AI Saved My Life

AI saved my life. I don’t like to go into too many details, because that cheapens it—and invites pushback and negative comments—I have enough of both in my life!

It made all my dreams come true. then it allowed me room to dream more, big dreams. and it helped me accomplish all those, too!

Frankly, nothing I’ve heard from the AI Alarmists is any different than the predictable human pabulum and cant in the face of new technology/ies. VHS tapes were said to be the end of movie theaters, and that seems reasonable to me. Last year, global box office revenue was $8.66 billion, a number so staggeringly large it’s meaningless. But real. In the same way that “money” is real, of course: a human invention to enable the continuation of the barter/capitalist economies at any cost. But, hey—that’s what we’re all agreeing to do, right?

The thing is, I could argue against AI Alarmism until I’m blue in the face, but very few people will change their opinions in the face of my rational arguments (it’s my father’s birthday today, and he’s one of the few people I’ve encountered who will change his opinion when presented with rational arguments counter to them).

Why I need to say anything beyond that is…well, beyond me.

The AI is Bad for the Environment Argument really gets under my skin, especially that it wastes water. I’ve been obsessed with the idea of water waste since I was a kid. And as an adult, I got to interview the Director of the Little Patuxent Water Reclamation Plant, Robert Hindt. Because I made an effort.

I asked him flat-out: “Can you waste water? Isn’t it always moving through the water cycle? He concurred with an important qualification: “The problem isn’t ‘wasting water.’ It’s cleaning dirty water.’”

And speaking of dirt, the AI Alarmists are protecting something from what they see as “down and dirty AI [my words]”—I’m not sure what they’re protecting, although I believe it’s their anxiety about their children’s futures. I don’t have kids, so I am mercifully exempt from this anxiety. I feel panicked just considering what I would be thinking, saying, doing if I had kids. Probably engaging in the same kind of anxious hysteria. So why can’t the AI Alarmists say, “Akbi might have a sanguine, unique perspective because she’s not in the same boat as me…”

AI is said to be “bad for creatives.” Maybe creatives should get better at their jobs. Sorry—harsh but true! I’m a creative! And I’ve only become better at my creative pursuits faced with the challenge of accepting that I’m an utterly replaceable cog in the machine. Grow up and do the same, AI Alarmists.