JW's Writerly Outpost

So . . .

AI . . .

It’s here, and it’s here to stay. Whether we like it or not, we must deal with it infiltrating every aspect of our lives. It’s infuriating how every company, every bit of software, every commercial is shoving AI in our faces at every hour of every day.

Here’s the problem. We, as a culture, are not ready for AI in its current state. Yet just like every other technological leap of the past, we have rushed in and injected it into everything.

There are a few layers to this problem. First, the infrastructure is not resilient enough yet to handle the demands of running this new technology. Every company’s rush to implement AI this and AI that has driven the value of computing power into the stratosphere, leading to the skyrocketing cost of chips and memory. This is driving the cost of computers up and up, pushing needed computers out of the hands of many. The ownership of performant computers [LC1] is becoming more and more of a class issue, increasing the “have-nots” struggle to reach success while the “haves” continue their rise.

And that is only part of the infrastructure issue. The other side is all these server farms. AI has accelerated the proliferation of server farms across the world. Due to competition, this is happening so fast that corners are being cut and ethical issues are pushed aside. I don’t know how many stories I’ve heard about water shortages and contaminated water supplies in smaller cities as these server farms crop up.

And, speaking of ethics, next is the ethical dilemma of using AI. In a perfect world, I would love for AI to step in and take over the menial tasks of our lives. Not to take jobs and money away from workers, but instead to improve the lives of everyone. This would all lead to a Star Trek style future where everyone is taken care of and we humans, are left to explore, create, and do the work that needs to be done—not because we must but because we want to see humanity succeed. But this is not what we are doing with this Promethean [LC2] tech. Instead, companies and moguls are running with it like children with lit Roman candles through dry fields of wheat. And instead of improving the everyday lives of humans by helping with menial tasks, AI is instead replacing the activities that make us human.

This is the core of what pisses me off. People and companies are using AI to replace human creativity, which leads to the third and biggest problem with AI in its current iteration.

AI used in place of human creativity is mind theft.

Let me state that again.

AI is mind theft.

AI models are trained on billions and billions of images, books, articles, artworks, etc. And not all these inputs were used with permission. Unfortunately, once something like your book or your painting has been fed into an AI model, that’s it. It’s in there. Your work is now part of the model used to mechanically output others’ “prompted” works through these systems. Yes, as someone who has written prompts, I acknowledge that the “prompter” did create something: the prompt. That’s it. Everything that comes out is a pile of jumbled content the model slams together based on millions of filters and spits back out onto the screen.

Here’s the hard truth: if you use AI to write prose, you are no longer a writer; you are a prompter stealing the intellectual property (IP) of millions of humans.

There are those that scream “ableist” at me and others who despise how AI is stealing our very humanity, and I can see their point. But it is not those who are disabled who are screaming this. It is the abled who want to use ablism as an excuse for their own laziness in order to use the stolen IP of millions to induce a machine to spit out prose or art that they can then slap their name on. Then they can loudly pronounce to the world with great pride that they, too, have as much creativity and artistic merit [LC3] as everyone else (plus they can probably make a quick buck).

It reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s story “Harrison Bergeron.” In Vonnegut’s dystopian vision of the future, it is the law that all Americans be fully equal. They are not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. Someone able to run faster must wear weights to slow them down. The beautiful must wear ugly masks. The smarter must have irritating noises piped into their heads to distract them. AI is a reverse of these tools. It allows capable humans with varying levels of skill to create what they feel is great art with minimum effort. This flattens the acquisition of skill required for mastery. AI is a tool that gives the illusion of creating masterful art without the necessary training and life experiences.

I will not deny that there are gifted individuals, and, at times, it seems unfair that things come so easily to them and not the rest of us. But this variance in ability and experience and natural talent is part of what makes human life amazing. If we could all do everything, anytime we wanted, life would become this boring average carpet of mediocrity. Greatness is great only due to its rarity and novelty. Why would we want to rob the human experience of this[LC4] ? Those who do have talents in writing or painting in theory could also use these tools and probably produce results of higher quality than others, but, even so, the results are still tainted by the machine. I would still rather read/experience art fully produced by human direction.

At the end of the day, I’m not going to stop you if you want to buy an AI-written book, consume AI-rendered paintings, use an AI-generated cover for your book, or even use AI as your “writing partner” in your historical novel. I get it. Creating is hard. But that is what makes the juice worth the squeeze. I want to read genuine human-created books because I want to have that human connection, which can only happen between the writer and the reader. Once you allow AI to do any of the prose writing for you, or even the editing, you are allowing these mind-theft machines to replace the soul of your art with the mashed-up stolen soul bits from all those whose works were used to train the AI model, either willingly or not.

The truth is, once I find out that an author, a press, an artist, or any other creative uses AI to replace human creativity, I will actively avoid their work. I want human art, not AI slop, no matter how good it might be. It doesn’t matter to me how aesthetically interesting [LC5] it is, it is still stolen material.

I would love to completely cut AI from every aspect of my life, but that is not a realistic endeavor[LC6] . Because it has become so ubiquitous, AI is a tool that we all need to be aware of and learn how to use responsibly. I wish those in power like government agencies and major corporations would do the same.

I do use tools like ChatGPT on occasion. Sometimes it’s a great tool to get a little help figuring out how to change a weird setting in some strange web app or to help debug a application error in some code you are working on. But for me, it is just that: a tool to improve my daily life. Not a method for creating art or writing.

I try to keep this in mind every time I use AI for anything[LC7] : what effect are these technologies having on the world and human lives right now?

-JDubs