Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Today’s title comes from Psalm 139 in the in the Bible. Psalms is a basically a book of poems that describe pretty much every emotion there is – from praising the majestic creator God to railing at His inaction against the wicked.
Today I am in the mood to challenge and protest but I’m not upset at God, I am turning my wrath towards generative AI.
Ah that beast of limited intelligence, saccharin compared to honey, most recently used to produce twee images of your perfect life.
It’s everywhere – well at least many of my Facebook friends have given away their images and personal details to create a vision of such false loveliness they fail to see the dark undercurrent.
Once I might have fallen for it too. I’ve often been gullible but I have a son with a computer science master’s degree and he won’t touch generative AI. It produces “slop” - that is the technical term he uses – imagine a ladleful of gruel plopped on a plate in the manner of a Dickens novel.
(Imagination is a wonderful thing. I have been blessed with the ability to see pictures in my brain and I’ve learnt recently this is not a skill possessed by everyone. A discussion of seeing words and pictures is perhaps a topic for another day.)
For now, let’s think about what happens when you ask Chat NGT (not got talent) to generate something.
It takes away creativity from an artist with a God given gift for creativity, whether that is using words or pictures or music.
It uses a phenomenal amount of power and resources. Huge data centres need massive quantities of water for cooling and your electricity bills will keep rising to cover it.
It is not generating anything new or wonderful but recycling and rehashing, manipulating your personal data. Harvesting information as it goes, storing up a dossier of each individual but somehow airbrushing everyone to look the same.
“It’s harmless fun!”
“Stop being a spoil sport!”
“I want to stay ahead of technology.”
Yes, maybe the last gripe is valid. We can’t bury our heads in the sand.
There has got to be some positives to these advancements. Ways we can use these innovative tools to help us. Crunching numbers of big data in seconds, finding patterns, finding cures for cancer, helping us combat the climate crisis, solving world hunger – you know all the good stuff that most of us really care about deep down.
So don’t hand over your personal preferences to the tech guys who will find ways to use it against you and make themselves richer in the process. That’s their ultimate goal – money and power.
And if you want a picture that shows what you really look like – ask a teenager to draw you one, they will capture an essence that generative AI could not begin to comprehend.
With many thanks to Jess who drew this picture of me on Saturday. I love how my eyes sparkle.