I have a practiced reaction to anyone saying that people can ‘write’ novels using AI. The truth of the matter is that anyone who likes to read won’t like reading AI-generated text when they know that it is AI-generated. So if anyone wants to write with AI and wishes to be taken seriously, they have to necessarily lie about their AI use.
What is increasingly becoming apparent is that AI and lies go hand-in-hand as far as most serious cultural endeavours go. It is no coincidence that most of the people who have taken to AI use to “create content” are grifters, scammers, and hustlers of the cheapest variety. The most widely-used manifestations of generative AI – chatbots and other consumer-level internet tools – seem designed to make such scammy behavior possible. There are no safeties, no safeguards, no protections available to help people tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t. This has led to, among other things, the rise of a general disdain for reality.
We were already at a place where the truth didn’t matter. The generative AI boom made things a thousand times worse. By 2020, it didn’t matter if a piece of information was true or not. Now, we seem to have reached a place where tech companies are working hard to make sure we stop caring if the people we talk to online are real or not.
I have written about this devaluing of humanity before, but most recently, it has come to light that there are AI-generated accounts on Instagram that are lying and saying they are licensed therapists. It goes without saying of course, that not only are these accounts not licensed therapists, they are not even human. Last I checked, only humans were getting licensed to practice therapy.
Perhaps that will change one day. Or perhaps it won’t and we will all get okay with getting lied to. It started when people got okay with political propaganda being made up. It is now at a place where we are all being asked a very direct question – “How much do you care about what is real and what is not?”.
I said this some time back and I think it bears reiterating. The real danger from AI (as it is widely manifesting presently) is not that it will grow sentient and take over the planet, it’s that it will ruin our relationship with reality itself by giving clear lies the status of truth.
