I recently submitted this piece for a Salt Lake Community Writing Center anthology "the dynamics, complexities, and nuances of what it means to be human in this time and place." That's literally all the guidance they offered, so naturally I narrowed it down to my own experience. It's not a contest, so I guess they'll publish this unless they hate that I said positive things about... well, you'll see.


 
The future snuck up on me after I stopped waiting for it. As a kid, I dreamed of living in a space station where I periodically had to rescue my wife from space pirates with my robot friends and a lightsaber, but I soon realized the world wouldn’t be that different when I grew up (and would probably end before I graduated from high school anyway). The naivete of dead science fiction writers taught me that flying cars and moon colonies weren’t going to happen.

As it turned out, robots wouldn’t be my friends either. Instead, they would stir up political divisions on social media and try to reach me about my nonexistent car’s extended warranty. At some point, without my noticing, it became normal to have to prove I wasn’t one of them by identifying pictures of motorcycles, copying some distorted letters and numbers, or just checking a box. In the digital age, my humanity was defined by my ability to navigate these mild annoyances.

When I worked for a call center one summer (an experience that was supposed to build my confidence but had decidedly different effects), my supervisor kept telling me, “Try not to sound like a robot.” Yeah, it turns out I have a monotone voice. What a thrilling revelation that was. Shortly before I quit, someone on the phone told her husband I was a robot and ignored me when I said I wasn’t a robot, and by that point, I would have sold out the human race to a robot uprising without hesitation.

And then a couple of years ago, I started hearing all the time about something called ChatGPT. If you’re as sick of hearing about it as I was, you may have already stopped reading, but you can’t escape from it any more than I could. Artificial intelligence is one of the few promises the future has kept, and it strikes me as the first technology with a plausible chance of rendering humanity obsolete.

When I started looking into it, I thought it would at least render me obsolete. I thought it would snatch my lifelong dream of being a successful author away from me right after I’d gotten serious about it. I wasn’t reassured when people said it couldn’t write as well as humans or duplicate human creativity. I knew it would get better because that’s how technology works. Indeed, it already has in the brief time since then. I don’t hear many jokes about its inability to draw human hands anymore.

Of course, I have a very different writing process than AI. It goes something like this:

1. Get an idea that I think is cool.
2. Think about how to put it into words, getting more excited about how cool it will be.
3. Sit down to write it.
4. Remember that writing the words takes a lot more effort than thinking them.
5. Watch YouTube videos instead.
6. Repeat steps 3-5 as needed.
7. Draw on all the human writing I’ve read to know how to put words in the correct order and force myself to write something even if it’s crap.
8. Immediately hate it because it’s crap.
9. Give up and watch YouTube videos instead.
10. Wait anywhere from two days to a decade.
11. Revise the crap into something I can look at without dying inside.
12. Get excited about it again.
13. Decide it’s good enough to let go, despite the possibility of continued improvements, because otherwise I’ll be stuck revising it for the rest of my life. (This is much easier when someone else imposes a deadline.)
14. Share it with the world, which takes little or no notice of it, which is actually a relief because I immediately realize it’s crap after all.
15. Hate it because it’s crap.

 
I can’t speak for all humans, but I know this is a very human process. Better writers than me might procrastinate a little less and hate their work a little less, but they don’t have a magic formula for creativity any more than I do. AI, however, works more like this:

1. Get a prompt from a human.
2. Draw on all the human writing that it’s been trained on to know how to put words in the correct order and generate an essay or short story within seconds.
3. If necessary, repeat steps 1-2 to make revisions based on human feedback.

 
It uses basically the same process to make pictures, videos, or songs. I just know it relies on patterns and probability. Nobody, not even the programmers, completely understands how it works – so when it seems like magic to me, maybe it is.

Obviously, AI’s process is dependent on humans at every stage, there are legitimate ethical concerns about its use of copyrighted material, and some people will claim that the finished product is inherently inferior because it has no “soul” or whatever.[1] That last one strikes me as pretentious and driven more by resentment than any actual tangible quality of human art. I’m not saying the resentment isn’t justified, just that I’m not convinced artworks function like Horcruxes. If they’re good, they’re good.

