I have joined VerifiedHuman™️. This is not some dystopian department of humanity, but a way for human beings to value the work of humans rather than AI. While I believe that AI, Machine Learning, Large Language Models, and their outgrowths have their uses, the creativity and imagination of human beings cannot be authentically recreated, Sure, AI can mimic the style of human creators, but it cannot mimic the experiences of those human beings. I cannot imagine an AI creating a masterpiece in personal critique like Eminem’s Stan or the longing and emotional pull of U2’s With or Without You. I also don’t believe that AI can write a truly human essay or contemplate the divine imagination. It can mimic those things, but even then, it draws on the collective human experience and not an experience of its own.
I write my content with only grammar and spelling help from the tool ProWritingAid. But even that misses my mistakes, but I have come to embrace the mistakes because it shows human origin. I have used AI for images for these essays in the past, but I have been using human attributed work for a while now. I really prefer the photos in the end. I don’t condemn those who use AI as part of the creative process, but I’m choosing to remain fairly analogue as a human being. I will label my essays with the mark of being authentically human.
I am currently reading an advance reader copy of Micah Voraritskul’s Human is the New Vinyl which releases in August. You can read the Foreward by Aaron Simmons here. You can see that this is not a Luddite manifesto, but a conversation about our humanity and how we can recognize our shared existence as human beings.
I understand the promise of AI, but I am also a child of the 70s/80s and remember Terminator. My fear is that too many of our technology leaders see Terminator as a promise rather than a warning. If we give too much to the machines, will they eventually want to protect us from ourselves by wiping us out? My concerns are existential as we get reports of AI being used in news stories, legal briefs, and other places where it has been recognized by hallucinations, fabricated citations, and other information. But, what happens when we just consume and believe instead of being healthily skeptical? Too often we don’t ask whether we should do something just because we can. Jurassic Park allusions aside, we really do need to take time.
While I believe that AI is able to mimic the style of creators, including my favorite band, it cannot mimic the substance yet. As a little understood set of processes, we can at least know that what AI does is consume vast amounts of data and connect it such that it can make coherent replies. But can it write a great song, novel, or poem with the depth of human feeling? I hope not. My concerns are not centered in the commercial realm so much as the realm of what it means to be a human being. The Peacock show Mrs. Davis is a farcical look into what might happen if humans give over control of our lives to an AI with an unknown origin or purpose. That’s where I live in tension as a person who also understands the promise of AI for research and summary,
But for my writing at least, I will be using the guidelines and pledge to have content that is human created and imagined. I have faith which I now define as my friend Aaron Simmons as “risk with direction.” It is becoming risky to write authentically for many reasons, but most of all because it is harder and slower. But writing, like good barbecue, is probably better when it is slow. As humans, we want to make things ever more efficient, but sometimes the inefficient is the better way. It causes us to slow down and pay attention. The recent rise in popularity of vinyl, CDs, cassettes, and other physical media is evidence that tactile and slower methods are appealing in a world of so much vapor.
https://www.iamverifiedhuman.com
