So, consider the digital elephant in the room.
AI.
Everyone has heard about it.
Everyone is talking about it.
Some people love it.
Others hate it.
But everyone has an opinion about it.
I’ve heard, time and time again, that AI is ‘coming for me’, that it will soon be able to do my job better than me and that I will, as a consequence, have no work and no professional future.
“Does that bother you, Ed?”.
Honest answer?
No, not in the slightest.
I’ve certainly accessed a couple of AI programmes and had a bit of a play, so to speak, with it. I’ve even used it to provide me with some ideas and source material for some of my work.
But only as, at the most, a foundation for what I am doing-for one thing, AI’s ‘take’ on the language is poor, it’s narrative is laboured and feels forced, reading, in short, like a coat of magnolia paint on the paper.
It’s there, it does the job but you only really notice it because it’s so unnoticeable and unremarkable.
Me? I write in rainbows.
I make words dance.
AI can’t do that.
AI doesn’t have a heart. It’s very name is its weakness, am I the only person in the world to have noticed this?
AI.
Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial. As in not natural, a substitute or replica. Something that isn’t real.
Do you wake up in the morning and have an artificial cup of coffee?
Make love to your artificial partner?
Look at an artificial tree or go for a swim on an artificial beach?
Eat an artificial meal?
Sleep artificial sleep on an artificial bed?
No, of course you don’t.
You feel all of those things, they waltz into your senses and bring you delight.
Because touch, taste, joy, perception and hunger, the sating of, are all real.
Physical reality that is accompanied by emotions.
Things that AI will never be able to replicate.
I’d add that it’s cold, chill heart isn’t capable of feeling them.
But that would be wrong. Because AI doesn’t have a heart.
And therein lies its greatest weakness.
It can only ever aspire to ‘be’ us, to replace us.
But it never will.
I know there’s evidence of it doing so happening all over the world at the moment and that people in certain professions are already seeing their jobs being threatened by AI.
But it won’t last. It’s a fad.
It’s the 21st century Segway Personal Transporter, another prime example of a product that was hyped as a world changing innovation but, ultimately, fell well short of its lofty promises.
AI will have its uses. Indeed, the great irony here is that it was an AI programme that suggested to me that I cite the Segway as an item that was supposed to change the world but ended up being in it instead (ie) as landfill.
Because after trying it out, people found out that, on balance, they preferred to use their legs rather than a machine to cover short distances from A to B.
So for AI, we going to eventually conclude that we’d rather trust ourselves, for all of our weaknesses, than a computer programme.
And, rather than taking over the world, AT’s place in your life and home will be no more significant in real terms than your kettle and toaster.
