My Very Real Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence

AI

Artificial Intelligence.

Oxymoron.

Let’s start with Artificial. Merriam-Webster has quite the laundry list of synonyms for this word: “affected, assumed, bogus, contrived, factitious, fake, false, feigned, forced, mechanical, mock, phony, plastic, pretended, pseudo, put-on, sham, simulated, spurious (my favorite), strained, unnatural.” 

Blech. And again I say, blech. I loathe this word and all it represents, which is QUITE A LOT these days. I could get existential in a hurry, but I’ll save that for later. Since when was anything artificial actually a good thing? (Never, according to Webster… except for the occasional artificial limb.)  Artificial flavoring, coloring, sweetener. Can you say “carcinogenic?” Does one aspire to be artificial? Is that what is coveted in an online dating situation? A resumé? Jewels? The news? Bring me all of the fake news, please? The more artificial, the better! I guess we can dress it up and make it French. Faux fur, faux leather, faux flowers, faux news. Resoundingly blech. 

If you read my recent debut post entitled, “Lactose Intolerant,” you know that I am recovering from creative burnout as a graphic designer/illustrator/product designer. I am approaching my golden years though currently I am feeling more rusty than golden. On this year-long quest for rest and self-discovery as well as the path forward, I am realizing that much of my burnout is the result of pretzelizing (I just coined that) myself to meet expectations everyone else had for me… whether it was society, religion, politics, the corporate world, or even friendships. I have learned that there is a very high price to pay for sacrificing authenticity for acceptance, approval, love, a paycheck, a career! The cost? One’s health, integrity, and very identity!

Authenticity over Artificiality every day all day! Let’s be REAL! (The literal opposite of artificial.) I am approaching Velveteen Rabbit level of Real these days, or at least it feels like it, sometimes. But even in that beautiful story, being real was a beloved status.

I’ve been on the path to authenticity for a long time, but I think it was the “healthcare” system that catapulted me toward the natural, along with my faith in God and the persistent and consistent affirmation that I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” in His very image. (Psalm 139:14) I’ve always been a “health-nut,” eating granola and wheat germ back when they were badges/monikers of hippiedom. Now I make my own granola, sourdough bread, salad dressings, and pretty much most things that I used to buy pre-made and packaged. Decades ago, I started following holistic health practitioners, reading books, watching podcasts. I wrote letters to my local council members about the fluoride in our tap water (got nowhere fast), and thus have bought or filtered my own water for many years now. This resulted from a deep dive into hypothyroidism, which hit me hard when I turned 40. Long story short (not really, hehe), I have become a passionate purist about sticking close to God’s plan for eating, living, and healing. My litmus test for most everything is how it stacks up to His design. When I stray from that, bad things happen. I do not color my hair or polish my nails, very little makeup, no glyphosate in the garden, recently made my own eco-friendly laundry soap and even deodorant. Both work nicely, by the way, costing me pennies on the dollar to go against the Tide! 

I am an introvert, also, and small talk or anything fake is like (unpainted) nails on a chalkboard! I’m trying to paint a picture here of why just the concept of Artificial Intelligence sends up red flags and triggers me on a very core and subconscious level. This covers the spurious portion, I mean, Artificial. Now let’s talk Intelligence.

I’m not sure when the idea of ai started bothering me enough to really (not artificially… see what I did there?) take a closer look. Like nearly everything in this simulated reality show we call life, the term ai has been infiltrating, insidiously penetrating, cascading down on us like the barium, aluminum, and other toxic glitter in chem trails until we are all in lockstep approval, or at least acceptance of it without even devoting much conscious thought (intelligence) to it. No one asked our opinion or permission, nor did we vote on it. It just happened all around us and to us.

Intelligence. Merriam Webster defines it as: “the skilled use of reason, the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (such as tests); mental acuteness/shrewdness; and the basic eternal quality of divine Mind.” Did you catch that last part? I know that Intelligent Design is a controversial concept, though I can’t fathom why. Our Creator’s fingerprints are all over everything in this universe. Speaking of fingerprints. Have you ever noticed how the rings of a tree look remarkably like our fingerprints? Or how about these images showing various foods and the bodily organ they nourish or help to heal.

But what seals the deal is even a cursory look at DNA, which has been nicknamed The God Code. Scientists calculated that to type out one’s DNA sequence 8 hours a day would take at least 50 years. It is infinitely complex and mind blowing. We are divinely designed with a divine intelligence. 

