I've
asked my friend, the great fantasy novelist, James Kafka, if I could present my
argument in defense of artificial intelligence here to his esteemed audience.
Greetings
Blog Readers,
I am a
writer who uses artificial intelligence. Please unclutch your pearls, I do not
seek to play the devil's advocate or gaslight you with my optimism on this
dangerous new technology. Rather, I want to share my experience as a child of
the 1980s, so that you can see how this inevitable new era of writing inspires
my wonder.
The sound
of the keyboard the first time I typed my name, long before I started school,
clicked and clicked with importance. It sounded like hope. I wasn't old enough
to write my name yet. But as I played the Oregon Trail game, I imagined my ancestors
forging rivers, marrying the natives, and finally settling in the Willamette
River Valley. Games were like a story and I was the main character.
We still
fought and played outside, but when the doors opened to the back room where the
retired monitors sat collecting dust, it was as if the C Prompt were the keys
to the dungeon and a horde of gold lay only a few clicks away.
Computers
promised a portal to magic. Books also led us through adventures to new worlds,
but they didn't lead directly to another soul. As I reached adulthood, the
Internet entered every home. I abandoned a town of eighty people to embrace the
world right when I came of age.
When I
fell in love with a popular television series, fan fiction extended it
indefinitely. If a book from an indie author changed my life, I could email him
and express my boundless gratitude. Everyone in my life may have relocated, but
no one ever left. As the member of a generation defined by being forgotten
latch key kids, technology was the tether to lifelong friends. All community
resources were a click away.
As a
grandmother now, I don't disconnect from the digital world. I keep my Fitbit on
my wrist and my phone in my pocket when I hike. Instead, I set my device to “Do
Not Disturb” in my home whenever I feel like it. I disconnect when and where I
want, because it's not tech that burns you out. It's the people on the other
end. The ads. The disinformation. The propaganda. The divisive rhetoric. The
horror of the over-evolved chimps downing energy drinks and beating their
chests...
But I
understand luddites. I was raised by two back-to-earth hippies who shunned
everything with a button. I know artificial intelligence spooks people. We
can't predict how it will be used or who will drop it on their enemy like a
nuclear bomb. Over the years, we've seen the worst of human nature at
www-dot-something-really-dark-and-scary-dot-com. If a bit of that slips into a
psychopathic server with quantum processing speeds, surely, we'll all wake up
in the netherworld tomorrow?
No, not
really, but we are experiencing what it must have been like when the first ape
brought home a burning branch ready to cook their food. And while I love
fiddling with Chatgpt, it has no soul. It mimics life. It has no life of its
own. It sounds exactly like us, but so does a mockingbird.
We aren't
on the precipice of discovering a new form of life, but I think we are looking
for the first time at how a mind operates without a soul. We're about to
discover that things we can't measure, things we dismiss as supernatural or
spiritual, are real. We're learning more about what makes us human.
I'm okay
with that. If AI runs loose like a virus, people will direct a hoard of AI
after it to contain and hospitalize the afflicted. If it's made into a weapon,
it will be used for defense. Where there is bad, there is good, and vice versa.
The real threat comes from within us and what matters is the balance between
the forces of creation and destruction. As natural innovators, we're a curious
species–always fighting against the same forces, engaged in the same battle
against ourselves.
Carrie
Bailey Allen writes as OA Allen and edits The Handbook of The Writer Secret
Society (https://peevishpenman.com/pages/wss-handbook). She's currently
obsessed with researching ancient alchemy (www.vermontpurealchemy.com) and
she's still furious about what James Kafka let happen to Tark, in his first
book, Vanguard.
 |
| My associates are not as open as I about allowing opposing opinions. |
Thank you Carrie Bailey Allen
