AI: Abomination or Blessing?

Old wisdom from a new Frankenstein

“AI Abomination” as imagined by AI

Driving over the Whitestone Bridge in New York, where an overnight rainstorm had flooded parts of the road, I hit a pothole. The car bounced with a splash as my iPhone crackled with a conversation between Joe Rogan and Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, about the pros and cons of AI and what surprised him the most (the types of jobs lost) and if he thought AI would be a net benefit for humanity (in the long-term).

I gritted my teeth and held the wheel and thought that out of the industrial revolution, the tech revolution and the second tech revolution, we missed the infrastructure revolution. Swerving a puddle glimmering with tires spinning, I thought how crazy it was to live in a city broken and born every day by the dreams of the people, not the promises they made but the promises of the people and the predictions of what they would see and how they would be.

Rumbling up and over the Whitestone Bridge and thinking of OpenAI’s 80 billion dollar valuation, I couldn’t help but think that today’s bridge and railroad enthusiasts are the same people in charge of making sure everyone’s Uber is priced the exact right amount for the exact mindset of the exact rider.

All the builders have gone on to build the metaverse: where reality is up for interpretation and machines are human and, most importantly, last of all, art is AI and AI is art because machines are human.

Meditations and Mechanics

You’re an alien tourist. Walk a few blocks in any city. What would you think?

First: cars are the dominant species.

Second: the servant-like human species doesn’t care what the outside looks like or feels like: we show a preference to enter portals of remote immediate human connection that are more stable than our material infrastructure. A bridge breaking is a blip compared to a data breach.

Ascending back out of Earth’s orbit, departing alien tourists may pass the estimated 170 million satellites rotating the planet and observe that modern humans are united by the distant satellites of our souls rather than the crushing immediate warmth of a hug when touch means more than memory. Monk-like, we have founded a future where mind is matter and peace is a flow state.

In his interview with Sam Altman, Rogan suggests we might be the last generation of unplugged humans. The integration with AI will become, literally, a no-brainer. Just like smartphones. For artists, this new medium is all menace, no miracle: AI can make songs, voices, paintings, videos, novels, technical copy and ad copy and brochure copy and essays with a few words as a prompt.

But what if we decided AI was a tool, not a threat?

What if we decided AI art represents not the void of art as we know it but a technological shift like the printing press or the typewriter, word processor and cloud software?

What if AI was friend, not foe?

What would Frankenstein say?

Come back to Litverse on Saturday for the pulse-pounding conclusion of “AI: Art or Abomination?” to find out it isn’t AI or art but you, the eyes behind this very screen, that is the abomination. JK. It’s about Frankenstein. The book. Subscribe!