At the moment, I work fulltime at a job that involves more numbers than paragraphs. At night, after I sling my work bag wherever in the house, or simply leave it in the vehicle for tomorrow’s workday, my brain is often, well, shot. That makes creative work I crave an exhausting thought.
For years, as anyone who has followed this blog knows, I have attempted to write regularly – multiple times over. One this year’s goals is to suss out if that dream needs to break. I literally took a solo vacation to work this bit out.
So as I sat down in a sea blue chair hugging my middle-aged hips, nicely keeping me in place as the ship swayed with the waves, I popped open the laptop, then Word, and was greeted with an AI agent. This agent invited me to ignore this (finally reawakened) urge to create, suggesting I could toss it an idea and it would gladly take on the “task.” All I needed to do was to clean up whatever they offered to spit out.
No thank you. Maybe another day, but not this one.
I am human. I feel things, both emotional and physical, and whatever else the other thing is called that falls along the lines of things unseen and uncharted (intuition). And this human is exhausted by all the press looking to turn us into Wall-E.
And this human is also exhausted by other humans who thrill at the idea of mechanical things taking over work they would rather not be bothered with; work that provides other folks a sense of fulfillment and even joy. One of these things is what I am doing now: writing.
As others have said, if AI can take on laundry and clean my home, leaving me time to write and quilt, I might be more excited about it. Instead, it’s offering me plenty of time to scrub the toilet while it gets busy having all the fun.
Part of that solo week’s journey was to destress, which writing helps me with greatly. Some thing doing that for me is akin to someone walking laps on my behalf. It may accomplish the end goal – laps get done – but it fails to achieve the personal sense of accomplishment and fulfillment doing it myself does, plus my body is no better off than if I had done the work myself.
But we are in a new age. I recognize this. Easter dinner with extended family found the kids happily deep in Chat-whatever bots. The world is changing. As it always does.
Many people don’t really care what one writer feels about all of this. Several will build arguments, likely with the use of these tools, to tell me I am wrong. Or swallow themselves up in the minutiae, telling me using spellcheck is the same as prompting an AI tool to write a post for me. *facepalm*
The new reality we are entering, whether we want to or not, brings a cloudiness to it. I find myself rocking like the waves I sensed and could see out the coffee shop’s window onboard.
My sincere hope is we refuse to discount being human in whatever form all this ends up taking. My sincere gut thinks that ship sailed several years ago, with the pandemic speeding the process up. Do you agree? If not, I challenge you to the following:
- Go somewhere, anywhere, and sit for a while.
- Leave your tech somewhere else, or keep it in hand, turned off, using it as a prop.
- Check in with your senses. What do you see? Smell? Feel? Hear?
- Are people in this place?
- Are the people around you with tech in hand?
- Are they noticing anything other than the electronic rectangle in their hand?
- If they are having conversations, is it with someone they are physically with? And if so, are there eyes on them (or their surrounding), or the rectangular tech?
- Head to another location, maybe even on another day, and repeat this.
So I ask you, after doing this, do you believe we are changing as humans? I am not asking you to pass judgment, I am asking you to notice and acknowledge what you bear witness to. We are changing. And if you and I wish to remain the same, be aware others won’t.
I find it ironic that after years working in the realm of the Autism Spectrum, we have come to this way of being. When I began working in the field, we worked to have some with autism understand how others view the world. There was a large focus on developing eye contact (I’ve never been a huge fan of it, but I digress), and now we are in an era with eye contact goes straight to a screen. I find we have flipped from neurotypicals demanding autistics behave like them, to where those with autism often use better social skills. From a place where people struggled to see those with autism as fully human (they are), to those with autism truly demonstrating more humanity than this world we are veering into (despite rhetoric ramping up that challenges autistics in ways that make my heart ache).
Things are, indeed, shifting, on a pace that makes pulses race, for good or for ill.
Back to writing. Aside from a few tips from grammar check, this post was written by my own hand. Any typos have been left in here. I can’t promise this will always be the case, as I find it impractical to make promises covering an unknown future. But for now, this post and ones to follow are by me. I hope to keep it that way.
A human.