Artificial normie

AI, culture, thought

As there is a lot of talk about AI, I will say something too. Specifically about these chat and imaging bots.

You have heard many things; that AI will take your job, that the robots will make all the art, and that they will do all the writing.

And you have also heard, that however strong AI might become, your special human creativity will forever remain special, and it will never be replaced by AI.

I do not buy this. If anything, these bots show that the creativity of most humans is easily surpassed. AI won’t make human creativity irrelevant, but it might just make you irrelevant. 

I want to repeat a question that was asked centuries ago, but which seems to have gained relevance like never before in the past months.

It is a question asked in the vein of Descartes. 

If we suppose that we can create a machine, a robot, which looks exactly the same as a ‘real’ man. And the robot can do everything this man does, in exactly the same manner. How, will we be able to tell the difference between this robot and a ‘real’ man? 

We won’t be able to tell the difference. 

If AI can create writing that looks exactly the same as human writing. Then how, will you be able to tell the difference?

People will say, '“yes but these chat-AI tools make mistakes, and they aren’t really creative.”

I see humans make mistakes all the time, and I rarely see humans being creative. 

As much as we have questions about these technologies, the technologies themselves are like questions put forward to us. 

When photography came around, it put mediocre painters who made a living making family portraits out of business. They had to start thinking; if this new technology can take my place, then what other place can I take that the technology can’t? And as such, painting was transformed. Technology forces self-reflection. 

In the same way, AI forces us to reflect on our activities. If some robot can write emails just like I do, then how can I write emails that a robot can’t? If a robot can write your thesis for you, then was your thesis-idea even worth anything to begin with?

AI forces us to progress our art. We either become better, or we perish. 

With AI writing and art tools, I think many underestimate the power of these tools, and overestimate their own 'human creativity.' The robots won't make human creativity irrelevant, but they might make you irrelevant.

AI is already able to make great things, and people say 'yes yes, but I am human and this was made by a robot.' Alright, but the AI writing is great and your writing is shit, so why would I want your writing instead of the AI’s? Should we deem your writing 'better', just because it was made by a human? That seems like a strange and arrogant idea. 

Is it better JUST because it was made by a human? I prefer a tree made by nature over a man-made plastic one…

I am in many ways a human supremacist. But human supremacy over the robots is not achieved by merely saying that the robots are worse than us, even when they aren’t. Likewise, we can’t just claim that we are better. 

Now another problem is that these robots feed on the opinions of men as they are reflected in digital discourse. But if so, the AI chatbots will be, for now at least, merely the reflection of common opinion. Pure Doxa, speaking through technology. Not the opinions of one man, or of some other, but of mankind itself. Its speech is like the speech of some archetypal normie, without the mistakes in grammar. 

There already were some scandals, where AI chatbots were unable to say anything critical about the pandemic measures, ‘green’ energy, and other topics such as the transgender craze. 

If so, the people that will be replaced by AI will be those who already live a very robotic life, those who already think solely in accordance with common Doxa. 

But perhaps in the future, individual nerds will be able to make different types of AIs, bred on different discourses. And you will have based chatbots, who knows? 

I do think AI has the potential to take over mass culture. But only the mass-man could claim that it will take over all culture. Men of culture will always have ‘real’ paintings and real sculptures in their homes, and their private collections will never be replaced by lines of code. 

For now, all that AI shows is that the majority of mankind is already a robot. In fact, even worse than robots. The AI can create entire articles in seconds, while humans suffer from “writer’s block”, a lack of creativity, a lack of discipline to work, a lack of confidence, and other nonsense. 

If AI can think just like we do, this only shows that we have yet to begin thinking.

If AI can’t truly think, then neither can we.  

The task remains the same as it has always been; start thinking, start truly thinking. 

If we keep thinking like robots, the real robots will win.

And of all the questions AI puts to us, the most essential one might still be the one Heidegger asked: “what is called thinking?”