Human Created Drivel

Here you get my genuine nonsense!

Much has been made of Artificial Intelligence, and the impact it will have on our society.

Those who write, as a group, seem particularly worried about the implications, but certainly we see those same worries from all who create. It’s fear of change, but it is also fear of the unemployment line. Writers and other creators are afraid that they will be replaced by some computer somewhere.

I suppose that there is another fear as well; that readers will be fed nothing but a diet of machine generated propaganda.

Evil computer

Given those fears, please be assured that everything you read here on Emeth, from me, is 100% genuine human created.¹ You get all my rants and drivel, straight from my mind to yours, without any Ai putting its stamp upon it. I write it all, the good and the bad.

I write all of this rather tongue and cheek, but in all honesty, it is a serious thing.

In a nutshell, Ai for the written word isn’t hard to understand, or even complicated. Tech guys, with far more available cash than a sense of morality, ignore copyright laws and intellectual property rights in order to create huge vacuum cleaners that scour the internet, sucking up every single phrase ever written by anyone.

All of this never ending hoovering results in a dustbin containing everything ever written by anyone about anything.

Then some random stranger asks this great Ai dustbin to write something about something. And a few seconds later, words pop out, short or long based on the inquirers inquiry, about whatever on earth was asked about.

In other-words, I can tell the great dustbin that I need an 800 word essay about that bright Freemason, the Chevalier Andrew Ramsay and his famous Masonic Oration, and a few seconds later out will pop a properly written essay, with the correct word count, all about that Mason and his world famous Masonic talk.

Almost always, everything will be correct, and it will contain the known facts and conclusions.

But, that’s the rub:

It will contain the known conclusions.

It will tell us what humans have concluded.

It won’t posit any conclusions of its own. Because it can’t. Because it is nothing but a dustbin containing all the words written by humans describing the conclusions that those humans have made. It doesn’t think, it repackages. It isn’t Commander Data, it’s a giant vacuum machine.

In my heart, I’m a farmer. It’s how I grew up, it’s the culture that created me. One of my grandfathers grew beef. To harvest the beef, someone is hired to come to the field, humanely shoot and dress the cow.

Let’s think of that cow as the great Ai dustbin. It’s got Rib Eye steaks inside of it.

But it isn’t in a form that can be cooked for dinner. It’s a whole damn cow, and there are only four of us.

So, it has to be cut and packaged so that we can just get the four Rib Eye steaks that we need for dinner.

That’s all text Ai is. A repackaging of that which already exists, but in a new form.

It may write things differently, it may package ideas differently, but it can never have an idea of its own. All the ideas were packed into that dustbin by someone, sometime. By a real genuine human.

Ai may be able to create reports for us, to answer emails for us, and to do all sorts of other text based tasks for us, but it cannot have that Ah Ha moment. It can’t scream Eureka! as it discovers some new and wonderful conclusion.

Only humans can do that.

It can’t be a thought leader, because it can’t think.

And that is why Ai can not, and will not replace those who write.

Because if a society ever came about where no new conclusion could be made, beyond the repackaging of conclusions already made, all progress would stop. The world would enter a new Dark Age, and humanity as we understand it would be no more.

Text based Ai is a tool. I would argue that it is a bit of an absurd tool that will do nothing to improve productivity. But, it is a tool. It certainly won’t destroy the art of our writers. For only humans can push our world forward.

As for me, I’ll be here. I’ll be here drawing some solid conclusions about our Ancient Craft while continuing to work towards our shared vision of creating truly Legendary Freemasonry.

I’ll also be here, of course, accidentally drawing poor conclusions, for the human condition demands imperfection.

But, it will always be human.

1. With the exception of the occasional image. Sometimes, as with this post, I do use images generated with Ai. Other images are licensed from their respective photographers, and some are taken of me by fellow Masons.