Yeah, yeah, I know, Artificial Intelligence. I despise “artificial” ANYTHING.
I mean, in the ’60s and ’70s, didn’t we figure out a single thing? That we were putting carcinogens in our food in the name of “artificial” sweetener? Our Kool-Aid was deadly. My folks drank Tab, Coca-Cola’s “artificially sweetened” diet soda. “It almost tastes REAL,” they would say. Artificial butter generally has a terrible number of potentially harmful ingredients. Artificial meat? Just give me a salad. Artificial deodorant ingredients: The big thing was “Aluminum Chlorohydrate! We’ve got it!” Now the first mention on any deodorant commercial is “Aluminum FREE!”
Artificial fabric: The polyester of yesteryear was the lousiest excuse for clothing material ever dreamed up. It was sticky, scratchy, hot in the summer and drafty in the winter. Everybody thought it looked good at the time. Mass delusion. Look at the clothing catalogs from back then. Have a good laugh!
So what’s our obsession with the “artificial”? Is it just a poor word choice for “technology”? I don’t think so. Technology, for instance, is robotic surgery that my doctor used to replace both of my knee joints—with titanium, and an amazingly low pain level, I might add. The surgeons had to program what the robotics were going to perform. That is NOT AI. AI is that annoying thing on my social media that pushes me every day to let it write what I, myself, am trying to write. Because it thinks it speaks English better than I do. “Manus” they are calling it on Facebook. I guess that’s supposed to be some reference to a “universal artificial man.” Nothing could be more disgusting to me. If you read AI’s writing, it only takes a minute to realize that it has no breath. Like
a term paper copied verbatim from an encyclopedia, or, nowadays, from Wikipedia.
Manus knows how much I loath it. Daily, it says, “Meet your new AI writing partner, Manus.”
I’ve tried everything to put an end to Manus. I’ve made up goofy stories to see how Manus would write it. I have written blurbs about Manus, the idiot machine that thought it was human. I even said once, apparently to no one, that I didn’t need a writing partner. All to no avail. The ridiculous creature still, infuriatingly, shows up every day. Can’t get rid of it. It very much reminds me of Frankenstein, or something out of an Asimov nightmare. What have we come up with here? What have we pointlessly assembled? And, more importantly, WHY?
What is the purpose of AI asking questions about every personal transaction on social media? What concern is it of AI’s? Why does AI assume that it knows the answers to questions that it poses on its own? Why does AI ask questions that are so off-subject that it looks like it came from another planet? What damage does AI do when it constantly misspells, misplaces and misinforms?
Do you ever watch YouTube videos? Some are very informational, insightful, even inspiring. Plus, they match my attention span—mostly less than two minutes. There is an AI voice on a lot of those that must have been programmed to irritate the ear. It is a human-ish male voice, but contains a haughty, arrogant, sarcastic tone that crawls up one side of me and down the other. What is THAT all about?
I have astonishing kids. My brilliant daughter is married to an equally brilliant man. He’s an IT guy. He speaks in languages I may never know. He works with technology daily. He informs me that most of my questions, at least the ones fomented in this little essay, can be answered in one phrase: information gathering.
The AI thing, apparently, is about getting into your business. I hate that. It wants to sell you more stuff. I hate that more.
So, this is starting to seem like the dreaded conspiracy theory, isn’t it? If target marketing has blown all the way up from local (like it was when I was in radio) to global, then is AI about harvesting info on everybody on the planet? That is a question, because I don’t know.
What I DO know is that there is a ton of incorrect information on all kinds of AI that I do not wish my grandchildren to be exposed to.
Probably the reason for my hostility toward AI is that I am a person of the arts. Humanities, they once called it. There’s always been a sweet, shining thread through the history of man: our spirit! In the arts, we celebrate that spirit. I couldn’t solve an algebra problem if you gave me all day. My reasoning ability has always been slightly suspect. I can find my way home if there aren’t too many one-ways. The creative side is where I live. I can write a song in just a few minutes, or paint a picture you might hang in your house.
Things that come from the soul.
Which, yeah, Manus doesn’t have one.
