Artificial Intelligence (AI) options are flooding the market with promises of convenience, efficiency, competitive advantage, and financial savings. Algorithms supposedly adapt to highlight more of what we need and want. Many people view AI and algorithms as primarily helpful tools. Others are cautious because such technology displaces human jobs. Additionally, AI and algorithms are questionably built upon data or works obtained without permission or without fully realized permission. Just read up on the recent accusations against Meta for using pirated literary works via LibGen. Sadly, some authors found up to 15 years of their life's literary works were pirated. The utmost challenge, however, is that in a fast-paced society like ours, routines are constantly refined by convenience. Simply by moving too quickly, we could overlook all we might be losing as a result of integrating AI.
Even with the privacy and security concerns related to AI and algorithms, encouraging individual discernment should remain essential. We discover our truths by exploring for ourselves…learning for ourselves. Digging deep. Hence the parent-child relationship, where a child steps away from shelter to learn hard lessons and truths for themselves. But there’s so much noise in the world around us…so many opinions, and so much information. How do we even begin to distill it? We start by distilling what’s most important to us, analyzing the data and outcomes as it relates to ourselves and our neighbor. Additionally, we can distill our present through humanity’s past, which reveals cyclical patterns of human strengths and weaknesses. These patterns alert us to the strengths and weaknesses within ourselves, so we might improve upon the here and now. Access to accurate, complete history and data is a separate rabbit hole.
Thankfully, we’re all given different resources and capabilities—because we can’t be all things to all people. When we develop and share the resources and capabilities we do have, it elevates our existence, personally and societally. While technology can offer tremendous advantages, may we never forget that it’s powered by fellow, fallible human beings who we’re trusting to do more and more thinking for us. If we trade in too much of our individual abilities to distill and discern in exchange for convenience and comforts, how skilled will we be at finding the right words for ourselves, or recognizing a plateau of AI-generated sameness or even falsehoods?
So, let’s make the time to dig deep. Explore beyond page one of the online search results, and question those results. Take a much-needed journey of growth by crafting our own painstaking prose or other works of art. Consider putting down our smartphones more often, and consuming less and upcycling more. Let’s call out the lie that we have to produce to the detriment of our health and our most important relationships in order to be enough. Sure, a strong work ethic is important, but let’s give ourselves room to think by reading short stories and tomes, praying, meditating, journaling, dancing, gathering in community, contemplating and debating, and agreeing to disagree in love. Let’s prepare to be wrong sometimes, too, and remain disciplined to recognize truth at our very core, without it being served up to us on a silver tech device.