Real Artificiality
I am troubled by the growing number of accounts and articles on Medium that appear to be experiments of Artificial Intelligence. For the record, I am a former tech junkie. While I still enjoy technology as a tool for constructive progress, I have learned (at times through difficult means) that technology is only a tool. It has no inherent good or evil. The nature of technology as good or evil is only obtained through its use by us humans.
I am impressed with the progress being made in various fields as a result of human ingenuity with our available technologies. Artificial Intelligence is one such field that I have always observed — mostly from a distance. Every tool can become something else if it is used other than intended — that is, the wrong way.
Art is a broad field. It encompasses all of our senses and can cause us to explore parts of ourselves we may never have known existed, maybe even creating new experiences and sensations.
Writing is an area within the field of Art that is unique to the human race. It is also an area that can be easily manipulated by people and by people through technology. And not only can writing be manipulated, it can be abused and mistreated. When a person’s words are taken, processed, represented in a different form, and published as someone else’s original words we have a name for this. In the world of writing it is called plagiarism. It does not matter the source of this manipulation and misrepresentation, it is still a dishonest and disrespectful act. And it is also a crime.
It impresses me that technology can generate original images, works of art, whether drawings or paintings. These are different from words of art. When technology is used to take our words, our phrases, our sentences, our thoughts and ideas, this does not impress me. It angers me. It turns everything I have spent hours, days, months, and years thinking about and honing into a verbal approximation of my experiences into a…well, a joke. It makes me feel played, conned, taken advantage of, robbed of my life. It makes me feel like my reality is nothing, like my joy and pain are artificial.
It does not make me want to stop using my words and stop feeling how I feel and stop experiencing life. Instead, it makes me think less of technology. It is exactly like when that one friend I once had took advantage of our friendship in the most loathsome manner possible, and we haven’t been friends since. It didn’t hurt me. It taught me a lesson, and I learned from it and am better for it. That other person…well, they just never learned.
Eventually, these accounts and articles that seem like they are created by someone not quite human will falter and fail. Maybe they will just be ignored and this will be the one glitch that they just cannot overcome. CTRL+ALT+DEL that.
