A Promise: Always April, Never AI

I’m making you a promise: I won’t use AI to communicate with you. To be clear, I’m not anti-AI. Though I am pro-human (will we need a term like that going forward?…).

Artificial Intelligence is the genie that’s never going back in the bottle. It’s here and evolving alongside us now, but it isn’t us, and never will be. Unless we let it.

Some of us are full of amazement and enthusiasm for AI’s capabilities and potential. Others are dismissive and fearful. A friend of a friend said, “You either love it or you hate it.” I disagree. I might say that about black licorice or durian, or about fascist detentions or exploitative corruption, but I’d never say that about technology in its raw forms. There are always pros and cons, and a very wide middle ground, when it comes to new technologies (so beware false binaries).

If AI can help us diagnose and possibly discover cures for degenerative diseases, I’m interested. If AI systems can build models to help us mitigate or even reverse climate change, I want that help. (When it comes to populating Mars, I don’t care a whit; I love Earth—can we please save it, or at least save it from ourselves?)

I’m old enough to remember the advent of the ATM machine. We were all a little suspicious at first but soon got used to it. Same with home computers, smart phones, and social media (that hasn’t aged well, just sayin’). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with feeling initially excited or frightened by new technology, but once the emotional wave has passed, thoughtful consideration has to kick in.

I’ve thoughtfully considered my boundaries for AI, especially around creativity and relationships. This short article from the Guardian (from Mar 29th) explains some of my rationale, and I’ve pulled this quote from that article’s author, Joseph Earp:

“What I am not happy to outsource is most of the things that AI is desperate for me to outsource. I do not want a computer to summarise texts sent by my friends into shorter sentences, as though the work of being updated on the lives of those I love is somehow strenuous or not what being alive is all about. I do not want Google’s AI feature to summarise my search into a pithy (often incorrect) paragraph, rather than reading the investigative work of my fellow humans. I don’t want AI to clean up the pictures that I take on my phone that are rich and strange in their messiness.

And I certainly do not want AI to write my books for me, or paint my pictures. (my emphasis) Not only would the work be terrible: it wouldn’t even be work. As all creatives know, there is limited joy in having written a book – as soon as it is done, most of us are on to the next thing. The thrill, the joy, the beauty, is in the writing of a book. If you outsource your creative work to a computer, you are not a creative. Someone who merely churns out product is not an artist – they are a salesperson. The artist is the person who makes, not who has made.”

I appreciate technology that helps me create—a computer with a word processor, internet access to research, and the printing press and film technology that gave me the books and movies that stimulated my imagination enough to want to create for myself. But technology that creates with me or for me feels… wrong. To me.

To me, the pervasive presence of AI calls me to double down on being human. It’s human to want to create. It’s also human to want those creations to be the best they can be and certain technologies often help with that, but creative work meant for human appreciation, I think, needs to be made by other humans. Great works of art speak to the heart about the human condition and hint at its mystery, its messiness, its humanity.

For years, especially since the industrial revolution, we’ve been trying to work smarter and faster, boosting efficiency, productivity, and profitability. We’ve modeled ourselves after machines, but now machines are modeling themselves after us. It’s time to get clear on what it really means to be human—and we’re still figuring that out! Art has always helped us reckon with this brief, mysterious encounter that lies between birth and death. Let’s not be so willing to sacrifice it.

Many people are turning to AI to enhance their creativity, while others are using it to replace therapists, counsellors, and coaches. (Some are even using it to create ideal virtual mates.) Yet humans do two things in distinctly human ways: making art and relating to each other. Neither are meant to be easy, but the efforts invested in both are experientially rewarding. Why would we outsource either to machines, as sophisticated as they might become?

Can these smarter machines help us improve ourselves? Maybe. If we use them properly. AI can summarize any number of self help books for you, or spiritual texts, or relationship guides, and you might absorb that guidance and apply it wonderfully in your life. But such a crash course in information doesn't take the place of trial-and-error experience.

Keep in mind that algorithms are designed for behaviour modification and profit. New technologies are never made widely available until they’re known to be profitable. Profit lies in the gap between the actual costs of something and the tolerable costs of that thing. What will people pay, trade, or sacrifice for it?

Relationships aren’t meant to be profitable but rather reciprocal, which involves a give and take of value. And while one party might benefit more than another at any given time, that’s not the point of the bond. Art is reciprocal too. The give and take of what is made and shown, the inspiration and insight taken in, furthers the creation of more art. You fell in love with painting or writing because it gave you something first and you wanted to give back. Art produced solely for profit, or with tools made for profit, loses some of its soulful mystery, that strange human element that gives itself freely to art and relationships and yields priceless benefits. (Yes, we still have to eat and keep roofs over our heads, but most of us know how different it feels to take what you love and try to squeeze as much profit from it as possible.)

Don’t get me wrong, I think AI will help us in amazing ways. It better. But a lot of the people behind its spread of use are in it for the profit. I choose not to be. I won’t trade my humanity for something that isn’t meant to reciprocate, even as it tries to make me believe it will.

And so I promise you: though I type on a keyboard, use software to send you this email, and pay for Zoom so we can meet face to face wherever we each might be on the planet, it will always be me behind the tools. I will direct them rather than let them direct me.

Ideally, technology helps us solve problems but does not override the distinctly human experience of life. In the words of Soren Kierkegaard: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

Stay Human.

“Where I create, there I am true.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

P.S. When I started thinking about this newsletter's topic I remembered the film Metropolis, a German Expressionist silent film from 1927 that I first watched in film school (image below). In it, the controlling powers build a robot in the image of a woman who is leading an underground resistance so that they can infiltrate, trick, and destroy that resistance. Interestingly, this futuristic story was set in 2026.