Like all aspiring writers I was disturbed when there was news about AI replacing writers. I didn’t hate AI as much as I hated the companies that rolled out creative AI. ‘How can they do this?’ I complained. ‘How much money do they need! How can we allow wealthy tech businessmen to make human written content and human writers obsolete?’
The proof that I didn’t hate AI was that a couple of years before ‘AI writers’ hit the internet’s mainstream, I was intrigued by virtual beings so much that I had attempted to create one myself. I created an avatar, gave it a name (Oonta), and made a few designs before I ran out of technical abilities and resources.
But I grew out of writers’ insecurity thanks to the way writers, creators, and intellectuals responded to the AI threat. I found them unwilling to give in. I found them willing to understand/expose AI and co-exist. No matter what computers generate, humanity is at loss if it doesn’t have human thinkers and writers.
At this point, I want to share my opinion on the term AI:
It is a useless term. AI is just modern computing.Coming out of writers’ insecurity meant I didn’t hesitate to experiment with ChatGPT. I was fascinated with it so much that my Google searching went down overnight. Instead of pressing g on my address bar, I started pressing c. And I’m still pressing it.
And last month, I even got myself ChatGPT Plus.After that, I did more than use ChatGPT for search. (I had to try to make the most of that expensive cost.)
So I used it for personal discussions, professional suggestions, and experimentation. And… with that heavy use, I wondered if I could now bring back my idea of creating a virtual being. Cause GPT allows me to do it in seconds.
And that’s what I did. I created a GPT. Gave it a name. Gave it a personality trait and started developing its characteristics.This article isn’t about that GPT.
A few days ago while I was on my bed contemplating the stunning dream I just saw, I praised my subconscious for bringing it up. And the next day I wrote about it:
That’s where I wondered if GPT — the tool I was using so much of — can be looked upon as humanity’s subconscious. This is because GPT can bring up information that humanity’s conscience will not have the time and ability to bring.
Just like how the dreaming mind extracts and brings content from everything ever seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted, sensed, passed-down. GPT and AI now has access to almost everything ever written, talked and done by humanity. So it extracts and brings content from all that.
(With the crazy amount of content we have today, we need such tools.)This is where I find myself asking the differences between two different approaches to AI:
1. Giving it a personality 2. Making it function without personality as humanity’s subconscious tool.With the first option, we anthropomorphize AI. We create millions and billions of digital personalities and even look upon general AI as an entity. This means, there will be many ‘I’ and AI itself will consider itself a separate entity. It looks at itself as ‘I’ which is distinct from humanity.
With the second option, AI identifies itself with humanity. That’s it. It doesn’t have an identity apart from being humanity’s information tool. The ‘I’ for AI is humanity.
Both approaches are interesting. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages. With personality AI, we will have amazing new characters and entities in this world.
And we’ll also have lots of disturbing ones. Each bot looking at itself as a part of the AI family is disturbing. The idea of having general-AI-identification with its identification of itself as ‘I’ is the most disturbing one.
With non-personality AI, we’ll look upon AI as the modern state of computing, and that’s all. Everybody shuts up and uses their powerful computers. It frees us from insecurities and bullshits. We won’t have to worry about Terminator bots.
And at the same time it stops us from creating amazing new interactive entities.The real headache is the regulation of this powerful computing that has been carelessly thrown into the public.
The balance with personality seems to be in approaching general AI as the state of modern computing and at the same time allowing micro beings with their own distinct identity (separate from AI) to exist for entertainment and educational purposes.
How can creating microbots with specific use cases cause harm?
How can looking at AI as an entity distinct from humanity not cause harm?Let’s say there is a robot that plays football. It’s name is Peledona. Its sole function is to play football. That’s all. It doesn’t identify itself with the general robot family. It has no sense of general-AI. There is no general AI. There are micro bots and there are powerful computers.
We can all co-exist. Humans with their collective sense of ‘We humans’ and bots without their collective sense of ‘We bots.’
Humans using their powerful computing as their collective subconscious to explore and extract amazing information that humanity’s conscience does not have the time and ability to bring.
Every art we create with our powerful computing would mean as much as what our dreams mean to us:
Mysterious, Educational, Amusing and Amazing.