How NOT to be eliminated by AI
To many, the rapid changes - both existing and foretold - that artificial intelligence presents are equal parts exciting and anxiety inducing. Today, let’s deal with the anxiety inducing side of the equation. Namely, the prospect that artificial brains will soon do the work that our brains do. It’s downright scary to think that no one will need us and our big, old, error-prone, occasionally tired, sometimes moody, and otherwise fallible brains for anything anymore. And when they no longer need our brains, will we be eliminated or replaced? What good will our contributions be in comparison to what might eventually become a “perfected” form of intelligence?
I should stop right here and warn you that this article is not about job security. I wish I knew how to keep AI from eliminating the need for copywriters and graphic designers. I don’t. Here’s what I can tell you: express yourself in whatever way you know how. Do it NOW. Do it OFTEN. Then SHARE it.
Let me explain. Earlier this year, one of my nearest, dearest, and oldest friends passed away suddenly. There was no warning whatsoever. We had been texting about the weather on Wednesday night. She likely died sometime on Friday morning. We met in kindergarten when we were five years old. For the next 40 years, we talked, whispered, giggled, sang, cried, shouted (never once in anger, mind you), passed notes, wrote letters, sent cards, texted, sent DMs, shared countless memes, burned up phone lines, and gave (and sometimes made) each other gifts. We went on trips, took so many pictures, shared adventures, inside jokes, knowing looks, and almost all of our best childhood memories.
As the reality that I had lost her began to sink in, all I wanted to do was find her. And the only place I can find her now is in the fragments of personal expression she left behind: the notes we passed in school, the Christmas and birthday cards she sent me, the photos we took together where she is smiling and making funny faces the way only she could have done, the little gifts she gave me - and most especially the ones she made for me - and, of course, ALL the memories I have of her.
If I didn’t have those notes, letters, texts, cards, memories, etc. in which she had expressed her true, full, human self, I would have nothing of her. This is the stuff of humanity. The essence of who you are is the things you do and the things you leave undone, the way you talk, dress, dance, walk, smile, your laugh, your anger, your generosity and your stinginess, your thoughtfulness and your self-centeredness, your sense of humor, and the things you deem absolutely, 100% dead serious and not funny at all. This is what lingers in your wake. These are what remains of a life, and ultimately, the evidence of a friendship.
What does this have to do with AI? Absolutely nothing. There was nothing manufactured, curated, or contrived about her or about our friendship. It was all as genuine as it could be. I am confident she never once asked AI to compose a single one of her messages to me - they were all her, springing from her own consciousness, based on her own knowledge and experiences, and drawing on her genuine affection for and years of friendship with me.
If, for instance, she had asked AI to compose her last text to me, that message would diminish in value in my eyes. I am only interested in cherishing the ones she wrote herself. In the same way, I have several stepping stools in my home, but the wooden one my mother gave me on which she hand-painted a wreath of flowers is by far the most precious of all the step stools. I have tons of blankets, but the afghan my grandmother crocheted for me is easily the most valuable. The shelf my father built for me is the best shelf, and of all the important papers in my house, the hand-written letters between my grandparents and great-grandparents during World War I and World War II are truly irreplaceable and among the only papers that really matter.
So, express yourself. BE the genuine article that you ARE however that looks and in whatever form it takes. In the wake of your life, no one cares about AI or what you might have asked AI to do. They don’t care about a machine-generated facsimile. They care about YOU and WHAT YOU DID. What of the authentic you will be left in this world to cherish and hold dear once you’re not in it anymore? Think about it. Do THAT. Do more of it. Do it more often. And then share it.
And hug your people real tight (Can you even imagine an AI hug?? Ugh. No, thank you.)