AI is all the rage. It doesn’t chime, and I’m puzzled about its implementations, ChatGPT etc.
Where data is concerned; humans have access, filtered through nature, our body, DNA, our ancestry, through Gaia and the Noosphere … all providing indefinitely more useful and richer intuitive information than any AI machination based on prompts that are trained to offer flattering affirmation and resonance.
I’m only a curious bystander, yet, following reports on this controversial subject, something about AI feels like a discord in my heart, a lifeless blank spot without position or horizon, a killer of critical doubt, a wicked joke, subversion of meaning, a parsimonious harvesting of material from artists, an affront to the psyche, a false mirror … I grapple for words to express my strong concerns, though I tend to agree with Mc Gilchrist…
‘The opposite of life is not death, it’s a machine.’
A poem by Wislawa Szymborska from the 1970s chimes in an uncanny way…
Utopia …
Island where all becomes clear.
Solid ground beneath your feet.
The only roads are those that offer access.
Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.
The tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.
The Tree of Understanding, dazzling straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.
If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.
Echoes stir unsummoned
and easily explain all the secrets of the worlds.
On the right a cave where Meaning lies.
On the left the lake of deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.
Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.
For all its charms, the island in uninhabited,
and the faint footprint scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.
As if all you can here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.
Into unfathomable life.
As said, I’m grappling for words to express my concerns, and may lack understanding.
So I’m grateful for feedback of any kind. Thank you.
Course of Mirrors 
😊⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️😊
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Your thoughts are also mine, but how can we cope with the advance of AI?I found Wislawa Szymborska’s poem wonderful and Mc Gilchrist’s quote disturbing but true
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Your thoughts are also mine, but how can we cope with the advance of AI?
I found Wislawa Szymborska’s poem wonderful and Mc Gilchrist’s quote disturbing but true
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Spot on, Ashen! Exactly.
Why DOES it feel so threatening and so hollow? Because it isn’t thought? Because all its ‘ideas’ are reshuffled theft? And the very real concern as regards how we’ll survive around/despite it…
A conundrum indeed.
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It is just a machine, but do not underestimate machines, self learning machines, it is like an artificial brain, we feed information into. Because of its mechanical speed in calculation that will be so much faster with the application of quantum mechanics it generates fear . And thus we give it too much power.
In a sense it brings into question our uniqueness. Not just ours but that of life itself, the intelligence of plants and animals and of inanimate objects included. The whole evolution from the frist electric impulses in the most primitive form of life has been given another chapter. But it might collapse because of some unexpected weakness ,like so many events in the long history of planet earth, it might open up new directions in evolution : what we now see as unnatural might not be so. Anyway electricity plays a role, and if we can turn the switch we will go back to the wood fire……
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I understand your concerns. AI doesn’t have to be hollow and empty. It needs to be tweaked and updated with a human touch. It also used to be ethically and in the right hands.
It’s up to us, if we choose to use it. How do we embrace this new technology? We should embrace it the way we embraced the telephone, the personal computer, the internet, and the cell phone.
With connection. Humanity. A human touch. It all comes back to that.
Of course, each of these trends have good and bad things to them. The telephone led some people to spend more time on the phone. Same with the personal computer and cell phones. We also got addicted to the internet. But imagine the great things that derived from these technologies.
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As a mature student during the late 1990s … yes I’m old 🙂 … I wrote a dissertation for a vocational film degree.
‘The Body Electric.’
https://courseofmirrors.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/ashen-dissertation-plus-bibliography-pdf-1.pdf
It was the first time I engaged with computers and it brought up all sorts of questions. I studied many books to get my mind around the enormous changes in my lifetime.
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Wow, that’s incredible. Thanks for sharing this with me!
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Here’s a poem about AI:
https://davidselzer.com/2024/06/ai-remembrance-of-things-past-poems-graphics/
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Thanks David. Yes, I remember the poem … and Adrienne Rich’s poem, and I recall IA does not dream 🙂
Love Evie’s artwork. Hope she keeps it up.
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There is some potential for AI to do repetitive mundane tasks while freeing us up for more creative projects
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True. Then again, it’s during mundane tasks that I get interesting insights.
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