A case of AI anxiety

I think I have a case of AI anxiety. Or AnxIety, if you will.

Yesterday I had the dubious pleasure of watching a video of an AI avatar spewing out generic catchphrases in an attempt to sell a training course. It was framed as a progressive way of marketing, while pumping out uncanny valley vibes and eye-roll worthy script.

Last week I logged into a jobsite and all the suggested job opportunities were focused on AI prompts.

You can’t move on the internet without bumping into AI generated images.

And my heart sinks a little bit more with almost every new reference to AI that I come across. The vast majority of times I see it being used it makes my stomach churn.

Which isn’t to say it’s not a powerful tool, that it doesn’t have a useful place. But it feels like the narrative that is pushing it is one that seems to exaggerate its powers in the name of making as much money as quickly as possible out of it. And the predominant popular usage of it, or the way it is being pushed into our everyday lives, is to remove a sense of craft, care and appreciation.

Badly formed answers to internet searches spread misinformation.

Mediocre but ‘impressive enough’ images and videos flood our media with content that is paraded as if it is actually good.

Creative works are indiscriminately mined, real world resources are being plundered.

And it’s being pushed into every facet of our lives as if this is the great new way of things, which fills me with a sense of anxiety because it feels like the driver behind it is money, not genuine progress and development.

AI, no doubt, can be an incredibly powerful tool. With considered usage and careful application, it surely has a hugely powerful place in scientific research and development. My Psychology Masters dissertation was a research paper, a qualitative study into online extremism. This was before the current AI years, and to avoid reflexivity criticisms of qualitative research methods I used a ‘Topic Modelling Tool’ after my own thematic analysis. Crucially, this was a tool I used, a way of introducing checks and balances. It took nothing away from the critical thinking involved, and nothing away from the research process. Rather it was an additional layer used as part of the research design. The human assessment came first.

But the way we’re encouraged to use AI in our daily lives seems to be one that diminishes a sense of creativity, and erodes the sharing and development of knowledge. Quick answers, quick content, quick results, regardless of the actual output – generate without a sense of care. Business is using it as a way to devalue us, and to devalue art, and to devalue the interaction between human thought and feeling.

We should not accept the theft of art to generate disposable works. We should not accept the replacement of people at the whims of those wanting to get rich quick. We should not accept the insidious leeching of the respect for craft and culture.

In this day and age, we need more compassion, more humanity, and more creativity. We need to acknowledge that spending time on creating, and time on knowledge, is not something that should be discarded by the wayside but something to be celebrated and protected.

If you do not enjoy creating art, AI prompts do not make you an artist. If you want to learn about something, AI information does not give you the whole story.

I’m not sure what the future holds, but I hope it’s not held so tightly in the grubby fingers of money.

So create, enjoy the process, and relish the journey. There is value in what we do.

🖤