The Blackberry Walk

After my first article a little while ago, 'Bullish on AI', I thought I'd present the bear case also. A few weeks ago, someone at work told me something difficult to digest. That his father, at his grandfather's funeral, wrote the eulogy with AI. I didn't quite know how to react to hearing this. A heartfelt message, sending your loved one off, all with words not your own? There are some things that should never be delegated. And this is the crux of the bear case against AI: delegation. Back in mediaeval times, everyone inhaled smoke. The chimney hadn't been invented, since the architecture of a peasant house couldn't support such a structure, so the smoke of the hearth's fire just lingered in the house. Everything would've smelled of smoke, their clothes, their food, their bedding, all day and all night, smoke. This sentiment spanned all the way into the Elizabethan era, with chimneys being seen as an effeminate invention. They inhaled smoke, and thought it good for them. To remove the smoke, by way of innovation, was to whisk away hardship by technology. There needs to be a kind of payoff, after all. In the modern day, we have Ozempic, a weight loss drug that cripples your appetite, and burns fat. The great hardship of having to watch our diet and exercise has been whisked away, and with a swift injection, you can lose weight. Being thinner is better for your health too, reducing the risk of cancer, diabetes, strokes, virtually every illness. Placing these two examples side by side may seem a little harsh. Many a reader will probably think Ozempic is an unnerving invention with unknown side-effects, and chronic smoke inhalation morning till eve may well be rife with negative health consequences. But the principle remains, the same principle since the start: we use technology to improve our lives. From the beginning where man made fire to cook meat, I reckon there were old purists who ate their meat raw, laughing at the young cave men roasting their meat with fire. With each innovation, there are those who are sceptical. And rightly so! We may laugh at the mediaeval inhaling smoke, and the cave man who doesn't cook his meat, but we share that same scepticism regarding Ozempic. Not every new technology will be used correctly, and nor will they necessarily be safe. We remember the successes, but not the failures; and how many failed technologies have there been? The number is likely too large to list. Technology is like the apple in the garden, like Pandora's box, no invention made can be reversed. A new invention is an injection of pure potential into the culture which must be broken down, digested, and incorporated into society by way of moral laws. Moral laws are a kind of scaffold. Without them, the project of building a culture collapses, however innovative your raw materials and tools may be. The scaffold of moral laws determine how the new technology is to be used responsibly, a kind of cast after the shock breaks a bone. And the introduction of a new technology is a violent event. See how society changed after the industrial revolution, the printing press, the canon, and in more recent times, the internet. The cat has left the bag, the train has left the station: there's no going back. And AI is one such technology. The full impact of the internet has yet to be seen, but thus far society's structure has changed absolutely. The way people work has changed, how they socialise too - this blog will only reach you by its means - but the morality of the internet has yet to set. The arm is broken, and the plaster cast is yet to set. Should the internet be used as an alternative to real interaction? Is it morally okay for people to work fully remotely - by which I mean, for their own well-being? How should we post on the internet, with what level of anonymity, and how should our digital lives relate to our real lives? The questions are still hot, and have yet to cool. And in short succession, this new disruption of AI has broken another bone on the same arm. Just as the culture began to figure out its answers to the first, a process which is always violent, this second disruption reared its head. We're at a digital crossroads, and the issue with AI is we don't know how to use it. Or worse still, in the case of the eulogy, when to use it. AI at present is throwing education into disarray, since homework is being rendered futile. Teachers receive homework written by AI, and the child hasn't learnt a thing. The institutions and the morality can't keep up with the technological change, and even though we know cheating on homework to be wrong, there's little the teacher can do to prevent it. In the schools, to the kids it's a game, a game of cat and mouse, to see if they'll get caught. But again, I'm struck by the eulogy. Why did he get an AI to write something so heartfelt and important? There's a quality of Wall-E, I reckon, a sense that we are made weak by our machines, so weak we forget to feel and empathise. We lose our need to toil, but we lose alongside it our capacity to love. This is the Faustian pact of our Faustian civilisation. We develop technologies, improving our lives, but end up losing our souls. This, then, is the bear thesis I have on AI. Or rather it's a bear thesis on mankind. Man has continued since the garden to sin and be tempted by technological innovations, some good, some devilish. The power of each new technology is great, and in lockstep dangerous if used incorrectly. Conquest, war, famine and death have all been seen released by technology not controlled. Our most recent calamity, the pandemic, was that not also a technological mishap? AI may well be Tolkien's Ring of Power, one of the greatest changes the world will ever see, and they'll look back on us fumbling. Some have even posited the internet was but the forerunner for AI, the necessary systems to create the database by which to train them. This is the greatest technological change of our generation, but it may be too much for mankind. Our beliefs and opinions about the world, held by the man on the streets, aren't yet primed for what is to come. Twenty to thirty years, I reckon, until Costco has robot maids on the shelves. I can almost see them, kneeling beside one another waiting for a master to take her home. How will people treat their robot maids, and can mistreatment by punished? What will they mean for marital dynamics? Cleaning and tidying will be a long lost art, one forgotten for a harder time. This softer age will have people leaving there socks lying around, litter on the living room floor, and cupboard doors left open. Like children, we'll likely not hold ourselves in good manners and regard, since we'll have a maid cleaning up after us. And again, our standards will fall. This is the reactionary temperament: as technological progress marches on, the quality of men declines. There's a lot of truth here, and it's a truth to which many today are allergic. It's a truth which abrades every capital of each moral pillar our society is build upon, to many it's a painful truth. If man is to be worthy of AI, we must be great enough to use it responsibly. The workman can't be used by the tool. And most certainly, when our family is concerned, and love is concerned, we should be wise enough to know AI has no place.