my relationship with ai
i want to be honest. when people first talked about chatgpt on twitter a couple years ago, i was intrigued. i really, genuinely thought it could be something cool. the start of the futuristic realities i saw in scifi movies and books.
my first attempt at getting anything out of chatgpt was a series of silly prompts trying to convince the large language model it was now my personal assistant. i was going to be lesbian tony stark and needed my own jarvis.
i wanted it to help me figure out a daily schedule so i could stop procrastinating. this was shortly after confirming with a (human!) professional that i most likely, pretty much, have severe adhd. but that's a whole 'nother post.
this was before people started using ai to generate images and "ghibli-inspired" profile pictures for social media. this was before people applauded ai's ability to generate videos of will smith eating spaghetti, before ai influencers, and way before the current hike in ram prices.
to be honest, i tried the chatgpt-generated schedule for like a week, then forgot about it.
i guess it was naive of me to think an early version of chatgpt would magically fix that for me.
then, a couple years later, which was this year, i lost my job to ai.
without getting too specific, i'm paid to write. and the company i used to work for basically got outbid by ai marketing startups and lost some of their biggest clients. clients that contributed substantially to our paychecks.
i've since bounced back, and am fortunately still paid to write at my new job.
oh, and i've since developed an ick? or hatred? for ai. or generative ai. or specifically the unethical, thieving type.
i wish i could say this wasn't a direct result of my losing my old job to it. i mean, i guess that was a huge part of it. but to be honest, i'd also completely stopped engaging with chatgpt by then.
instead, i was chuckling at r/MyBoyfriendIsAI posts and quietly fist pumped every time a scummy "ai artist" was called out or exposed on twitter. i guess the cringing and laughter just deepened into something more than an ick once i realized this thing was going to get in the way of me making sure my cats get to eat. and have a home to live safely in.
so, to be really honest, i really did try to like ai and be excited about its potential. i really wanted something cool to come out of all this, back when it was first bubbling with hype. i really wanted ai to be the helpful savior every ai bro is swearing it is.
but it's done jack shit so far.
i'm tired of having ai features i didn't need or ask for getting shoved in my face. i'm tired of heaving that deep sigh whenever i realized i would need to replace my favorite app or browser or something because a ceo came out doubling down on ai.
i really, really wanted to like ai and generate silly cat pictures and videos and not care about carbon emissions and data centers. and i could, because it's so easy to stand behind something like ai.
but it's just a lot easier for me to admit when i can't do something, or when something just isn't for me.
i'd rather not be able to draw (whether by hand or digitally) than drool and giggle while typing elaborate prompts for this or that ai to generate the image i cannot draw.
i'd rather listen to the tons and tons of music available on the internet than have ai generate beats or chord progressions for me.
because it's okay that i don't know how to do these things or that i don't know how to do these things well.
i think a lot of people struggle with being okay with not being able to do something, and ai has successfully exploited that lack of self awareness.
i can't draw, can't dance, can't sing, and it takes me a while to solve problems, and that's fine with me.
i can write, and am proud and grateful that i'm able to make a living out of it. and i will always look down on the people who use ai to write instead of simply being okay with potentially not being a good writer.
we can't be everything. i can't be good at everything. that's okay. i don't have to be an artist or a music producer or a software developer. maybe next year i can learn, or maybe not. or maybe i'll learn and still be bad at them, because maybe they're not for me.