We’ve arrived in the future where we can have anything we’ve ever wanted and create a reality that doesn’t exist.
Artificial Intelligence is starting to have its way with our world. I had lunch with a former student who showed me examples. Although it is making lives easier and helping people with written proposals generate impressive work faster, recently experts for AI technology have admonished us regarding potential dangers.
CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman addressed Congress and seeks regulation of the industry before it is too late. Altman expressed that his “greatest concerns” are with the upcoming presidential election and the potential for AI programs to manipulate voters and target disinformation campaigns. Wow, a CEO actually asking for regulation! Imagine that.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal played a message that was composed by ChapGPT in which it mimicked the senator’s voice and laid out his views. The senator recognized that the program accurately depicted what he believed, but expressed concerns that other individuals could use the program to put words in his mouth that he never uttered nor believes or even worse, undermine foreign policy efforts around the world.
Here we go again, it sounds like Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein and the pandora’s box argument all over again. What benefits can it bring us and what harms can it impose?
Although AI will be making life substantially easier for many people, it also has the potential to displace millions of workers. Writers and actors are on strike and one of the reasons is AI technology. AI can create plot scenarios in a matter of seconds that would take a room of writers hours to figure out. The big money studios feel they will no longer need living entities to create movies. They can resurrect Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe from the grave and create any contemporary scenario to meet the fashion of the day.
Ironically, director Stanley Kubrick brought this scenario to life with his masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Astronauts in space become the dupes of an evil computer’s attempt to take over their operation and literally kill them and take control of the spaceship.
The beast is terrorizing the city like Godzilla, crushing the hopes and dreams of artists trying to survive on contracts that have not kept up with the changes in streaming revenues. The proposals that the studios have initiated have writers and actors working for less than they are already making. With new forms of technology, producers feel as though they have the artists right where they want them and refuse to budge in negotiations forcing many writers and actors out of the industry.
I imagine in the future we will be able to create our own characters and let the scenario play out. With the creation of holograms our wildest fantasies will potentially come to play in our own living rooms and we will be thrown further into the galaxy of illusion – further isolating us from one another and potentially creating a society of lost souls anxious to understand what is fact and fiction.
As Tom Stoppard, the preeminent playwright of our times stated in his acceptance speech for receiving the Tony Award for Best Play, “Leopoldstaat,” “I’m teeming with emotions a chatbox would not begin to understand.” We have not arrived at the ability to create meaningful dialogue, but it’s coming and begs the question of the importance of asking each other what does it really mean to be alive? And what does it mean to be a living artist creating something meaningful for others to experience? Maybe the ancient art of theater will bring us back to our senses. On the other hand, the potential for further isolation from others is also possible.
Victor Tangermann writing for “Futurism” wrote an article titled, “Fully AI-Generated Influencers Are Getting Thousands of Reactions Per Thirst Trap.” The article talks about how influencers are being created by companies. For a dollar a minute, you can have an encounter with a person who doesn’t even exist, a “virtual girlfriend.” She’ll tell you everything you want to hear and be anything you want her to be, but she will not come to your door – yet.
This idea of living in illusion is nothing new. Plato addresses the idea of the shadows in the cave and how illusions come to play with our sensibilities. These themes are carried out in Hinduism and Buddhism. Hindus point out that we all suffer from Maya, “Illusion” and can’t see the true reality of what is at work in this life. The Buddha faced the demon “Mara,” (destruction) under the Bodhi tree and attained Nirvana by resisting his persuasion to join the world’s amusements that “ensnare and delude us.”
Once again, religion and spirituality point us to seeing the importance of community. We are called to support one another, learn from one another and commune with individuals to help us work through what we believe and why we believe it. The more person-to-person contact the better, because it creates for us a context for what it means to be human and alive.
Marshall McLuhan’s quote, “The medium is the message” has never been more relevant than it is today. Our senses have been properly satiated through the development of technology. It started with a book, evolved into radio and moving pictures, evolved into television, computer games and social media and has moved to AI. The question becomes who controls the message and what does that leave for society in the hands of someone whose only concern is to manipulate the masses for his own gain?
Please note: The piece was composed from a human mind.
spirit beat 