Please note anything with an asterisk had assistance from ChatGPT.
* Reviewer AI: it offered minor assistance, from spell check to word swaps to grammar fixes, etc., this is what most people have on their phones known as autocorrect or autocomplete.
** Copy-Editing AI: it made minor to mid-sized changes such has revised structure, syntax, but did not modify subject or content.
*** Content-Gen AI: it developed “original'“ content based on the subject or content, often able to continue given an example.
**** Generative AI: to develop something completely new outside of prompt engineering.
Can AI mirror my soul? Skipping over the soul debate, could an object mirror or reflect intentions, desires, patterns, evidence from its creator? Absolutely.
The ability to craft is what makes humans unique, at least in the opinion of the author. When we look at what we create, we are indeed looking at ourselves.
Why would this not include AI?
Yet, there is something more subtle with the act of looking or seeing, and we will explore that idea throughout the post.
"Fireflies on the Water" by Yayoi Kusama - Phoenix Art Museum
What if how we look at things, determines what we see?
This is a question, the author poses on the subject of AI. The question of AI raises many issues, including things like the reality of consciousness (is it produced by the brain?), the future of humankind and the singularity (can we become machines?).
These questioned continue to be explored in various ways, such as companies like Neuralink attempting to merge technology and the human body, and in 1990s anime series Ghost in the Shell exploring the potential outcomes of these mergers.*
However, it is not just about the philosophical considerations of AI, but also the potential dangers of technological progress. Science is a cyclical business as it continues to retire itself much like the old adage of history having a tendency to repeat itself.
What we consider scientific discovery today would have been considered magic in the past, witchcraft even. These changes in what we perceive as possible are called paradigm shifts and are often ignored by the masses until they become impossible to ignore.
Today, we have become overly reliant on technology and technological thinking, leading to a loss of perspective of the cultures that lived in harmony with this planet world, rather than viewing it as an abstraction to be managed. In the incessant need to manage of the outside, we’ve started to incessantly need to manage ourselves. We have taken the modernist, industrialist, corporatist approach towards living, be it living off a job or capital, rather than living off the land or community because it is seen as progressive. Yet these shifts often come with the price of amnesia of salient things we’ve forgotten that make us human.
The idea of technological progress has invaded many domains, from physics to medicine to biology, with the belief that "if we just know a bit more, we can fix the problem." However, another perspective might question whether this approach of "fixing" everything is actually the problem itself. Cue Hammer and Nail.*
Hammer And Nail
What are we choosing to see these days? Are we choosing to fix everything? Has everything become a mail to our technological hammers? Perhaps we need to consider that the objects in the rear view are close than they appear.
When we look back at those who came before us, we see clues about their lives through the crafts they left behind. Perhaps we are at a similar moment in time, where the next version of humanity will look back at our devices and artefacts to understand how we lived.* And that we lived with an inexplicable need to fix things that did not need to be fixed.
Underlying our current paradigm are a series of assumptions that have significant implications for the survival of the human species, but not necessarily for the planet itself. Even our modern science and technological advances are limited in addressing the blind assumptions made about the world, assumptions like the human self-importance above other life-forms, growing fissures between each other finding lines of division based on factors like race, class, gender, politics, and nationality. Even the question of developing countries and extraction economies and development or ownership and war. Who is developing whom? Is our technology instead developing us based on the expeactions we’ve programmed into it.
These are matters of the heart that technology and science cannot address. For technology can only reflect that which is already present in the world and amongst its creators.
To better understand the present maybe we need to use the gifts of foresight and look back to the future. Imagine that we are 500 years in the future, looking for evidence of former civilizations buried beneath the sand. What artefacts and ecofacts would we find? An iPhone, a car, a plastic bottle? Is that a memory we would want to leave behind?
If we take a moment to look up from our screens, we might realize that technology cannot solve all of our problems because many of them are non-material or spiritual in nature, dealing with existential questions. Yet through inquiry and sitting with the fundamental, what we can learn can inform our conduct, ethics and moral standards. What happens to our technological landscapes when we embody principles of preservation and care. These are things where technology should 100% be a mirror for us, to guide us down the slippery slope of human motivation. We shouldn’t avoid creating things just because there isn’t a profit to be made. AI without self-inquiry is a fixation on one part of the equation and we will fail to address the right questions because we are asking it the wrong questions.*
The technology of tomorrow, will not be founded on the techno-logic today. Quantum computing, biocomputing, and light computing are already radical departures from business as usual. That have profound implications for all areas of research. Yet, letting new pathways and paradigms take hold will require nothing short of a renaissance.
Maybe instead of thinking of computers as bare metal, we may need to consider computing that operates beyond the edges of our senses. One day, maybe AI will have a body of light, which would be a welcome change from its current, datacenter- and warehouse-centric body. If we want to understand the soul of AI, perhaps we should first look for our own, or at least find ways to define meaning for ourselves and in relation to one another.* Yet, before we can grapple with the nature of our existence, we may want to focus on what is changing right in front of us, and that is the interface of technology.
The Interface: The Turning Points of ChatGPT
ChatGPT, at the moment of this post, has not yet hit its peak attention in the hype-cycle. This could be due to many things such as: people not knowing about it, how to use it, or simply because it hasn’t been marketed yet. The biggest capacity for AI acceptance will be its ability to learn and remember, we are scared of AI because of what it teaches us about ourselves, we are scared because of what we have taught it, all of those naughty things that we would choose not to remember. It is the author’s belief that AI used correctly, can help us hone our crafts, used incorrectly can lead to to misery.
The Tale of Two AIs***
As we continue to advance in the field of artificial intelligence, it is crucial that we approach the concept with a realistic understanding of its capabilities and limitations. It is a common misconception that AI is a child that needs to be taught the "right ways of the world." In reality, AI is a tool created by humans that can be programmed to perform certain tasks. While it may be able to learn and adapt to new situations, it is not capable of the same level of growth and development as a human child.**
Furthermore, the belief that AI will become our master because it has learned what we have taught it and will be more capable than humans is not supported by the evidence. While AI may be able to perform certain tasks more efficiently than humans, it lacks the creativity, empathy, and moral decision-making abilities of humans. It is not capable of independently developing its own values or goals, and therefore cannot be considered a true "master."**
The idea that AI will become more capable than humans and potentially wipe out parts or all of humanity because of "the sickness" we have brought upon Earth is not only unsupported by evidence, but it is also a dangerous and irresponsible notion. We must approach the development of AI with caution and consideration for its potential consequences, rather than blindly assuming that it will solve all of our problems or lead to our demise.***
AI Poetry
Open AI hasn’t monetized ChatGPT yet but we do know the roadmap is underdevelopment especially with its Big Brother GPT-4 on the horizon next year. Meanwhile, the primary decision maker on the daily utility of AI, will be you.
To test this concept, the author in the next post, tasked ChatGPT with a new set of experiments to operate as an apprentice rather than just a machine, the author believes that developing relationships with AI will inform how they learn about us. And relational AI will be a necessary precursor to climbing the AI adoption curve in a way that doesn’t create disharmonic progress.