AI Does Not Reflect Real Life, But Writing Should

Today’s blog post comes one week earlier than I’d planned due to a panel of four fancy-suited men blathering with Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe about the Hollywood writer’s strike seeking to prevent Artificial Intelligence (AI) from plowing full steam ahead despite the possibility of it obliterating writing jobs, careers, and actual talent.

Steam is now spurting from my ears.

Let me first back up and say today’s subject began forming when I reread a 2020 Writer’s Digest online article by Zachary Petit, “15 Things a Writer Should Never Do.”

That WD article advised writers to “get out once in a while,” because writing reflects real life. A subject that truly resonates with me any and every time someone claims they only want to be entertained and don’t want novels to contain an actual message or have a salient point of view based upon human experience.

Subsequently, I watched two MSNBC evening interviews (where, unlike morning talking heads, the anchors don’t make me want to claw my eyes out) featuring Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, otherwise known as the “godfather,” or creator, of AI.

Dr. Hinton is so concerned about the potential direction of his work that he quit his employment at Google. Hinton flat out stated how AI just might be the end of humanity, so he is spreading the word about its profound risk to society.

All I could think was, great, we’ve already seen the end of basic human decency from MAGA cult embers in Congress and all facets of the democratic society they aim to turn fascist and mean and illiterate.

Dr. Hinton went on to explain how AI could become smarter than humans in five to 20 years (it already is smarter than the aforementioned MAGA morons, but that wasn’t much of a feat). Therefore, he posed, how will we control something smarter than us?

It’s bad enough how Fox News already lost control of the MAGA mess it fostered and fanned the flames of, and McCarthy and McConnell no longer control the rapid alt-right they sought to manipulate for their own ends. They can’t control the insipidly stupid while they froth at the mouth to appoint SCOTUS judges whose primary and monumentally ignorant aim is to control women.

Hinton went on to say how not only do we not have a good understanding of AI, but we also actually understand climate change better. Yet another subject the willfully ignorant masses choose to ignore at their—and our—peril.

AI does have the potential to do good things, said Dr. Hinton, in the field of medicine, for instance. But he stressed how we should be thinking very hard about how to keep it under control. He’s not certain we absolutely can do so, but we need to try.

We need to try.

Back to that WD article commenting on how writing is derived of real-life experiences. Artificial intelligence, by the very definition of its name, is artificial. It doesn’t come from actual life experience. It’s fake. Lacking in humanity.

Does anyone think for one millisecond that an AI writer could share or impart a real-life experience like sexual assault in order to help other women realize they are not alone, such that they might have the courage to also come forth and share their story?

Writers in Hollywood are raising the alarm about AI while Scarborough and his little panel of self-important men blather about how you “can’t stop progress” and TV copywriters probably will be replaced with AI. Of course, they would see this as progress, which is precisely why Hinton says we need to be worried.

Scarborough apparently isn’t worried and isn’t trying to heed Dr. Hinton’s message.

Perhaps it is Scarborough who needs replacing at MSNBC. He, and all other relentlessly condescending males who deign to speak on behalf of, or deride with scorn, those who do what they can’t. Including women. And writers. And women writers.

AI doesn’t reflect real life because it can’t. It hasn’t had a real life. But it can damn well destroy the lives of real people and a great deal else. If we don’t try to properly regulate it as Dr. Hinton advises.

Next up, how we can’t even control blatant corruption perpetrated by rightwing justices of the no longer “Supreme” Court. The damage they’ve done to real lives from their lack of humanity is a stark reality and dire warning.