The Future Starts Here
Generative AI as such isn’t necessarily bad—in a different timeline, the technology would have been implemented into software tools where it makes sense, and development would have been ecologically, economically, and societally sane.
Yet, even a terrible and purposefully maliciously misguided app like ChattyPITA (the term my friends in Japan use for ChatGPT and generative AI chatbots in general) can be adapted and transformed into a useful tool if you put your mind to it. Here’s an example. A friend of mine has an eight-year-old son with (hopefully mild) learning problems and concentration issues. The son, with his father’s assistance, devised the following approach to address several difficult learning subjects in one process that he also happens to enjoy a lot:
- He writes a short text in English on the computer (lessons involved: typing; writing/composition in English, English spelling, English grammar).
- He lets ChattyPITA translate his text into 4th-grader Japanese (which involves around 650 kanji on that level).
- He examines the output, spots the inevitable gross translation errors, and devises prompts to fix them (lessons involved: Japanese reading comprehension, error spotting, thought expression, instruction formulation).
- He refreshes his kanji memory on the way and relearns all the kanji that slipped his memory (lessons involved: kanji repetition, relearning, and memory reinforcement).
- He recreates the finished text in handwriting with an extra focus on grammar (lessons involved: kanji memory reinforcement, stroke order, stroke direction, kana/grammar).
Yes, this could be the raw sketch for a dedicated and sophisticated app, which would be the Good.
Instead, what we have—for out-of-the-box use—is a boot-licking error and ego manufacturing engine with slot machine mechanics for the dispensation of stolen goods that excels in bad advice, paternalistic self-confidence, and suicide recommendations. Which, you guessed it, is the Ugly.
And then we have ChattyPITA and everything similar as eager agents of and accelerants to the pending ecological catastrophe, economic collapse, and rise of the authoritarian state, thanks to a tech sector helmed by fascist ghouls with a deep disgust for democratic processes and ordinary people, to whom the putrid stench rising from their open purses when paying their obeisances to the Mad King smells sweeter than wine. This, of course, is the Bad.
Now, my argument.
Condemning people wholesale for using ChattyPITA reproduces the manufactured carbon footprint fallacy, only set off by bottom-up (moral) panic instead of corporate top-down propaganda. I can understand the reflex, but let’s not do this. People use what exists. People drive cars, smoke cigarettes, buy from Amazon, use Google. What needs to change is the political framework, into one that nudges market forces in the right direction with a well-devised mix of limitations, prices, incentives, and fines that hurt. Will that happen? That’s what we should put our energy into, to make that come about, not into vilifying people for using generative AI. Not against the Good, not against the Ugly, but against the Bad.
Which doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t criticize people or kick them off our feeds and communication environments for uses we find offensive, starting with everything that makes use of stolen property and is ugly as fuck to boot—images, texts, videos, or the ever-increasing “chill” and “ambience” and “jazz” slop population on YouTube. Or can’t or shouldn’t criticize colleagues and friends, which I do, for having ChattyPITA suggest the structure and “research” the content for their lectures or essays or chapters. Not because they’re using stolen goods, I don’t think that’s applicable here, but because both structuring and researching are critical parts of the creative processes intrinsic to teaching, learning, and writing. (Also, with regard to structure, there’s the “content of the form” condition that profoundly shapes our perception, which people in the Western cultural sphere in particular love to forget, neglect, or actively dismiss.)
If you have something valuable to add or some interesting point to discuss, I’ll be looking forward to meeting you at Mastodon!