Now I will admit, I do not know that much about ai. This is not an in-depth treatise on the yays or nays of it. I will preface my following opinion with the admission that there are good and even remarkable things being done in this field. What Is Artificial Intelligence by Alyssa Schroer at builtin.com/artificial-intelligence provides a nice overview. In this article, she outlines benefits as well as challenges and limitations of ai. She also gives statistics of a Pew Research Center survey of 10,260 Americans in 2021 finding that 45% are equally excited and concerned, and 37% are more concerned than excited. I am in that latter group. 

It is not just that I’ve had bad experiences with it, and there are those. While in Tuscany, my daughter and son-in-law and I were trying to find a winery in the mountains. Googlemaps misdirected us up a very steep narrow, one lane gravel path with a sure-death drop off. We met another truck barreling down toward us, whose driver thankfully led us back down the mountain and to the winery. This was after I had a slight nervous breakdown, complete with tears. Wine has never tasted quite as good since. And then there was the time I used google translate for a product label for a step stool. By the grace of God, a co-worker fluent in Spanish caught the faux pas before printing! What should have been “goes from chair to stool in seconds” translated to “goes from chair to sh@! (poop translation of stool) in seconds.” Not the marketing message we wanted to put forth. Don’t get me started on self driving cars…

Yes, there are limitations galore when we endeavor to allow machines to do human thinking. But it is the moral and ethical aspect that has me cringing. Let’s go back to the oxymoron, Artificial Intelligence and substitute synonyms. Playing (Artificial) God (Intelligence). Isn’t that what we are trying to do here? This is a slippery slope that we may not want to slide down and from which we may not ascend. I saw a reel on instagram yesterday where a woman was standing outside on a vast lawn with trees in the distance. The creator of the reel showed how ai could very convincingly and seamlessly put a castle and lake in the background, and fall leaves in the foreground. This is my wheelhouse as a graphic designer. I have used Photoshop for decades and achieved similar feats. I read through the comments and the majority were expressing concern about the ethics of this and where this could lead. Bottom line… people do not appreciate being deceived. We want and deserve truth. Now we are knee deep in the age of deep fakes, fake news, chatGPT, instagram filters, robotic surgery, self-driving cars. Where does it end? Who is in the driver’s seat? Who does the programming and who are the programmed? Who are the arbiters of truth (or fiction/propaganda disguised as truth?) Who are the gods and who are the Plebs? Who are the fact “makers” and are they also the fact checkers? And who makes these decisions? It seems like ai could be on a fast runaway track to nebulous and/or nefarious goo with little accountability and thus little credibility. And possibly great harm.

I have reached a point in my life where I no longer trust governments, media, higher education, history, religion, medicine. I’m sure there are categories I am leaving out. Just like the response to infidelity in a relationship: fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me. Trust is obliterated. I now know I have been deceived in all of these areas by people so far removed from we the deplorables. 2020 gave me time to go down quite a few rabbit holes and there is no going back, no unlearning, unseeing the things I discovered down there. Suffice it to say, I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about Artificial Intelligence after seeing what the “powers that be” have wrought. It is akin to not wanting to eat a hot dog once you’ve seen how it’s made.

Yet I want to see and know how the hotdogs are made, what the ingredients are, who is making them, etc. Artificial Intelligence removes choices, decisions, thoughts, conclusions. It feels deceptive to me and the opportunities for nefariousness are limitless. The premise of trying to replicate and then replace human thought is just way too creepy and morally repugnant to me on a spiritual level. I’ve seen recently how women are being replaced/erased by men pretending to be women. That is morally repugnant to me as well. But this is a whole new frontier… replacing human intelligence with machines. I was traumatized as a child by the movie The Stepford Wives. I am hauntedby it still. Funny how it was just the wives being replaced…that just now occurred to me.

Again, I know that there are altruistic and positive outcomes with some ai. But at what cost? Is technology always to be considered progress? So many great things have resulted from smart phone technology, but at what cost? I would go so far as to say that “social media” is an oxymoron also. We have forgotten how to converse face to face, be courted or do the courting, go on dates, and just be neighborly. I have seen such blatant meanness and rudeness in comments on so-called social media. 

I think we need to tread very carefully, slowly, prayerfully, and deliberately when it comes to ai. Maybe even leave crumbs along the way in case we get lost and need to find our way back.