I may not be able to fully understand a lot of things in this world, yet people, and their behaviors as a whole presents itself to me more than others I have found. Curiosities, and pondering has revealed something going on that I think should at least be said if not studied.
I have been watching the headlines and by-lines as all of the AI news hits our collective consciousness. They contain normal unease with new things and a whole bunch of “what if” doom saying. The thing that I have noticed more and more is not the positions people take on AI, but how they go about getting those positions. For someone that is accustomed to small talk taking over the long thinking, this one aspect hits home more and more as time goes by. What we should notice, and be aware of is not necessarilly the computer AI, but the personal AI happening. AI in this case is what I call Apathetic Inteltainment. It is a parasite to our thinking that has a long and entrenched history already, and is now undoing the best of our evolution.
I have been watching this happen without a word for it. It is a slow motion erosion of even the best of minds. There is this belief that we are doing things that aren’t actually happening, that we are engaging somehow with thoughts, likes, dislikes, upvotes, and other interactions. But that is far from the truth, the truth is we are allowing an infection to creep along in our ability to think for ourselves and it is just getting worse. In the news this week was a piece from the Associated Press and their desire to do buy outs for legacy newspaper contracts. That may not sound like much, but in the big picture of things it rings with some other troubling signs. The legacy newspapers were always just that, dependable, honest as they could be, journalists. Which for older minds reads – legally responsible for the information that they publish. That part is almost gone, that lasting trust and manner of safeguarding the facts that we had in place for years. This is still an aspect of this we haven’t noticed, there are not a lot of ways left anymore for reporting online, or through various platforms to be called to account, to be held liable, to be bound to truth. The AP story is just a small example of getting away from those things that we as a people supported and invested in for generations.
We used to aggregate our information with plenty of thinking, there wasn’t a next available input, or other thought. The quickest answers at that time were more likely found in a public library through the Dewy decimal system. We were left with what we knew and what we found out and it dictated that we think about things. Just as now, we didn’t always do a deep dive into the story, but we thought about it. As things have changed and our outside world was engulfed into the digital realm, the manner in which information changes hands and minds have changed a lot more than simply a disappearance of newspapers. It is the consumption and overconsumption of raw information, misinformation, lies, deceit, and every other manner available to humankind, in every format that we can imagine as well. That kind of consumption does not lead to thinking, but to shut down, a normal reaction to too much information. That shut down leads to a sense of apathy, and other-ness, someone else will take care of that, I just ignore that stuff, I don’t do – fill in the blank.
Even the very thing I am doing now, writing about this on a tiny blog in the middle of nowhere is part of the issue. AI hits the news, I write about it, someone shares it or not, a side is chosen, I stood for something today. That would be all fine and dandy if that’s all it was, but that isn’t the whole truth. Our minds are being reconditioned to infer action and engagement where in all truths there isn’t any. Liking this post will not change the world, even if everyone on earth liked it, it’s still just words and inactions rolled into a piece on a blog. No policy changed, no organizing, no protest of any effect, and then it’s onto finding the next bit of information to save the world.
There are many facets to it too, the things we simply just do now instead of think. The things that come along and change without apparent notoriety, the editors are removed, context is stripped down, and speed replaces reflection. “I saw something, I reacted, I’m informed” There is no synthesis there, no real “thing” happening. There is the political engagement theater too of course, I shared a post, I argued in the comments, I feel aligned with a side/position. But that leaves no organizing, no policy engagement, no real world impact. But the dopamine and our various other internal chemistry is telling us we did more, we did do something, and we will be rewarded for it. Expression replaces action. We do this with our exterior consumption, something gets labeled good or bad, we buy or buy into the “right” thing and feel morally aligned. Yet the supply chain is untouched, nothing has changed at all. Consumption replaces contribution, but we feel better about ourselves, so yay!
The reason this all goes undetected and permissible is because we don’t really see it. It’s the smokers lungs caught up in the right now effects without seeing that it is causing cancer or irreparable harm. Things like this get uncovered when, like myself, you see the patterns in your own behavior, the lack of a full picture, but there’s still a confidence that you still know enough until pressed on the topic and it all comes falling down. The small talk of thinking will not do us any favors going forward as things appear simply black or white, yes or no, simplistic. Life and living is full of colors we need to make note of, apathetic inteltaiment is just another phase we are going and have been going through for quite some time. Until we can understand what these processes are doing to us I don’t think we should only worry about the computerized AI, but also the human kind, the other AI.
