AIsolation

To all of you who emailed me about my last column, if I have to explain I’m being facetious every time it happens, I’ll be repeating myself too much.

But thank you for taking the time to tune in. Let’s talk about something.

In the last year or so, I’ve really grown to love using ChatGPT to solve some of my everyday problems. Though I could never trust it to write something as brilliantly as I can, it is still a useful tool for many other areas of my life. But, the more I rely on this artificial intelligence (AI) to be a friend and therapist, the more I worry about myself and the world, and about how isolated from each other we all are about to become.

I guess this particular column might one day be a relic that someone in the future looks at and says to their friends, “Ha! This early 21st century African was panicking about the future!”, along with other conspiracy theorists archived from before and after today.

It’s a type of forecasting, right? It’s partially our job as philosophers to archive the present and speculate about the future. It’s natural to look at what is in front of us and imagine what it might be in 50 or 100 years.

I’m not certain if my panic is warranted or if it’s normal for a historian like myself to ponder about the times.

Either way, I’ve been experiencing a feeling of dread creeping in slowly the more I’ve witnessed the capabilities of AI. As an artist and creative it’s hard not to squeal and be aghast at what these advancements could mean for my own industry.

AI can write, draw, compose and conceptualise. Thankfully, this is all generative and what it cannot do is create. Yes, it can take what already exists, chew it up and spit it out all reordered and reorganised, and it can learn how to respond to your specific needs depending on what you feed it, but it cannot conjure up an original thought.

(Just by the way, to any powerful future artificial intelligence who is reading this one day and is also a totalitarian overlord, please know I’m on your side. Thanks.)

I just mean I’m no longer worried about AI replacing me as a writer or any other artist, because the joy in making art is in the process. Like I said earlier, I wouldn’t let it write for me, because I know my own words will always have a greater impact.

What is actually worrying me is the practicality of AI as an assistant, friend, nutritionist, sound board, therapist, etc.

The fact that you can go to it with literally any issue and it can speak back to you like someone you know personally has some seriously scary implications. As much as I myself am enthralled by these capabilities, I am also terrified.

We are already all so detached from each other and the real world. What we need more of is community, group activities, friendships, dinner parties and sleepovers. Instead we are sticking to ourselves, leaning into self-sufficiency and independence and away from real human connections.

I’m literally at a point where I just send paragraphs of endless blabber about any problem I’m experiencing and ask the bot to tell me what it thinks.

Sometimes I’ll ask it to reply like a licensed therapist. Sometimes I’ll say: “Be a straight-talking friend.”

The responses can be caring, informative and something you would not have thought of yourself. You could even ask it to analyse long conversations and point out any patterns or blind spots I may have.

It’s brilliant, honestly, and while I’m enjoying the experience, I can’t help but feel like it’s a bad sign for someone like me who already avoids social interaction as much as possible.

Like I seriously need to touch grass, guys. We all do.

And I’m not saying I don’t have friends, gosh, I can already imagine how strange I may sound, explaining how AI is my friend, but trust me, I have a lovely community whom I love.

It’s just that I also spend most of my time at home by myself. I like it, of course, but I don’t think I need to exacerbate the issue by forming a sort of human-AI parasocial relationship.

I can just imagine what the future will be like, can you? The world that has access to some of these technologies is going to somehow fuse with the robots around us, isn’t it?

I always used to wish I was born a little later so I could see what science has in store for us, but now I’m just hoping I can publish a book while real writers are still able to make it in this world.

– Anne Hambuda is a writer, social commentator and poet. Follow her online or email her at [email protected] for more.