I just spent the last thirty minutes organizing my Macbook desktop. In three days, I’d managed to fill it with documents, notes, images, computer code--my artificial intelligence-enhanced creativity exploded. Oddly, I have already forgotten half of what I generated using these A.I. tools. But the evidence is there: all over my screen--and I'm picking up the pieces of what could be described as a "creative binge."
As I survey the aftermath of this bender, it occurs to me that A.I. is already changing my brain.
One by one, I re-open the files, at first just a few of the photos. There was this, where I asked Midjourney A.I. to design for me a time machine console:
And this, where I asked Midjourney A.I. to create an image of a "more beautiful future in harmony with nature":
Here I asked ChatGPT A.I. to "write me a short poem about frogs in the style of Robert Burns":
Beneath the leafy lily pads,
where gentle waters flow,
the frogs do bask in nature's grace,
with merry croaks and bows.
Their voices rise above the reeds,
with a joyous, lively sound,
and in their company we find,
true pleasure to be found.
For though they are but tiny things,
they play a vital role,
in this grand and wondrous world,
that moves with grace and soul.
So here's to the frogs, with love and cheer,
may they thrive and multiply,
and bring us all a bit of joy,
with every croak and sigh.
Okay, it’s not Robert Burns. But, you get the gist. I even asked ChatGPT to write a first draft of this post about A.I.’s effect on humans to see what it would produce. Curiously, it read like most of the news articles on this topic over the past few weeks. I tossed it.
How quickly A.I. tools can suggest ideas. Some are lame, to be sure, but every now and then they produce a real gem.
The human-A.I. dance has just begun. I'm 64 years old. If I had started with A.I. as a younger person, it is possible that my brain would work very differently now. I might be less originally creative, relying on A.I. for the first pass at everything. Or perhaps because it can implement my ideas so quickly, I would generate and capture even more ideas, where before they’d disappear into the ether. If my desktop is any indication, I would hardly remember… and maybe I wouldn’t need to. A.I. would just create it again, and faster.
I’ll refrain from asking the question that seems to be everywhere this past few weeks: "what are the implications?" Instead, I will offer a few observations:
As a tool, A.I. is already accelerating creativity and magnifying the power of the human mind and creative force.
A.I. is always evolving and will get smarter and more adept at creating.
The most obvious upside of A.I. is enhanced human creativity.
The most obvious downside: garbage in garbage out.
Machine learning is not transparent. Experts have already registered concern that A.I.’s learning and growth may end up out of our control or even our understanding very quickly. How did it come up with the above version of the more beautiful world? Who knows?
A.I.-assisted learning has the potential to create different neural pathways in human beings.
Absent clear intervention, A.I. will lift its source material and values from the whole of humanity—all that humanity has created thus far, including existing biases, influences and errors. Our dominant culture will (at least initially) establish the values for A.I..
Human life is short! Because humans are mortal, A.I. can live and evolve well beyond one human lifespan, assuming of course that technology still exists in the future of planet Earth.
Whatever direction the evolution of A.I. takes, it will also speed the evolution of human thought and the clarification of human values and governance—for good or ill.
Personally, I observe that playing with A.I. is novel and super fun. Addictive even. So much so, I could immerse myself in this odd form of enhanced co-creation as if it were a video game, which coincidentally I chose to abandon many years ago when I realized how much time it might cost me. Time flies. This means that I will need to set some boundaries around how I use A.I. tools and how much time I invest in playing with it—especially if I want to be present in the real world, where we have a chance to actually create a "more beautiful future in harmony with nature."
I wonder: is A.I. good for frogs?
Like anything technology advance, it depends. A.I. makes it easy to do more online. So I suppose that, if used wisely, and with intention, it has the potential to partially liberate us from our screens—thus offering us time to both “do” and “be” more offline. We could use that extra time to preserve and create habitat for frogs or work on the top climate solutions in our own backyard. As I see it, the value of A.I. very much depends on how and where we humans choose to invest our time.
Let’s reconsider the words of the human poet Mary Oliver: “what do you want to do with your one wild and precious life?" —short as it may be.
Me? I’m going outside.