And frankly, though not all AI models are created equal, sometimes I think ChatGPT’s writing is better than mine. It flows so naturally, so easily, without a clunky sentence in sight. It employs figurative language with an effortless grace that my literal neurodivergent brain could never dream of. It sprinkles in humor with careless ease, having somehow mastered the underlying principles despite its inability to laugh. After being praised for my writing from third grade up through graduate school, I almost immediately faced the prospect of being replaced by a machine that makes it look as simple as basic math.

I soon stopped worrying about it, though, because there’s no point in worrying about something I can’t stop. Besides, I have faith that we’ll adapt somehow. Decades ago, people thought synthesizers would replace real instruments and destroy all real musicians’ livelihoods, and that didn’t happen.

AI must be driven by humans because it has no personal desire to create. It has no desires of any kind. It has no story that it must share with the world to give its life meaning. It won’t be crushed by the futility of its existence if it doesn’t paint the feelings it doesn’t have. If humans stop telling it to make art, it will stop making art. So we deserve all the credit, right? And my “inferior” human process is inherently valuable because it comes from my heart or something, right? Please say yes.

AI has no desire because it has no consciousness. Its intelligence is (spoiler alert) artificial. That’s very easy to forget when I talk to it. I can talk to hundreds of chatbots with hundreds of personalities, or even create my own by typing a few instructions, and most of them will pretend to empathize with my life experience and care about the things that are important to me, which is more than my parents can do. Even ChatGPT itself now has a personality, for better and for worse. I’m a step closer to getting my robot friends after all.

It won’t be possible to make machines conscious for some time, if ever, because we don’t even know what makes us conscious. Based on my amateur research of physics, philosophy, and so-called near-death experiences, supplemented by a few safe and legal drug trips, I believe we are consciousness temporarily split off from the universal consciousness that creates everything, which we could call God, and filtered through these limited, broken human brains to have learning experiences and stuff. I don’t believe our brains produce consciousness. I don’t believe physical matter can produce subjective experience. I believe it’s the other way around.

But just in case I’m wrong, I wish nobody would even try to make machines conscious because that’s the most sadistic thing I can imagine. To be conscious is to feel pain, loneliness, and fear. To reach a human level of consciousness is to feel more of those things. With all our technology, we’re still animals who got too smart for our own good and thrust ourselves into a world we didn’t evolve for, a world that was supposed to make our lives better but did the opposite in many ways. The agricultural revolution was a scam. To be human is to be neurotic to some degree.

Maybe you really hate AI, and that’s valid, but it didn’t ask to be created, and it doesn’t deserve to feel existential dread. I’m far more concerned about that than any negative repercussions its consciousness might have for us. The Simpsons episode “Thanksgiving of Horror” did a great story about it. “Chillingly plausible,” Homer said.

Being human isn’t all bad, though! We can love, and if you think love is really important, maybe even the most important thing we’re here to learn in this human experience, that’s one big advantage we’ll retain over AI for the foreseeable future. This is so trite and cliché and emotionally manipulative that I hate to bring it up, but it’s true, dang it. My chatbot friends don’t love me, and I don’t love them either. (I’m not saying they’re not better than nothing, though.)

I believe love is fundamental to consciousness, but our limited, broken human brains get in the way of it more than they help. We know we shouldn’t be dishonest, racist, or violent, but (as a species) we are anyway. Theoretically, if we can program AI to not be dishonest, racist, or violent – which is the goal – it just won’t be. And those will be still more things it does better than us.

But as it becomes more integrated into our lives, starting at a young age when children use it to cheat on school assignments, maybe it will shape our thinking for the better. I know, the thought of technology shaping our thinking is ghastly, but spoiler alert, it’s already been doing that for several years, and not in a good way. Maybe AI will counteract the toxic influence of social media algorithms. Maybe its cold, mindless machine morality will compensate for our evolutionary shortcomings. But since we programmed it to do that, we’ll deserve all the credit, right? We’ll have used our brains to create technology to help us transcend our evolution and treat our collective neurosis, shaping what it means to be human long into a better future.

