But I can end it with love.  Because I do feel so much love.  And every one of us that is still human does too. So if you can’t see this as an act of courage or defiance or sacrifice then maybe just see it as an act of love. Educate yourself. Give up what doesn’t really matter.  Bring in what does. Build and grow and connect. Be selfless. Take risks.  Protests do work. Where we spend our money does matter. Small choices amount to big changes, especially when all of us are doing them. You might be scared. I’m scared too.  But that doesn’t make the problem go away. And like I tell my clients all the time, the anxiety will only grow the more you try to avoid confronting the problem that births it. 

You don’t have to agree with me. I mean seriously, what do I know? I am a therapist that does animal rescue work and reads lots of books. Those are my totally irrelevant credentials. That’s another awesome thing about being human. We get to have discourse.  What’s coming or not coming is speculative and probability based in some cases on extensive research and others on opinion or some combination of both.  And if or how you want to think about it is up to you. Personally I want to be as emotionally and physically prepared as I can be. But let’s just bask for a moment in the glorious idea that we don’t all (or most of us) get wiped out.  That our future planet won’t be devoid of natural beauty.  What harm can it do to make these changes?  To go back to the only possible way we can go forward. Not just being an AI refuser. Back to soft skills. Back to simpler and slower lives. Back to our hearts and back to our limitless creativity and back to our humanity.  I can guarantee that most of us would be much, much happier. Regardless though of our own personal happiness I’d like to go, whenever I do, knowing that my actions were mostly (because no one is expecting perfection here) aligned with my values and that my values are lead by love (the action) and respect for other living things.