I enjoy science-fiction, specifically those of the optimistic kind.  As an idealist myself, I am deeply interested in a future wherein humanity thrives and technological utopia.  Such stories depict a world wherein robots perform all the menial tasks that normally would eat a sizable chunk out of a person’s time and energy, and humanity is then left with whatever artistic passions and scientific developments are gained with such newfound time and energy.  How depressing it is then that in reality the robots are making poetry while human people are clocking in at the factory lines.

Artificial intelligence is a tool, the latest in a long line of tools humanity has utilized.  It is in this framing that I remain incredulous at many of the frankly apocalyptic language by its loudest detractors.  Over the past few years AI has been the center of much criticism, from disinformation and plagiarism to job replacement and ethical transgressions.  All of those concerns carry validity and should be discussed, which I will in this essay, but I find much of the response to be short-sighted and even potentially regressive.  The advent of any new technology brings forth pushback, and without fail the vitriol displayed is often proven to be myopic and with the help of hindsight, quite ignorant.  Outright banning the newest technological advancement exposes a lack of historical self-awareness and is akin to an old man screaming at kids on his lawn.  The dangers are there and they are of concern, but in the same way we don’t condemn a hammer after someone uses it to bash a head in, we must also not disregard AI’s benefits.

At the end of the day all artificial intelligence really does is identify patterns, in a level that is incomprehensible to human minds and has proven to be very useful.  In the field of medicine, artificial intelligence has been used to detect early signs of dementia, a disease that is notorious for displaying symptoms when it is already too late.  Many other fields can benefit from AI’s impeccable pattern recognition as well, computer programming and other mathematical landscapes can have much of its tedium cut down similar to how the debut of abacuses and calculators shortened the tedium.  This theoretically would trickle down on all of us, fulfilling the ideal paradise I described in the introduction.  Such a premise is succinctly put by a silicon valley tech CEO who proclaimed that it would be like everyone would get an assistant.  In the months following that statement Amazon and Meta would lay off thousands of employees, not so coincidentally both companies unveiled new artificial intelligence models with their services.

The human touch is an essential component that’s been quite undermined in recent years.  Personally, I believe that there’s very little beating it, but many of the more profit-minded individuals disagree.  The Garden of Eden picture much of the tech CEOs painted becomes much more opaque when one sees what artificial intelligence is robbing us of.  What bothers me the most are the areas being picked as the first to go, mainly the artistic sectors.  First and foremost I find the rationale confusing, because who would want art created without a soul.  Secondly, this is just another in the cycle of disrespect these sectors endure, going from underpaid and underappreciated to downright replaced in work where they are intrinsically replaceable.  It’s not just art being illogically affected, because last year GMA announced new AI sportscasters they’re introducing to their line-up.  Something as human-specific as sports and a job as heavily reliant on human charisma and interaction as a sportscaster, being replaced with robotic voices and lifeless CGI eyes simply does not compute for me.  I echoed the word “illogically” and said on multiple occasions how I can not understand the reasoning, but I lied.  Because looking through a dollar-tinted lens, it all makes sense.  The lack of logic is justified in the eyes of human greed.

It mustn’t be understated the value of the human aspect.  As much as we are flawed this does not mean AI (something humans created) is any more flawless.  Artificial intelligence can do pattern recognition better than us, comb the internet faster than us, and to the people with substandard taste, even create better than us, but it can also make all the same mistakes we can to a similarly exemplified degree.  Despite the name and its reputation in science fiction, these things don’t actually think in the way we do.  Models such as Chat-GPT and DALL-E simply sample from already existing material which not only brings up a question of ownership but also mirrors much of humanity’s aforementioned flaws.  The most serious allegations against artificial intelligence I resonate with is its use as an agent of disinformation.  Currently AI-generated photographs of presidential candidate Donald Trump amongst African-Americans are being circulated and I must admit I have trouble designating them as AI, how much more the less tech-savvy of us?  While AI can do all sorts of things faster and better than us, it also seems true that artificial intelligence can lie and steal faster and better than us as well.

These are all the gravest of concerns I take very seriously, which makes my dedication dismissing the fear mongering seem obtuse.  This is also not considering AI’s evolutionary nature, how any restriction can not be reliably made because AI will just learn around it.  So why do I not think this is humanity’s doom and that the cancer known as artificial intelligence should be cut out right now right here?  Well I think humanity will realize the con pretty quick.  A soul is abstract and its existence disputed but I think after we’re fed books and music and paintings with its absence, we’ll soon realize how integral humans really are to human life.  At the end of the day artificial intelligence is neither our savior nor an end, it’s just a tool.  This is all a question if humans should be in charge of what is inherently human, and of course the answer is yes.