alex is writing (or supposed to be!)

Aside from the obvious ways that OpenAI, ChatGPT and other LLMs have stolen from artists and creatives, I wonder… in what ways (and to what extent) have they stolen from you personally?

I’m writing an essay on the subject and curious to hear people’s thoughts and reactions to the question.

What is giving you hope this week? ✨

What is giving you hope this week? ✨

quiero vivir en esta ficción

After 2039 years, Plato has finally returned 🔥🔥🔥🔥

A+

My mind is blown right now.

Let’s talk about AI, LLMs, and Big Tech 🧵

Let’s talk about AI, LLMs, and Big Tech 🧵

For example: When you use Google Maps, it doesn’t make you a better navigator.

In fact, it erodes navigational skill to the point of complete reliance on big tech for long distance movement of any kind.

The cycle with tech often is:

1) outsource and flatten a fundamental aspect of the human experience

2) fill the void (where human knowledge once flourished) with dependence on tech

3) if you can’t charge for the thing directly, mine and sell its data

4) profit and scalability at all costs

While being a good navigator, in this example, is a bit of an abstract and archaic concept, I am thinking about losses of that ilk.

Skills, abilities, and accumulations of human knowledge and experience that are taken from us, leaving us more helpless and reliant on big tech.

What do we lose when we outsource our conflicts in our partnerships, family relationships, and/or friendships to ChatGPT?

What happens when we lean on this profit-driven machine as friend, mediator, validator, therapist?

What hard won skills of conflict resolution are forfeited?

How do we miss the chance to grow closer and develop deeper trust with another being, as a result of moving through shared conflict?

What about creativity? What do we lose? I’m anchoring my thinking here in the way we lose the ability to sit with and move through discomfort. The idea that much of what makes life valuable is through not only enduring, but moving through discomfort with self-compassion.

If the moment something gets hard, we outsource the challenge of experiential learning to a machine, when and how do we expect to attain fluency with that skill?

There is also the question of boundaries. There are some aspects of our modern era that make full self-reliance unavailable or unrealistic.

The contrarian might say, for example: “Oh you’re against AI, but you’ll still use a computer?! You won’t set the type letter by letter? You won’t paint the ink across the press, you won’t physically write the manuscript out line by line?! Where does your tech aversion end?”

Everything can be taken to its most extreme distillation, and each of us have boundaries with the artistic process.

I think of painting, for example. I am willing to buy the paints and the canvas from a company that manufactures paints and blank canvases, but I am not willing to let the company paint the picture for me.

This is more so an excercise in public conversation and story sharing. I am hoping to spark and widen my own thinking and to also spark deeper reflection on this topic.

I already have a host of ideas for the piece, but I’m curious to hear your experiences. I won’t use any of your replies in the piece, unless I specifically reach out to you and confirm your consent to being included.

I’m not necessarily interested in making the raw tools of creation from scratch, which is an art form all its own, but I am interested in preserving the humanity of how one uses those tools.

I think of painting, for example. I am willing to buy the paints and the canvas from a company that manufactures paints and blank canvases, but I am not willing to let the company paint the picture for me.

Everything can be taken to its most extreme distillation, and each of us have boundaries with the artistic process.

The contrarian might say, for example: “Oh you’re against AI, but you’ll still use a computer?! You won’t set the type letter by letter? You won’t paint the ink across the press, you won’t physically write the manuscript out line by line?! Where does your tech aversion end?”

There is also the question of boundaries. There are some aspects of our modern era that make full self-reliance unavailable or unrealistic.

If the moment something gets hard, we outsource the challenge of experiential learning to a machine, when and how do we expect to attain fluency with that skill?

What about creativity? What do we lose? I’m anchoring my thinking here in the way we lose the ability to sit with and move through discomfort. The idea that much of what makes life valuable is through not only enduring, but moving through discomfort with self-compassion.