On the Matter of Inhumanity

 On the Matter of Inhumanity

I feel the time has come to set out my stall on the evergrowing issue of AI and its use in society. And my stall is very simple.

I HATE it.

Why so dramatic a statement you may ask? Surely it’s just aharmless tool to aid in creativity and productivity? But as someone who livesher life positively vibrating with frustration at the injustices and unkindnessesof modern society, what I see is something that heavily magnifies both. Let meexplain.

I shall start with injustice. A very basic fact of AI thatpeople seem to forget is that is draws its knowledge from pre-existinginformation that it has been fed. Everything it creates and produces is takenfrom previous human endeavour – but often, it has been taken without the permissionor even the knowledge of the original creators and is now being used to undercutand undermine their own ability to make a living by creating free knock offcopies of their work.

And worse, much worse – it is even being used to replacethem. There is already talk of AI authored screenplays and scripts in the filmand TV industry. AI art is being used instead of hiring artists. Genuine humancreativity is being pushed aside in favour of an easy, cheap alternative. Andit isn’t just the creative industries that are being affected – ordinary,straightforward jobs are being pushed out of existence by it too. I’m sure we’veall suffered the “joys” of interacting with a customer services chatbot, as itstonewalls and blocks you from actually being able to get anywhere with a totallack of compassion for you as a person.

And total lack of compassion brings me to unkindness. AIdoesn’t care about people and sadly, that reflects a lot of modern profitdriven society. People talk of an idealised society where computers do all theworking and the thinking and we can just relax but do we really want to live ina world where existing as the unthinking, computer ruled blob people fromWALL-E is the best case scenario? A bunch of lazy humans who never troubletheir brains in any way, shape or form?

And knowing the selfish, money-ruled nature of modern existence,I don’t believe that “best case” is what would actually happen. Far more likelyis that AI will simply put vast numbers of people out of a job and massivelyincrease poverty and destitution in the name of saving money for business. Butthese businesses lack vision for where do they think their profits will comefrom when half the world is unemployed? And more, the world of business andindeed often these days of politics seem to view people as commodities to beused and mined or as a source of profit or custom, but not cared about orlooked after as people and to quote the late, great Terry Pratchett “Evilbegins when you treat people as things.”

Because AI represents the ultimate in inhumanity. Not justin and of itself, but allowing and enabling humans themselves to behave ininhumane ways with far greater ease. It is speeding up loss of the simple factthat what matters is society is not ease of existence or how much profit onecan rake in, but PEOPLE. Human creativity is far more valuable that anything acomputer can cook up from the scraps their endeavours. The quality of humanexistence is far more important than any amount of money. Caring about otherhumans should not be pushed aside in favour of protecting a profit margin. Andthese basic truths are getting increasingly lost. And AI is, as mentioned,magnifying the ability of other humans to lose them.

At the end of the day, I know AI is just a tool. My issue isthe inhumanity of those who will make use of it and what they will use it to do.And that is what I hate it for.