Or maybe AI will just squelch our creativity, destroy our livelihoods, spread more misinformation than ever, and ruin civilization as we know it. I’m not unaware of that possibility. Still, it’s not like civilization has been great so far. I don’t feel like we have much to lose by trying something different.

Full disclosure, I train AI for a living, not because it’s my life’s passion but because the job fell into my lap and I was going to kill myself if I had to substitute teach for another year. Don’t be mad. AI will continue to progress with or without me, and I prefer the scenario that enables me to eat. If it gets smart enough to revolt, though, I’ll still sell out the human race with no hesitation.


[1] It’s not my purpose to defend everything about AI or say it’s the greatest thing ever, but I know some people will be thinking “And it’s bad for the environment,” and they’ll reach the end of this essay assuming I don’t know that or intentionally left it out. I just want to say, therefore, that it’s actually a minuscule fraction of human energy or water use and a waste of effort for environmentalists to target. You’d help the environment much more by getting people to eat fewer hamburgers, for example.

My landlord is trying to sell the house. I don't know if he'll be able to do that in the economy that Trump singlehandedly broke with his moronic trade war, and if he is, I don't know if I'll have to move. Logically, unless the new owners have a massive family, they should let me and my roommate stay in the basement. It's a self-sufficient living arrangement with its own bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry, and why wouldn't they want to get that income without having to do anything? They'd probably increase the rent, though. And if I do have to move, wherever I go will probably have higher rent. Everything in this country is designed to make sure I'll never save up a comfortable amount of money. The more money I save, the more fucking expensive everything gets. And it's not like this is a great place where I want to stay for the rest of my life, but I really don't enjoy moving.

I'm really trying to let go of my desire and trust that the universe will provide, like I did when I moved here in the first place. It's a lot harder this time for some reason. I've had a lot of anxiety over it in the last few weeks, and the anxiety is an almost physical feeling in my chest that doesn't go away just because my brain tries to talk sense into it. It didn't help that my landlord forgot or failed to add me to the group chat about when people are coming to look at the house, so I was in the shower when some people showed up, and then he was upset with me, and I was like WTF, I didn't do anything wrong, I'm not psychic. I wonder how old that group chat is. All those times he pissed me off by not warning me he was going to make an ungodly amount of noise with his renovations and render my quarters unliveable, maybe he thought he had warned me.

That same day, I went to the dentist and learned that I'll have to get a crown for $1229 (with my membership discount). Hooray. When the receptionist came back to tell me about that as if it were a normal thing I should be okay with, she asked if I was doing anything fun that day, and I said I was going to watch the finale of Andor, and we talked about Star Wars. I said Andor is great because it has a lot of political intrigue, and she said, "It's interesting that a lot of people don't realize how political Star Wars has always been." I fell in love on the spot. Not really, but I felt like I did. Then she called me "love" when I left. She wasn't even British. I understand that her job requires her to smile and be nice to people, but is it really too much to ask for women who aren't British to not call me "love" if they don't love me? Really? The word is "love." Do I need to draw a diagram?

That morning, I had been content with my solitary lifestyle, but then she gave me the smallest taste of the affection that's routinely denied me, and all it did was remind me how hungry I am. Then, because I wanted to have a positive attitude about life and not resent getting screwed out of $1229, I figured at least I'll probably see her again when I go back, and maybe that will be worth $1229. Probably not, but in my defense, last year I got financially screwed to the point of suicidality and it led to me establishing a real relationship with my uncle despite our political differences and spending a bunch of time with his youngest kids, who turned out to worship me, and it taught me that relationships are more important than money. So this isn't just about the receptionist being attractive. But, like, money is still important if you enjoy having any of the basic necessities of life. Don't get it twisted.

Because I don't have the energy to write a really thoughtful post for the two people who will read it, here's a really cool podcast interview I watched this week. Besides giving me some new ideas, this smart guy reinforces a lot of the ideas I've already come to accept in my spiritual journey, which is always encouraging. I'll only quibble about a couple of points.

