A ... I ... Can't
Thoughts on the current state of "intelligence."
Hi friends!
In these polarized times, I think we can all agree on two things:
Every cruise ship gets dry docked and set ablaze.
We don’t need Demi Moore’s opinion on AI.
And yet …
Demi Moore at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this week:
AI is here. And so to fight it is to, in a sense, to fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So to find ways in which we can work with it is a more valuable path to take.
Demi Moore, the great elder stateswoman of Unwellness Culture, is correct — AI is here. Quite literally here on Substack where dumb AI-generated content abounds and people are paying to consume it. But I have to disagree with everything else she said, because even though the richest, most emboldened dorks in human history are waging war against what’s left of our dignity, I don’t see AI as a battle to be won or lost. I see AI the exact same way I see Elon Musk: A disturbing entity foisted upon our lives that is talked about too much.
Of course, there are deeply existential reasons for all of the chatter. Speculating on whether AI will end humanity or create a “permanent underclass” of destitution and sorrow is just another day at the office for tech bros. Elon Musk and Sam Altman — conjoined twins in a past life — are fighting each other in court right now, ostensibly over money, but the trial devolved into sci-fi when Musk, in an effort to prove that he cares more about the future of humanity than Altman, referenced Star Trek as his utopia. When Musk shared his dream of a Trek-ian future set in space and presented the alternative as The Terminator, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, according to Vanity Fair, rolled her eyes at him.
AI is new technology, sure, but men like Elon Musk have been obsessed with destroying the planet since the atom was split and have dreamed of leaving it since Sputnik. “For some time now, a great many scientific endeavors have been directed toward making life also ‘artificial,’ toward cutting the last tie through which even man belongs among the children of nature,” Hannah Arendt wrote in The Human Condition back in 1958.
Ruthless technological advancement is in direct opposition to what it means to be human, which isn’t always a pleasant experience but is still a remarkable gift we’re given.
Earth is a mother, and it is women who possess the portal to birth new life into existence. Women don’t yearn to live on Mars or spend $80 billion on a failed metaverse because this is our planet, and we don’t have a subconscious drive to trash it, escape it, or remake it with technology so we can finally be the creators.
Nevertheless, women face triple the risk of losing our jobs to AI, and the gender gap in who’s currently using it is large enough that Reese Witherspoon started filming content.
“We are now seeing the girlbossification of AI,” said The Cut this week.
Perhaps the girlboss gang is right and we aren’t getting the support or mentorship we need to implement these new tools of productivity. Perhaps our socialization to center others and consider the greater good is getting in the way of adopting a menacing, destructive technology. Perhaps those of us who finally found balance in a toxic work culture are over the machine-adjacent vibe of late-stage capitalism. But, also, just throwing it out there because we’re still hearing shouts of LEAN IN from the same pick-me hoes: We won’t acquiesce and the tech world is gross.
Dare I try to escape the ceaseless AI conversation by watching a prestige comedy series? No dice there. Both The Comeback and Hacks recently roped me into viewing this discourse on my TV. If any of the last six working sitcom writers are reading this: I would really love to watch a show that doesn’t take place inside the industry. Write it for me. I need an escape and a cackle, and I believe in your artistry. But I understand the impulse to write what you know and hold your ground when Hollywood is famously exploitative and has a herd mentality. Actresses may be boldly declaring AI’s inevitability, but they’re not the ones generating the IP.
Writers be discoursing because Large Language Models, the AI we’re really talking about here, steal our words as part of their training to replace us. Our comrades who wrote the books that these models were trained on are finally being compensated, and it’s a pittance. I’m grateful that I have a twisted mind that can game algorithms with copy because I still have clients. AI doesn’t do my copywriting, and it doesn’t write my newsletter or all the other crazy shit I write for the love of it. I write because what feeds me is the process. I live for the torture and the magic and indulging in my goddess given psychosis.
In terms of its creative potential, AI only excites grifters and the cerebrally less fortunate who get to generate something bordering on coherence for the first time when they use it. For every Demi Moore there is a Guillermo Del Toro, who once said he would rather die than use AI, and also shared his take from Cannes this week:
They tell us everything is useless to resist, that art can be done with a f***ing app and we are facing things so formidable … we can give to love, or we can give to fear. Never, never, never give to fear.
Resisting the destruction of art and culture is never useless because power to the people, the permanent FUNderclass, who know that everyone is not doing anything. Making it seem like everyone is doing something is an effective rhetorical strategy to manipulate the insecure into doing that something. Being left behind is a threat to our sense of belonging, which our mammalian brains crave because moving in a pack once protected us from predators. But being happily left behind by AI is so pervasive that it’s quite literally a meme. And if everyone jumps off the bridge, who will report from the scene?
AI has a lot of practical applications, sure. I have no idea what vibe coding is, but I like the name, so I’m OK with it. I’m not against someday figuring out how Claude can do the admin that makes me want to set myself on fire. But it’s a slippery slope once you start outsourcing more complex tasks, because all the studies show the same thing: Letting the machines think and write for you will make you stupider. And in my ongoing journey to make sense of cultural insanity, I recently learned about cognitive miser theory. Did you know that human brains are wired to spend the smallest possible amount of energy on thinking? See: That one friend who gets their political opinions from TikTok. Our brains, when it comes to exerting cognitive effort, are like a bunch of miserly old men who won’t open their wallets.
The human condition, it turns out, welcomes intellectual shortcuts.
Algorithms already did our brains in, and it’s clear that what’s left of our intelligence is under attack. I mean, Sam Altman literally admitted that he’s trying to make everyone stupider so he can sell intelligence back to us. “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter,” Altman said earlier this year, as if that statement was casual biz dev. If the King Dweebs of Dystopia are truly invested in creating a permanent underclass, it’s in their best interest to get between our ears and destroy what’s left so we don’t fight back.
I wonder what the future holds for what is already an alarmingly low level of human intelligence, but I feel insane when I think about it, so I’m going to stay in this moment. Sure, idiots are posting AI-optimized poopoo and making money in the “creator economy” from it, but we’re not cursed to join them or consume it. The good news is: We still have free will. Some people are perfectly content watching shadows in a cave. The rest of us can build a different culture if we choose to.
All the jabber about AI may be doing my head in, but I do love this delightfully elitist opportunity to resist by honoring my intelligence. I was radicalized against stupidity long ago, and making sure some of us retain the ability to think as AI licks its chops like a zombie is a good job for me in this apocalypse. I’m going to keep reading and thinking and writing and talking and communing with my demons and my friends.
This may be a troubling time for a writing “career” but it is a spectacular time to hone your own voice and your intellect.
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™
Liz
... it's a bit of a relief to know that we have Guillermo Del Toro and Hannah Arendt on our side... we're gonna fight to prevent our Demise...
> "I was a fool," Musk told the court.
... a real quote.