The obit thing reminded me of how my husband went to a wedding recently and the bride and groom admitted to (bragged about?) using chatGPT to write their vows. I couldn't get over the idea of my partner standing in front of me not even able to tell me they love me in their own words. It's like, at this point who are the vows even for? Who did you want to hear those words? For what purpose? It's dark days out here.
I believe most people don't want the responsibility of being responsible for their own lives and willingly give it away to any charlatan that offers to relieve them of the necessity.
Seen in this context, many/most of those who believe AI will lead to some new utopia are assuming it will make their lives easier by assuming responsibility for them, or that they will have much easier work since AI can make their work easier and faster without realizing that none of the benefits are going to go to them, but to the owners who replace them with machines.
It's scary how closely we're mirroring 'The Butlerian Jihad' from 'Dune' - handing over our thinking capabilities, and thus our free will, to machines, with the hopes that it'll "set us free." So many stories, from just this year alone, remind me of the ChatGPT obituaries and eulogies you mentioned - which is a frightening thing in itself. A growing number of people are offloading so much of their thinking onto these predictive machines and by doing so, are surrendering, slowly but surely, greater amounts of their humanity in the process. How can one remain tethered to our material reality when they've replaced reality with AI chatbots who reinforce their most problematic tendencies and behaviors (which are largely motivated by the violent system of capitalism)? It's a dark time were living in when people can be so utterly dismissive of the humanity art requires in order for it to be truly special, unique, and meaningful. Surrendering the very parts of ourselves that makes us human just speaks to the palpable desperation that exists among everyday people struggling to survive in the late-stage erosion of our current hellish existence. So many deals with the devil are made on a daily basis in the hopes that a cure for the capital crunch is just within arms reach, when in reality, it becomes further away the more we try and compromise with an uncompromising cycle of systemic and structural violence. A growing number of people have resigned themselves to the detrimental "TINA" mindset of capitalist realism. As tough as it is and always has been, that's where our praxis must come into play. By proclaiming loudly what is happening, we can help those people move and by doing so, they recognize the chains that have long locked them into place. The work ahead of us is immense and overwhelming yet, despite the monstrous behemoth attempting to crush us beneath its belligerent weight, our revolutionary optimism continues to burn bright and refuses to be extinguished. We must always remember, as you once so beautifully wrote: "we owe each other everything." Keep being the revolutionary human being that you are Scarlet. The work you do is vital and the people are better for it as a result.
I agree with you but I will offer you that a small (but growing) number of people find their main communities online. Most/All of them to only be disappointed when despite the initial validation they feel, nothing much changes in their material life. And these could be any particular type of person, initially I'm not only talking about more than the average lonely person.
Doesn't it seem that for a subset of lonely disaffected people, their online interactions increase in proliferation but decrease in actual dialogue? They are always online and simply repeating the same kinds of statements of outrage or grievance back and forth?
They fall out of regular normal interactions with people irl. Some of them continue to lean into this. For some it's not a severe problem other than they've created a life out of how they present themselves "authentically" living but they must maintain a certain appearance, never step out of the bounds of marketability lest monetization gets shut off, leaving them very unprepared to rejoin the rest of us. I'm not talking about any specific political ideology at all, it's more defined by a refusal to acknowledge this exists. How convenient for the worst people in the world (not the influencers or whatever).
Then you get people living online as their identity that have decided there is nothing redeemable in our diverse but segregated and unequal society and so nothing is sacred and nothing matters. This is more of a problem.
How to reach people before they've fallen all the way into these holes is something that I don't have an answer for and I'm personally not very good at attempting to try. Helping people locally and working alongside them in simple community work can ameliorate the weird things I might say irl, and that's tremendously helpful.
The obit thing reminded me of how my husband went to a wedding recently and the bride and groom admitted to (bragged about?) using chatGPT to write their vows. I couldn't get over the idea of my partner standing in front of me not even able to tell me they love me in their own words. It's like, at this point who are the vows even for? Who did you want to hear those words? For what purpose? It's dark days out here.
I believe most people don't want the responsibility of being responsible for their own lives and willingly give it away to any charlatan that offers to relieve them of the necessity.
Seen in this context, many/most of those who believe AI will lead to some new utopia are assuming it will make their lives easier by assuming responsibility for them, or that they will have much easier work since AI can make their work easier and faster without realizing that none of the benefits are going to go to them, but to the owners who replace them with machines.
at war with eachother? we're at war with ourselves
It's scary how closely we're mirroring 'The Butlerian Jihad' from 'Dune' - handing over our thinking capabilities, and thus our free will, to machines, with the hopes that it'll "set us free." So many stories, from just this year alone, remind me of the ChatGPT obituaries and eulogies you mentioned - which is a frightening thing in itself. A growing number of people are offloading so much of their thinking onto these predictive machines and by doing so, are surrendering, slowly but surely, greater amounts of their humanity in the process. How can one remain tethered to our material reality when they've replaced reality with AI chatbots who reinforce their most problematic tendencies and behaviors (which are largely motivated by the violent system of capitalism)? It's a dark time were living in when people can be so utterly dismissive of the humanity art requires in order for it to be truly special, unique, and meaningful. Surrendering the very parts of ourselves that makes us human just speaks to the palpable desperation that exists among everyday people struggling to survive in the late-stage erosion of our current hellish existence. So many deals with the devil are made on a daily basis in the hopes that a cure for the capital crunch is just within arms reach, when in reality, it becomes further away the more we try and compromise with an uncompromising cycle of systemic and structural violence. A growing number of people have resigned themselves to the detrimental "TINA" mindset of capitalist realism. As tough as it is and always has been, that's where our praxis must come into play. By proclaiming loudly what is happening, we can help those people move and by doing so, they recognize the chains that have long locked them into place. The work ahead of us is immense and overwhelming yet, despite the monstrous behemoth attempting to crush us beneath its belligerent weight, our revolutionary optimism continues to burn bright and refuses to be extinguished. We must always remember, as you once so beautifully wrote: "we owe each other everything." Keep being the revolutionary human being that you are Scarlet. The work you do is vital and the people are better for it as a result.
I agree with you but I will offer you that a small (but growing) number of people find their main communities online. Most/All of them to only be disappointed when despite the initial validation they feel, nothing much changes in their material life. And these could be any particular type of person, initially I'm not only talking about more than the average lonely person.
Doesn't it seem that for a subset of lonely disaffected people, their online interactions increase in proliferation but decrease in actual dialogue? They are always online and simply repeating the same kinds of statements of outrage or grievance back and forth?
They fall out of regular normal interactions with people irl. Some of them continue to lean into this. For some it's not a severe problem other than they've created a life out of how they present themselves "authentically" living but they must maintain a certain appearance, never step out of the bounds of marketability lest monetization gets shut off, leaving them very unprepared to rejoin the rest of us. I'm not talking about any specific political ideology at all, it's more defined by a refusal to acknowledge this exists. How convenient for the worst people in the world (not the influencers or whatever).
Then you get people living online as their identity that have decided there is nothing redeemable in our diverse but segregated and unequal society and so nothing is sacred and nothing matters. This is more of a problem.
How to reach people before they've fallen all the way into these holes is something that I don't have an answer for and I'm personally not very good at attempting to try. Helping people locally and working alongside them in simple community work can ameliorate the weird things I might say irl, and that's tremendously helpful.