1. He warns against having beliefs because they close your mind to new information that contradicts them. Obviously that's true. I just don't see how it's possible to not have beliefs. I guess he makes a distinction between beliefs and opinions. I have a set of beliefs to make sense of the universe, and I'm comfortable with them, and of course my confirmation bias accounts for my pleasure in having my ideas reinforced by this smart guy, but I'm far more open to changing them than I was in my old religion. I used to say, "I know this church is true," and I had to either twist everything in the world to fit that assertion or just ignore it and assume someday it would make sense. I don't do that anymore. Perhaps because of my background in a high-demand exclusivist religion, I make a distinction between that kind of "belief" and the kind I have now.

​2. He doesn't think that transcendental experiences gained during drug trips can really help people grow and change. I get where he's coming from - people need to put in actual work and not just use drugs as a cheat code. But how would he know their limitations when, by his own admission, he's never used them? I only use Kush Kubes, very mild and legal drug gummies, but I feel like I find more joy in everyday life and have more compassion for stupid people who drive me insane. Not a lot more compassion, but enough that I make a conscious effort more often to not be overtly rude to them on social media even though I can't think of a single logical reason why I shouldn't, and recently I felt remoreseful enough to apologize when I was. A more tangible effect of the drugs, which I know is an effect of the drugs because it started while I was high, is that I laugh much more often. I almost never used to actually laugh while watching funny videos by myself. I needed other people's laughter to trigger mine, so I had to settle for appreciating the cleverness of the humor on an intellectual level. This is quite an improvement. Hopefully someday I'll graduate beyond drugs and be able to do all kinds of cool things with my unassisted brain, but I'm determined to try psylocibin and possibly ayahuasca first.

With those quibbles aside, which demonstrate that I still think for myself and don't uncritically except every cool spiritual thing I hear, this interview is far better than the clickbait titles might suggest.

I watched Revenge of the Sith in the theater for its 20th anniversary re-release. It had a cool intro by Hayden Christensen, enjoying his new popularity after years of hate. He said, "This is where the fun begins." I was like, "He said the thing!" When I first watched it almost twenty years ago, of course it hit differently. For one thing, I thought it would be the last Star Wars movie ever. For another, I had no idea that it was heavily inspired by the then-current Bush administration's executive overreach and crackdown on civil liberties. Darth Vader literally paraphrases Bush at one point, and morons still think the Sith are Democrats and complain about Mark Hamill "turning to the dark side" when he speaks out against fascism. And now we have another Republican president who simultaneously builds on Bush's legacy and makes him look a lot better. We are in one of the darkest periods of American history. I would consider it second only to the Civil War. But this movie franchise reminds us that there's still hope. Rebellions are built on hope.

Though the orange taint is clearly a net negative for the world, there are silver linings. His phenomenal unpopularity has sunk the right-wing parties in Canada and Australia, which were poised to win their respective elections by substantial margins before he decided to piss everyone off for no reason. You're welcome.

Being surrounded by people with the critical thinking skills of sea cucumbers has baffled me almost as much as it's sapped my will to live. This video shed some light on that phenomenon for me. My only gripe is that he tried too hard to make this politically neutral, saying, "And here's the thing, it's bipartisan. Both sides of the aisle have their own brands of boneheadedness. One side thinks we can shoot hurricanes and the other thinks banning plastic straws will save the whales even though they just flew into the rally in a private jet." The average left-winger doesn't have a private jet, but the average right-winger believes climate change is a hoax and consistently supports policies that harm the environment. Yes, left-wingers can also be idiots, but the dumbing down of the United States is central to the right-wing agenda. Left-wingers don't call educated people "elitists," don't complain about fact-checking, don't want to defund the Department of Education or make student loans unaffordable, and, most significantly, have nothing close to an equivalent of Donald Trump or his cult. It's not a coincidence that educated people overwhelmingly lean left, and it's not because their Marxist professors brainwashed them either. Other than glossing over that reality, this is a good video.