Is Artificial Intelligence Creating Zombies for Humans? A personal Reflection

Quite frankly, I fear that Artificial Intelligence will take away my job. Or it has already taken. Recently while discussing an upcoming Rumba event we are organizing, one of the guys in the group casually said, "lemme know the details, I feed ChatGtp to finesse for us the proposal". In a sense, I was relieved, that a machine would save me the many hours it takes to generate a proposal and since only one in a million proposals gets to be funded, I didn't feel half as bad. Having spent the last ten years writing proposals that don't even get to be read. However, as a researcher, a writer, and a journalist, I am duly worried.

Recently, Sports Illustrated, the greatest and largest news organization dedicated to sports, was exposed to have used AI to generate some of their recent sports news. It took experts of course to detect this, but the fact that the public rarely knows better keeps me awake.

There are AI novels. AI is making animations for children. AI will be making movies. And now the big boys of AI are saying a more sinister, more powerful, super intelligent AI is coming, sooner than later. For the media, with declining readership, and diminished revenues, they may have no choice but to cut down on the cost have robots write and read the news. For teaching, writing term papers and other ways that we traditionally relied on to measure a student's creativity and ability to think critically, will no longer work. Even so, many people have bought degrees and academic writing is a mockery of higher education, yet, it is the reality, so why not just opt to use machines.

My concern is for the kind of public we are building. We will end up with zombies with this trajectory. Increasingly, people appreciate things that AI generates, be it photographs, or videos. People can't tell a deep fake from a real video. People are ok playing games such as American Football, European soccer, rugby, and basketball on TV, as opposed to attending to the real matches.

Chuck Klosterman in his book, "What If We Were Wrong" predicts there will come a time when stadiums will be empty and people will only attend American Football matches in theatres, like we do movies, or whatever incarnation of TV will be there at that time.

I am old school and believe in the power of touch and human ingenuity. I like a book with sentences written by a human being in real-time. I like reading Jim Harrison, and him dropping a phrase that makes me stand and reach for a cigarette. I so badly believe in the power to be human that I am opposed to sex toys. I believe in the power of human connection, human touch, human hands, eyes, nose, ears, and all that makes us human. I like hanging out with friends, and having real-time banter, witnessing the human brain at work, chucking good sentences, spontaneous laughter, and all. Like, if there is anything I want more, are people getting together. Putting phones away. Cooking together, eating together and laughing their sorrows away. But this is in the past.

We have already laid the ground for the future world. The books over the years have become staid. Like we will never have another Charles Dickens or Sidney Sheldon. We will never have another Achebe or Wole Soyinka, or Ngugi was Thion'go. We will never have another Fela Kuti or Franco Luambo Luanzo Makiadi, who I consider the greatest musician the universe has ever seen.

I don't mind machines making our work easier. Certainly, typing on a laptop is better than a typewriter. Certainly, I like the MS feature where I can place a recording and the software can transcribe for me. I like washing machines. Speed cameras and such. I love. Not one to bemoan the lost past. Maybe the future people don't need the hard-boiled football that made Manchester United and Arsenal such a joy to watch in the era of Roy Keane and Patrick Viera.

Maybe the world does not need the savagery of Martin Scorsese or Taranantino's movie. Maybe people are happy with the bad skits online. Maybe the world doesn't need the inventiveness of Woody Allen. It is kinda sad for the old soul, but the world always matches forward. And there will be a time when machines will do everything for us, and I don't know what kind of life we will lead.

Is your hustle safe from AI?