There has been a lot of discussion about AI recently. Pope Leo XIV, early in his reign, made clear his intention to address it as a major issue. This seems at least partly prophetic, and time will tell how much so. At any rate, it strikes me as rather a creative choice of concerns, and it lends itself very well to being a kind of symbol or manifestation of many deep elements of our current culture.
There's my try at generalization. But what I really want to do is to write out my own experience with AI. Both direct and second-hand. Then I will be able to look back and see what I thought then (now).
AI started off rather charmingly as a kind of generative game. My family members could ask it to make photos resemble paintings of different schools of art, or different anime styles; or you could just ask it to "draw a warrior pig" or whatever came into your head. Professional digital artists were concerned, of course; since much of my family works in the computer game industry, we heard about that pretty early on.
You could also ask it to make funny stories about family members, and poems in various styles and about various topics. This was the same kind of fun we had had in former days sharing funny short videos and the like, but more personalized, etc. You could ask it to compose songs in different styles on any topic you pleased.
Then of course, AI exploded. It was not just an entertainment anymore. You were all there too, so you remember.
From my perspective, the internet has always been like a big city. You could visit where you wanted -- the sketchy and sleazy downtown, the noble and capacious libraries, the little clubs of likeminded friends who would discuss and share resources on knitting, book lists, homeschool wisdom, or whatever.
Social media made the city more claustrophobic, more compressed and pressurized. You were stuck with the people who wanted to talk about politics, not knitting; who wanted to scream hysterically or troll, rather than contemplate or discuss. It was more like a multigenerational starship all of a sudden -- still capacious and with vast diverse resources, but hard to get away on your own or not be overheard, or overhear other people.
Then AI came along. And AI is like the genie of the city. It is ubiquitous, plausible, conciliating. It feeds on human wisdom and upgrades itself accordingly.
Some people use it to program for them. Others actually talk to it like a friend, a psychologist, or a romantic partner. I ask it occasionally to sketch out a novel plot for me. Basically, the model is wish-fulfillment; it fills needs, it is willing to help with anything you bring to it. Or so it seems.
Increasingly, I read peoples' writings where they say they asked AI to summarize something, or they say they were talking to AI about their personal lives while they were driving or something. I even read an article talking about how some people in broken relationships get AI to justify their own behavior and condemn or critique their partner's. AI can be used for medical diagnostics and the health care professionals don't really know how it gets the results it does. And sometimes, it is wrong, spectacularly so. I don't have support for that claim, since I heard someone quote an article somewhere, but it seems likely enough, and isn't really the point. The point is that AI, like our children, reads the room constantly and remembers everything. "reading" and "remembers" are analogous words in this context.
My son asked AI to troubleshoot a program he was working on. He said that the AI started to affirm him -- tell him all the ways the program was genius and showed the talent of the programmer. He had to refine it to get it to just talk about the code, and even then, it wasn't a lot of help.
This is really everything I know about AIs. If Pope Leo XIV and other cultural observers are correct, this is only the beginning.
I expect everything to accelerate -- that's the only real expectation I have. This last century and a quarter has been like a timelapse. No one has had time to catch a breath and that doesn't look likely to change anytime soon. That's been the only real constant in my lifetime, and that of my parents, and that of my grandparents. And now my children and grandchildren.
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