No affiliation, but no surprise either.
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Plenty of good read/listen of people like Manfred Spitzer (‘Dementia Digital’ and few others) or Jonathan Heidt (‘The Anxious Generation’, or discussions such as Unsupported browser).
Car navigation, smartphones, Google, now AI - all dumbing down the user, making our brain something like just an interface and some processing power to add to the hive mind.
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@rogerh113 Thank you for sharing this. I’ve written about similar topics a few times. You can check out here:
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Yeah, my mental health has improved since removing socials from my phone 6 months ago. I think another HUGE issue is Ai usage - like chat gpt etc, people are not thinking for themselves anymore, it’s terrifying. And some think that the ai is sentient or a deity… we are going to be in for a bumpy ride 
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The problem, too, is how genuinely helpful ChatGPT 5 can be for research. Not saying it’s perfect, but it is addicting once you get a taste. And if you look past all the AI slop images everywhere, engines like Flux 1.1 are getting crazy good for images with the right prompts. We are definitely headed for uncertainty and an overall cheapening of everything that has to do with media, entertainment, and our lives. The scary part too is when ChatGPT is just straight up wrong. Reddit is supposedly the top website that AI combs through and boy that is not the best source for anything anymore imo.
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AI is primarily helpful if you doubt your own capability, or don’t want to invest the time to do it yourself.
Recently heard from a friend of the wife that she composed a ‘personal’ anniversary card for her husband using AI. Wow, who would not want something as heartfelt as that ??
A friend that records and composes music as a hobbyist just told me how helpful AI is in mixing to optimize sound quality and producing a better quality musical product. Wondering if he puts his name on the music, or as co produced with Mr. AI.
I think a designation will be needed for non AI generated content, much like for organic food.
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AI helps me design board games by balancing the stats. It also helps me design product images for some skincare and herbalism products that i sell because i cannot afford to hire an illustrator or a costume company and a photographer. I take a generated image as a foundation and then i edit it heavily myself afterwards.
I hate modern technology more than most people, but i would be lying to myself if i said it’s not helpful and doesn’t make things more accessible.
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AI might also be helpful in browsing thru big data pools, when designing a proper table and making conclusions every time from the scratch for every case is a lot of hassle (depending on the tool you have to work with your db).
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@urszula Those articles are so alarming to me and helped me over the last couple weeks (like a lot of the great Mudita blog content) in self reflecting myself and the people around me. I have two daughters at the age of 6 and 9 and I always was much aware in terms of media competence like what effect exposing them to tech devices, the internet etc. might have to them. Those articles sharpened my senses even more so that I will be even more aware of how, when and what they use while growing up. I won’t let big tech destroy their social behavior or self esteem from the get go.
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I am one of those illustrators that has been affected by the flooding of the market with ai slop. Ai has absolutely GUTTED jobs for illustrators and artists like myself, it’s terrifying.
Us artists would rather people used clip art than ai (or photography - there’s SO much of it for sale cheaply, doesn’t have to be commissioned from a photographer), since ai image generation is only able to make images because it’s stolen my art and millions of others without permission.
I don’t support companies that are using ai image gen (and I can still spot it, thankfully, for now), or using it to write stuff (which also has lots of clues).
As someone said ‘why would I want to read something that someone couldn’t be bothered to write?’.
As you can imagine I’m more than a little sore regarding Ai image gen due to its huge impact on my sector, and it’s going to affect almost every sector at some point. After all, the ‘broligarchs’ who have made these plagarism tools are all about ‘don’t ask permission, ask forgiveness later’. I think the general population (I’m not saying this is you btw) just don’t seem to feel bad about stealing art because they don’t see making art as labour or a skill that has been developed, they think it’s just a talent that they can’t have. I’m also aware a lot of folk don’t know that ai image generation is built on theft.
I’m not against Ai as a tool, but not for ANYTHING creative (because it’s inherently not creative). Keep it to medicine and doing boring tasks that humans take weeks to do that it can take seconds to do (analysing data etc).
I think the biggest danger we have with it as it gets better now though is scams, and worse, political ‘scandals’ created with it, it’s only a matter of time. Etsy is filled with fake items and on facebook I see adverts (or at least i did before blocking my newsfeeds!) telling people how sad it is that they have to shut down their bag making/sweater making/watch making company, and the pics are all Ai images of a fake person making their ‘products’.
Oh and of course military use is already pretty terrifying too.
Sorry, bit of a long rant there! I just don’t think people understand that by using ai to do tasks for you, it will eventually make it impossible for people to use their imagination, strengthen problem solving skills and more. It’s really incredibly worrying.
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This is an important aspect thats overlooked by most people, and overlooked by our own governments as well. These companies with AI have committed possibly the largest most widespread global theft of property ever, and very few even bat an eye or even know. It’s an open secret to many and to government, but no one wants to do anything about it ‘in the name of progress’. They stole from the human race to create something which is decimating the lives of the people they stole from.
Your last paragraph is also very on point. Over-reliance on AI will quite literally reduce the gray matter in your brain. It reduces or even removes peoples skills in being able to research topics, it reduces peoples capacity for reasoning skills and logical thinking and more. Passing the burden to AI to do the thinking for you.
It has its uses… but i really dont think people (myself included) understand where the line is in how it will quite literally turn us dumb
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Yeah and the ai lovers scream ‘luddite’ or ‘you have to add it to your art process or you’ll get left behind’ (um, no, I use watercolours and I don’t want machines making my creative decisions and taking away my voice!).
It is going to make us dumb, I fear for the people who grow up using it to think for them and then as adults they’ll be next to useless - but then at that point will anyone even have a job? I dunno, but it seems like if the billionaires want cheap labour, they’ll use ai and eventually that’ll be robots and we’ll all be like the strange people in Wall-E… or worse, the Morlocks!
Unfortunately we are all wired to want pleasure NOW and not delayed gratification, so it was always going to be hard to convince people that Ai wasn’t a great move (certainly not for thinking!).
What is sad is that all those people who don’t learn to struggle and go through the discomfort to make something (whatever that thing is, woodwork, sculpture, music, art etc) will never learn the deep fulfilment that comes after practicing something for a long time and then succeeding in achieving the thing you’ve been slaving over for years! There’s going to be a lot of frustrated people.
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Beyond the ‘brain impact’ issues of AI, there are also the infrastructure and ecological impacts.
Nuclear power plants expected to be needed for the huge amounts of power required by the AI server farms, Already the requisite cooling water requirements have caused water shortages and the calls for shorter showers in Texas.
Technology is sometimes, or often, not of genuine value to humanity. Here you have nuclear for AI but not people, water for AI and not people, and all for a technology that diminishes the brain function and further brings down humanity.
Without the huge TECH banner, who would actually want AI ?? I think with the commodity nature of electronics (no big profit margins), the apparent demise of biotech, and the pressure against social media, the tech industry / DARPA needs to find a new big money maker, real or not - enter AI…
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roger you’er absolutely right. All of it. Quite aside from the danger to our brains and jobs etc, the ecological impact is gigantic. I don’t understand why these mega rich types are ok with trashing their children’s and grandchildren’s lives for the sake of more money - over the money they already have which is already too much to spend in their lifetime!
Greed will kill us all I fear.
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