Suck Up

Goldman Sachs economists predict that 18% of work globally could be computerized, with the effects felt more deeply in advanced economies than emerging markets” (CNN International)

My four adult kids find Artificial Intelligence fascinating. We talk about AI a lot, and its implications. I listened to this recent full interview on CBS (link below) with Geoffrey Hinton, who is considered “the godfather of artificial intelligence”, as I was driving around, running errands yesterday. The grounds AI is making in such a short amount of time, is exciting and fascinating, all at once. I have that same feeling that I get before watching an interesting and intriguing, but terrifying thriller. I’m really curious, and I want to see what happens, but I’m also filled with dread and doom at the same time. Geoffrey Hinton believes that with AI here, we are on the brink of something bigger than the Industrial Revolution and/or the invention of the wheel. What I keep pondering is, will we humans soon be relegated to a lesser status on the food chain? Will we end up being “the apes” to Artificial Intelligence? Or will AI get into the wrong hands and take us all down to obliteration? (That’s my pessimistic side coming out.) If we do handle AI carefully and thoughtfully and consciously and wholesomely, it could make life easier for all of us, and allow us to pursue our creative and leisure pursuits more frequently and enthusiastically. Only time will tell . . . . .

Here’s a question I asked ChatGPT yesterday and the answer that I received back. (I find Chat to be kind of a “suck up”, but I also adored Chat’s articulate answer):

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Automation

Last night, our middle son showed us something on the internet called “ChatGPT”. It’s an artificial intelligence that appears to make Siri seem like an inexperienced child and apparently, ChatGPT is only in its own infant/rudimentary stages. To show us an example, our son asked ChatGPT to write a poem about a lonely turtle. In less than a minute or two, the ChatGPT wrote a four stanza poem that rhymed perfectly and was quite clever and added a lot of details about a forlorn little turtle. Our own kids, who are still college students, admitted that some kids use this tool occasionally to write their required essays. I like to believe that those “some kids” are not mine.

As a writer, I find this new technology heartbreaking. I’ve often curiously questioned technological advances in the past, and their moral implications, but this is the first time something that I am fully passionate about, is being touched by and taken over by automation. Will the kind of writing that I like to do, become some quaint relic from the past? Will we grow to assume that everything that we read in newspapers, magazines, on the internet, and even in books has been written by some algorithm/artificial intelligence? Will anything be original and human anymore, or will everything that we do be handled and created by robots?

My son reminded me that artificial intelligence only works with what we “feed” into it. He said that he could ask ChatGPT to write a poem about a lonely turtle with more of a Shakespearean feel to it, and he reminded me that AI could only do that because Shakespeare existed first.

I fear sometimes our need for perfection. I fear that we worship at the holy grail of getting everything done quickly, easily, and flawlessly. We disdain the imperfections which we find on our faces, so we have filters for that. A machine can do surgeries precisely. Who needs a human touch? Are those science fiction shows about babies being birthed into labs in order to mine them for replacement organs going to really come to fruition?

Sometimes when I write, I think to myself, why do I do this? Everything that I write about has already been written about, by other people, at least 100 times over. But then I remember reading an article by Anna Quindlen, a great writer and teacher, who told her students that we all can write about the same thing, but nobody brings the same “voice or soul” to any one topic. Like fingerprints, each writer has their own intrinsic voice. I believe that this individual voice from each creator/artist/writer is connected to our deepest souls, and that’s something that machines don’t have – they don’t have feelings or passion or a true connection to Creative Intelligence, which is the true source to all things alive and wonderful. Machines don’t have souls. In my mind, Creative Intelligence dwarfs Artificial Intelligence any day. The most beautiful creations in the world, whether they be natural, or manmade, are beautiful because they were created out of passion and longing and feeling and desire. Feelings are messy. They are not perfect. Feelings are jarring, and fleeting, and overpowering, and intense. Feelings are not analytical and systematic and perfect and predictable. Feelings are human. Feelings come from our souls. The best creations in the world come from harnessing the chaos of the fervor and the zeal of our feelings and of our intuitions and of our passions. Intelligence without feeling is aptly named “artificial.” Creative intelligence is as real as it gets. We humans are the channels for Creative Intelligence. I hope and pray that this never changes.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.