A Rant on AI

Let’s start this rant like cooking blogs write. A story that’s somehow maybe related to to the recipe that you’re gonna have to scroll far and wide for. I know the attention span of everyone is rapidly declining (me included). I don’t expect you to read this stream of consciousness writing, so I’ll give you some subheadings. Read the whole thing or pick and choose, I don’t mind.

My earliest internet memories

Anyway, year is.. I don’t know. Our family was semi late to the PC bandwagon. My first memories of using a computer were searching for information online for a school project. And I mean the school project was to find “Internet” information. And then compare it to “book” information. Browsing the net cost a small fortune (at least according to my mom), so you had to have a plan ready for when you could go online and make every second count. Make sure no-one was expecting a call on our landline phone!

Fast forward, no more dial-up internet access. It’s the time for MSN Messenger, Myspace and chatting in different forums with like minded people. It didn’t matter if you were from a small town without like minded people. Go online, make online friends. I never was a socially adept kid, and would rather be alone than not be myself. Whatever social skills I now possess have come through other people, learning and… adulting. But over the internet, it was so easy to interact with others. It was a place of creativity and friendship. We’d post stories with my friends to a shared blog space that I’ve now forgotten.

(and a gentle reminder to the younger folk glamorizing this time – there were mean people, predators, scammers and ads back then. But they were a lot easier to avoid with some common sense and basic internet safety than it is today.)

I guess this is where we bring in the AI

When I was in uni I took a course on AI. With “AI” I mean more or less the LLM:s of today.

(As a side note: I’m a person who has learned to look at things from a positive perspective.)

So, when the essay of the use and ethics of AI was on my table Google Docs, I thought AI was a good thing – it will save people time, give more opportinities to those less privileged, basic income for all yadda yadda yadda. At this time, the images and text I generated for coursework… Not good. Horrible actually. Not just the extra fingers! I didn’t even take the AI thing seriously. But look how fast everything’s evolving. Now it can be hard to tell what’s AI and what isn’t. Looking back, only thing that comes to mind is something like this:

This is where we get really angry about AI – or people

In that uni essay, I completely forgot… about people. About capitalism. About people who put money, their ego and themselves over others. Companies trying their best to replace people with AI. We all have our own visions for what good AI use is. Sam and Zuck having a pissing contest about whose unnecessary, resource-wasting AI video platform comes out first does not belong in mine. Is this is what we do with this technology? Is it because… it’s actually not that good in other things?

Why AI makes me… sad.

I’m prone to melancholy and quiet desperation. That kind of loneliness that persists even with loved ones laughing around you. It doesn’t feel quite like depression. More like a yearning for something that doesn’t exist. It’s quite hard to pinpoint what it is. What helps me connect to others is simple – culture. Books, music, art, architecture. Stories and beauty, perfect in their flaws. The unique potential of human creativity.

What are the creations made with AI? Stolen stories, stolen beauty. Broken into the tiniest pieces, reconstructed in an order that a person sees fit. The beauty of creation, leaving a story of yourself with it – lost.

(You can argue how it’s creativity as any else, coming up with an idea and prompting – it still doesn’t change the fact that that work is based on theft)

You can also argue that I’m being ableist. My counterargument is… do you actually think people with disabilities haven’t created art before AI?

AI also makes me worried about the future

One word: Propaganda. In a world where everyone and everything is competing for your attention, it’s hard to figure out what is “real”. AI is NOT helping, and I’m concerned about it’s effects on politics and societies.

But I also have faith in humanity… every now and then.

People are capable of such amazing things. Maybe that’s the real reason I’m so pissed about AI. We’re all getting lazier (which is understandable since our brain want’s us to conserve energy). And we’re switching creating for the fun of it for creating for profits (also understandable in this economy, but sad). Maybe I’m not mad at AI as much as I am tired at this point of late stage capitalism. Go figure.

Anyway. I see people fighting brain rot with personal curriculums. Doing no buy years. Switching to old school dumb-phones. Protesting governments for right causes. Learning to draw by hand. Calling out AI slop. All of these things have in common one thing: focusing on things they find valuable and taking action for what they believe in.

Before you cancel me…

… know that I wasn’t popular to begin with.

I used AI in this post, just for curiosity. I will not actively use AI in this blog anymore. By that I mean things I have control over, for example my content.

Hell, I didn’t even put this text through Grammarly. So, if this feels horrible to read – you’re welcome. One very real very old school blog post. Even completely out of my blog topics. But since this is my blog I’ll post what I want. You have the choice to read it or not.

If you want to fight me in the comments, feel free to do so 🙂