Jack and the AI beanstalk
I love writing. But what happens to that passion when everything I produce is soulless? All I write are endless social media posts and articles conveying how yet another startup is the next big thing; the big disruptor doing things “differently”. The type of content the algorithms love.
The dangers of romanticizing what is both a hobby and your full-time occupation are clear. Work is not always going to be fun — it can’t be — and as a result, this activity, which you usually enjoy and is a big part of your personality, is dragged down by what you have to do. At this point, I’d sooner outsource my production to one of the new-fangled AI bots, than write another tone-deaf piece touting how this newest company “cares”. And no one would bat an eye, right? ChatGPT and the other soldiers in its phalanx are going to save the world, right?
Despite basing all of its capabilities on existing content produced by humans, pundits say this new “intelligence” is going to change everything. It can make anything for you! It can produce shows, write essays and poems. It can even take tests — and pass them!
But instead of questioning what the advent of this technology says about knowledge and education, about creativity — about life — we all just jump in, cannonball, with as big of a splash as possible. Despite its obvious shortcomings — despite all of the morally questionable uses for it — advocates cling to it like Jack and the Beanstalk. AI is supposed to be the next big thing, after all.
Of course, we all know what happens in that story. Jack was on his way to the market to sell his family’s last cow. On his way there, he is offered a hat full of magic beans for the cow. Jack gladly takes the trade. His mother is furious, and throws the beans out. The next morning, the beans have grown into a massive beanstalk reaching up into the sky, above the clouds.
Much like artificial intelligence has made an impression on a lot of people, the magic beans and the beanstalk opened a new world to reckless Jack. But that world was also inhabited by a human-eating giant: ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an English man: Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.’
In the same vein, many have warned about the dangers of AI; it has been a staple of science fiction for decades. Most of the arguments, both real and imagined, circle around distant futures of robot world-domination. But almost none of them talk about the detriment of human creation, of art, in favor of faceless content overload in the spirit of the algorithmic average. That is how creative work becomes soulless. “Work smarter, not harder” say the advocates. I say nothing worthwhile ever came without hard work. It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, no one would do it. There are no magic beans.
Unlike many stories for children, Jack and the Beanstalk has no real moral to its story. In fact, it is fairly immoral. Jack’s reckless and irresponsible behavior nearly drives his family into ruin, before the beans grow into the beanstalk. When he climbs the stalk and reaches the new world, he steals gold from the giant, before having to flee for his life and chop down the beanstalk when the giant wants the gold back. The parallels to artificial intelligence are easy to draw. Maybe there’s a lesson here, after all? Else, the AI shall grind our bones to make their bread.
Fee-fi-fo-fum.
