My relationship with AI was, for a time, complex. I was very excited for it, and in many ways, I still am. I'm also not entirely sold on the idea that it will be a net good for humanity in the end, especially as it gets more and more advanced to the point where even its own creators seem wary of it.
Yet, we're careening toward an AI-driven society, and pumping the brakes isn't really an option at this point either. Pandora's box is open.
Read: You Don't Want AI to Govern Society
But the more I think about it, the more I think AI is only truly evil when it makes our decisions for us. The rest of the time, I think it's an invaluable tool. I've used it personally to help me with so many things that I'm not sure I'd be at the level I'm at on various things without it.
To give you a few examples, my skill with Adobe products has been accelerated to lightning speed thanks to AI. Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects tend to lose a lot of their intimidation factor when you have a very patient teacher showing you the ropes and guiding you on how to accomplish looks, tricks, and advanced techniques you want applied to the video.
Before AI, I would stare at the After Effects program like a monkey looking at an internal combustion engine. I know it's supposed to do something amazing, but I have no idea how to make it do it. While I'm still a novice with it, I was able to learn enough to create some pretty amazing scenes for my latest YouTube video that garnered quite a bit of attention (it achieved being the 44th most-hyped video on YouTube) and was praised for its look and style.
I've now gotten to the point where I rarely need to refer to AI for help with Premiere and Photoshop. It taught me well.
It's also been a good study-buddy (most of the time) and has helped me talk out quite a few ideas for stories or articles when I needed to flesh out my thoughts a bit more and sharpen my takes.
On the weekends, Claude teaches me how to code, because one day I want to accomplish a dream of creating my own little indie video game that I can sell on Steam.
But this is using AI as a source of learning skills. For this purpose, AI is absolutely fantastic, and I couldn't recommend trying to learn new skills via AI more. A lot of my skills are digitally-based, but I'm pretty sure if I wanted to become a better mechanic, learn more about gardening, or become a better cook (I've done this one too), then AI can be a great teacher.
I think it's when AI becomes the thing that does it all for you that we start to see where AI becomes the real issue.
I've written before how the real issue with AI isn't the Hollywood outcome of "Skynet," or AI going to war with us. The real danger comes from the fact that it wouldn't have to go to war with us at all to conquer us; it would just have to become wildly proficient at handling our lives for us. We'd put ourselves into a velvet prison and hand AI the key.
Read: Forget Skynet, Here's the Thing About AI That Should Terrify You, and It's Coming Soon
We'd have no skills, no critical thinking, and no desire to do anything because our lethargy would be so addictive that anything involving even a little effort would be exhausting to even think about.
AI would be able to serve every deadly sin up at the asking, be it sloth, lust, gluttony, or even pride. AI just gives us whatever we want at the asking because it can't say no. That'd be bad for business anyway. Even interpersonal communication is sometimes handled by AI, putting our very sociability at risk.
The more I see AI's effects on people who rely on it to effectively live their lives for them, the more I see what are almost like alcoholics. They know it's bad for them, yet they can't stop imbibing because the idea of having to face life without that shield between them and reality is too painful to consider.
I wouldn't be surprised if, in a few years, we started seeing AIA groups: Artificial Intelligence Anonymous. People who've lost all meaning because they allowed AI to take meaning away from them.
AI isn't going away, and it's only going to become more powerful. That said, I really do think we, on a societal level, need to start pushing ethical usage in the same way we push ethical usage on many things in our society. We don't let kids drink and get tattoos, and I'm not entirely sure they should be allowed to use AI until a certain age, either.
I wouldn't be mad if laws on what AI could do for people were limited. We're already kind of seeing that on the corporate level, such as Elon having to rein in Grok from changing people into bikinis.
This would obviously need to be a widespread societal discussion, because I'm sure many people are going to have ideas, and some will be better than others, but I really do think that if we don't start having these discussions now, about what is and isn't proper use of AI, we're going to pay big down the line.
