One of my problems with AI is how organisations are using it to avoid blame. This is an extension of how they’ve been using their systems for a while. It is HARD to find a person who’ll take responsibility for a problem. From blame to solving the problem, the organisational system is designed to shrug it off. AI is now the perfect excuse.
But in my focus on systems I’ve overlooked the individual experience of AI.
As a novelist I’m constantly analysing characters’ motivations. I forget that for a lot of people understanding and working on themselves is terrifying. And what’s the best thing to do when you’re scared? Run away! (I’m kidding).
But AI really is a tool for escaping the self.
Instead of writing a heartfelt best man’s speech, or a sympathy card, or finding the right words (from a place of love and respect) to end a relationship, people are avoiding confronting themselves, their situation, and their emotions. and simply prompting AI for a response.
We are obscuring ourselves from our own gaze by using AI.
Because I tend to frame my world verbally, I’ve used examples from verbal communication. But visual artists are furious at AI partly because they learn themselves and their world through visual art. Same with musicians. Our stories emerge from confronting our selves.
If we mask with AI we will be individually, as well as socially, poorer.
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2 responses to “The AI Mask”
this is an insight that i overlooked. and will now drive some of my engagement not only with the tools but with my friends who use them.
refine the presentation versus write the presentation / sentiment.
it is an interesting aspect of something that one could work on in therapy. (I have someone help me work on myself.)
for writing, this is a clear distinction for me because so much of what i value in the written form is the nuance of presentation. I suspect – but doubt it has been tested – that the second book generated by AI for a series would not have the same “feel”.
the visual artist aspect is an interesting one given that good AI art is based on the prompts given. that means the creator has to have a vision of what they want and a set of skills to create it. there has always been a debate as to how much the vision versus the skill versus the medium makes art. I believe this underlies the distinction we see in “crafts” versus art. One of my examples is work in malleable medium (for example pottery) versus hard materials (sculpture).
And now you’ve given me something new to think on! I hadn’t considered that old debate over vision versus the skill to realise it.
I keep circling back to how little we know/value our less consciously deliberative self. I started thinking about it when David Krakauer mentioned it, and I wonder how much we’re going to suffocate that unknowable self (my previous post) as AI’s lack of it becomes part of our society’s framework for acting.