The AI Ignoramus

I might be setting myself up for a huge fall. It’s likely that I am. Like the guys who rejected computers, the internet, or Photoshop.

I’ve used ChatGPT about nine times. Each instance was considered and immensely helpful towards big mental and career challenges in my life. Not once have I generated a jokey image or a recipe suggestion.

The primary reason for my blanket and potentially catastrophic rejection of AI in my life and creative practice is ideological, specifically born of the environmental cost.

I’ve had to work through a lot of despair, anger and sadness that this powerful, resource hungry tech was released to everyone without a broader consultation. Not to mention the ready acceptance of it by many intelligent people.

I’ve interviewed scientists about breakthroughs in machine learning. This tier of the tech excites me. I’m not against AI. Positive News magazine ran a wonderful feature on uses including drones to help indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest track illegal logging in realtime. This is magnificent. Astounding progress. What’s not progress is someone editing their head because a rogue spotlight hit the glaring truth of a receding hairline, or kids being depicted naked by their antagonists for bullying purposes.

There were many discussions that morality suggested we should have had before this stuff was released. But greed, ego and vested interests ensured we didn’t.

As a father of two, I’ve found myself unable to ‘see what whichever large language model spits out’. Knowing of the intense strain on water resources stops that, and any other arbitrary, or even better use of the tech. Now the concern becomes about how far adrift I’ll be in a society that didn’t share my ideological standpoint and pressed on without me. A man with a fork in a world of soup, to quote Noel Gallagher’s assessment of Liam’s temperament.

A man with an ink pen, paper, and hand written client letters in a world of instant genius might seem laughable, but I’m sticking to my guns here. It might be that I’m obsolete in several years’ time, but I also believe its possible that the whole thing spirals out of control, the internet becomes the domain of the machines where we no longer know what’s real, and we all have to go analogue in little The Matrix style hideaways. If so, then I’m a visionary because I never left.

On a basic mental health level, I don’t want to be on screens any more than I have to, so I’ll take notes and take longer.

For now, I’ll get on drawing and monitor the water use situation.