Above is a representation of Hector, one that, since he doesn’t have any real intelligence of his own, was generated by AI. Superficially. I suppose, it is, a striking image – one that could even be considered impressive. But irrespective of how clever the technology is, it’s one that, for me at least, lacks heart.
The photo I sacrificed to ChatGPT in order for it to be produced was the one that I posted yesterday, alongside the so called poem I wrote for Hector’s birthday. After which, curious to see what it would come up with, I asked the same AI Chatbot if it could improve my own attempt at comic verse. Which, the bar not being particularly high, of course it did – seemingly with consummate ease, judging by the second or two it took to complete the task.
But even as it did so, it made me a little sad – not because I’d been shown up by a soulless computer programme, but rather because, written without affection, the ‘improved’ version was reduced to nothing more than a clever use of words – and an artificially clever use of words at that.
And therein lies the problem with AI – it is, as its name suggests, counterfeit and fake. And whilst AI may indeed be able to process data at incredible speeds, just as there are more to facts than raw data, and more to knowledge than simple facts, so too is there more to intelligence than a lot of knowledge, and more to wisdom than great intelligence.
Which is why, if we start to rely too heavily on AI, it’s not just the ensuing pseudo wisdom that we should be concerned about. More than that we should be concerned about what artificial intelligence will do to us.
Because, whilst the words offered up by AI will undoubtedly resonate with some who read them, since they don’t mean a thing to the piece of software that strung them together, those words cannot be anything other than meaningless.
And who wants to be moved by a misleading machine? Or a computer who couldn’t care less?
In recent years technology has created an increasingly contactless world – one in which a more remote existence is the experience of many. So then I wonder., having encouraged us to distance ourselves from those we live alongside, are we seeing technology now urging us to distance ourselves from our own thoughts and, in so doing, rendering us unable to either express or feel any real emotion at all.
I hope not, because that’s not what life is all about. I’m no more in need of a perfect Hector than I am a perfect poetic ability. Or, indeed, a perfect you.
On the contrary, the ability to deal with both our own, and each other’s, ‘necessary fallibility’, is part of what it is to be human.
And if as I do, we do want to be changed for the better, shouldn’t we want that to be by an encounter with something, or someone, who is real? Which is why, no more wishing to faultlessly fool my fellows, than I desire to be meticulously misled myself, this will not just be the first post of mine that AI has had a hand in – because it will also be the last.
Related posts:
To read ‘Machines – enough to drive you berserk’, click here.
To read ‘Contactless’ click here
To read ‘On not remotely caring’, click here
To read ‘Eleanor Rigby is not at all fine’, click here
To read ‘Life in the slow lane’, click here
To read ‘A Sorrow Shared’, click here
To read ‘Professor Ian Aird – a time to die?’, click here
To read ‘When Rain Stops Play’, click here
To read ‘Now we are two’, click here
Some musings 