Isla Renker-Darby
We live in an increasingly artificial world. Artificial intelligence writes in a bland, flat, and soulless way – ask it to write an essay and it will construct an eerily perfect piece of work. But this essay means nothing. It has been generated by an algorithm which has access to almost every resource out there but no access to its own thoughts, experience, or opinion. It is empty of nuance; it is monotonous. And frankly, it’s boring. Some have argued that AI is improving, becoming more ‘human’ in its writing style and therefore more useful. However, humans feel such deeply endured emotions, which then resonate through their work; AI does not. The notion that AI can write in an adequately human way and therefore is again useful is entirely untrue and harmful. We are veering close to a world where you cannot even assume human authorship behind what you see or read.
This last year has seen an exponential increase in AI-generated content, from summaries at the top of a Google search to those Italian brain-rot characters and memes of fake cats dancing. If you are on the internet, it is impossible to avoid, and many of us have become disillusioned – we’ve lost trust in the content we consume and feel cast aside in favour of these non-human entities. Almost every friend and peer my age I have spoken to is anxious about this huge uptick in AI content across the web. It’s almost not the content itself that is bad, but it is what it signifies – a shift away from the real, and into a strange, uncharted world of fake, invented, and often unintelligible algorithmically-created content. In a sense, we are walking through a new version of Dante’s ‘Hell’ in this digital age. The deeper we go, the more is revealed about technology’s ugly capabilities, which draw us further away from the real world.
One comment beneath an AI video on Instagram has stuck with me. They simply wrote, ‘We want real things.’ I have turned this over in my mind ever since. We need humans creating art – we always will. We need to hear and share our real lived experience, to connect with others, even just to have fun. We need to preserve our capacity to think, to wonder about the world, to talk with each other, form opinions and articulate them on our own. A human comes to any task with preconceived ideas and experiences that are entirely unique to them. This combination of previous knowledge allows one to write or create a distinctive and deeply personal piece of work, whether it be an essay for university, an article, or a journal entry; something that is earnest and true. This imaginative work is exactly what pushes humanity forward. But I’m afraid that in this new age of AI, in our busy lives filled with technological distractions, there will be no room left to imagine.
An MIT study found that the use of generative AI leads to low neural connectivity. Why are people not more frightened by this? Not only are we estranging ourselves from real things, but we are also dampening our ability to be those humans who produce real work. In this way, the problem is self-reinforcing. In a world dominated by AI, we need to hold onto our own intelligence, unique and irreplaceable.
The scariest thing is that we didn’t choose this, and we can’t opt out. AI corporations are locked into a race to create ever-powerful digital intelligence, and even the technocratic elites know that it will not end well. As tech billionaires pour money into funding AI, they simultaneously invest in remote bunkers and survival equipment. We are at the mercy of whatever they decide to do; whatever is efficient, drives profitability, and cuts labour costs.
We must actively choose to simplify our digital worlds and return to real things. Diaries filled with sprawl and uncertainty, paperback books, art created by the hands of humans, words written late and in a bleary-eyed frenzy. If life becomes governed by technology, it will lose its wonder; to quote Zizek, ‘a fully controlled existence is one bereft of meaning’. We need to reconsider what we value. When we use AI, we lose touch with our creativity and lose our very ability to appreciate human expression. If this appreciation is lost, will we cease to create entirely? Should we be challenging ourselves, holding ourselves to higher standards?
There are many things to worry about when it comes to AI. Environmental pollution, deepfakes, a society at the mercy of technocratic elites. But for me, the most tangible and frightening effect is the way it is taking away our creative integrity and imagination. I feel the beauty of the world slipping away and falling into second place behind this new sensational realm of generated content. It is possible to resist, and we can still fight for a future that is human.