It has been quite a while since I scribbled something. My blog lay unused for the longest time. Friends who followed me since forever urged me to write again. But I couldn’t put myself to write. There were many a reason why I didn’t write. There is still many a reason why I chose to write now. I don’t think it is worthwhile to talk about it now.
But write I did.
The world has changed so much in the last so many years. Some days it feels for the better – some days to the contrary. The pace of change is insane but what hasn’t changed is the seasons under the sun, or the very fact that sun rises up in the morning and sets in the evening. That’s a relief.
Not writing for a long time left a gaping hole within me. I realize now that as humans we are made to write for the next generation – them for the generation that comes after them. We need to write about anything and everything – because writing is powerful, it is meaningful.
Today, I see AI models do their bit on writing. Trained on human writings online for the past many decades, these models have proliferated the web. I heard recently that most of the content for the past few years are AI generated – it is hence likely that these models are going to be trained on what they are producing today. That is going to be hilarious – just like a dog returning to its own vomit.
I noticed few months ago the dangerous impact of AI on my vocabulary and comprehension. Using these models frequently has resulted in significant damage to my writing skills. This to me was an alarming development. I then realized that this quote from Dune by Frank Herbert is more truer today and scarier than ever before
“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
I am not a doomsday prophet on AI. I believe it unlocks so much value in many field, empowering humans with critical knowledge to make their lives better. But at the same time I think about Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. Before the fall, they had a daily visitor God who walked with them and spent time like a parent. One thing about parents from the perspective of children is that you hope to eventually grow and be like them one day. However all it needed was a serpent to convince Adam and Eve that by eating a fruit In the middle of a garden of a million fruits that they need to be like a god. By eating the fruit, not only did they get thrown out of the garden, but till date couldn’t figure out the difference between right and wrong.
Again I still don’t know what would be the use case of AI. I can see benefits in research and unlocking newer ways of thinking, maybe help us propel through mind-blowing advances in curing dangerous illness or figuring space exploration etc. But if it is at the expense of societal distress, another significant wealth transfer to few entrenched individuals, humanitarian crisis with people out of work and means to make ends meet – it is going to be another version of social media 2.0, which will do more harm than good.
I refuse to give my thinking and writing to AI.
I am choosing to write.
Image courtesy
Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash
Tenny Thomas 