Artificial Intelligence Is A Helpful Program, Not A Way To Live
Don’t let useful tools use you, struggle has a good purpose
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“True growth comes when we accept the mantle of that which we feel is beyond us. If you can grasp it…and stay steady under the weight of the expectations placed upon you, you’ll be able to look back on this…from the perspective of a version of yourself you never knew was possible.”
— Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files #245
From an early age, my dad would nag me about things which I didn’t understand at the time. He wanted me to do physical things around our store. If there was painting, fixing, or manual labor, he wanted me around to watch and take part. Honestly, I didn’t get it.
I aced everything in school, and was drawn to technology. Why sweat? I could push buttons or answer questions on a test and get rewards. So, my earliest memories are of me being hostile to my dad’s efforts. Basically, he was wasting my time.
This hostility turned on my teachers when they tried to get me into sports. Again, I didn’t get it. My hobbies were video games and watching TV, why should I run around? But nature answered my question within a few years.
By the time I was in fifth grade, nurses at my school were telling me to lose weight.
My child-sized body weighed as much as some adult men. By any standard, I was morbidly obese, and even as a kid, my body was showing signs of distress. So was my soul, and pressure overwhelmed me.
Bullies sought me out. It was like they could smell weakness — the way a predator might.
Tough situations and stress caused me to crumble — at school and home.
My body was useless. So, I couldn’t use hand tools properly. Physically, I couldn’t move well either, which limited me in many ways.
Over the years, I tried to better myself. Intense exercise became part of my routine, in addition to martial arts, and working in the store which I avoided as a kid.
The physical effort improved me dramatically (inside and out.) But I currently see the world groaning through the same problem with its many conveniences. Technology continuously makes life easier and smooths over struggles.
ChatGPT and AI programs are even removing the struggle of writing since they can do it for you. But is that such a good thing?
A rock singer and actor named Nick Cave answered this better than I ever could, in a letter to a fan.
“What’s Wrong With Making Things Faster And Easier?”
In Nick Cave’s blog, a fan named Leon asked the question above in this subtitle. However, before asking, he noted one of his friends uses ChatGPT to write lyrics for his songs because “it’s faster and easier.”
Cave answers by referencing the Biblical story of creation in which God rests on the seventh day, after creating the world in the six before. Cave eloquently states:
“The day of rest is significant because it suggests that the creation required a certain effort…that some form of artistic struggle had taken place. This struggle is the validating impulse that gives God’s world its intrinsic meaning. The world becomes more than just an object full of other objects, rather it is imbued with the vital spirit, the pneuma, of its creator.”
The singer also warns that delegating writing to AI “rejects any notions of creative struggle.” While we may see trying efforts as something to be avoided, they “animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning.”
Not only does the avoidance of creative struggle remove the “pneuma” from the potential creator — especially in writing — it also removes thought. Computer scientist, author, and co-founder of Y Combinator Paul Graham sees this as a major problem with AI and similar technologies.
In a viral tweet he mentions many people hate to write as much as they dislike math. So, just like a calculator, people may sub writing out to a machine.
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Personally, I remember hearing many times that writing is thinking and found it to be true myself. If you’ve ever penned anything, you’ve likely found this true as well.
And these warnings from Cave and Graham point to an odd space in time we find ourselves. Technology is growing exponentially and so is convenience.
Tech Rapidly Increases As Time Passes And So Does Convenience
Historian Henry Adams designed a graph that showed the rate of change over time. This Adams Curve shows a slow increase through much of human history, but sometime after 1800 and the Industrial Revolution, it skyrockets, becoming a straight line upwards.
Physical work gave way to mechanical devices, and eventually to digital screens. Things also became easier. For instance, author Andy Crouch on an interview on the AOM Podcast reminds us music has changed forever.
In the past, if you wanted to hear music, you needed to play it, or listen to it live. Now, you push a button. Inevitably, it made things easier, but also removed a driving reason to play music, or even attend concerts.
The physical work we left behind also created an unforeseen toll. The World Health Organization claims a quarter of the world’s adult population isn’t physically active enough to be healthy, and over eighty percent of the world’s adolescents aren’t active enough.
Obviously, our new sedentary nature has something to do with this. Just the idea of “exercise” is foreign. Work and daily labor were once enough to help mitigate risk from health issues we now need exercise to combat. All due to the convenience we’re addicted to.
That physical struggle we lean on technology to avoid has health benefits for our body. You have to imagine there’s an overlap for mental struggle too: the “pneuma” Nick Cave mentions creators breathe into their work.
What happens when we shift this to computers for convenience? With that in mind, let’s revisit my childhood opinion of struggle.
The Good Hidden In Struggle
Psychologist Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search For Meaning compared humanity to an arch: the more stress that’s placed on us, the stronger we become. Consequently, like a body in space with no pressure on it, we atrophy in the same way.
Technology has done wonderful things. It’s conquered diseases and bacteria which were deadly to us at one time. Moreover, it makes our lives easier. But with convenience, we lose something that goes unnoticed.
I couldn’t see it as I argued with my dad and well-meaning teachers. It damn near took illness to make me aware. The physical struggle of exercise, learning a martial art, and using my hands to fix things changed me both mentally and physically.
It makes me wonder what the convenience of delegating writing and similar activities to programs might do to us.
Nick Cave warns Leon it “renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary.”
Paul Graham says it stops us from thinking.
Viktor Frankl instructed his readers and patients that work, and the effort you put into it creates meaning. Conversely, we can lose that meaning.
Even the struggle of formulating my words here forced me to think, and hopefully, put a piece of myself into what you’re reading.
It’s something to think about as technology reshapes our world and tempts us into the embrace of its ever-expanding convenience. Don’t delegate the struggle of creation and thought. It has consequences.
Artificial Intelligence is a helpful program, not a way to live.
-Originally posted on Medium 8/14/23