Carrion Luggage

WDC25, Day 2

As we acknowledge Writing.com's 25 years of existence this week, I'll be blogging about that instead of the usual stuff I find.

Today's prompt has to do with AI. Artifical Intelligence: bane or blessing?

Yes.

But first of all, I'd like to clear something up: AI isn't really artificial intelligence. Certainly the argument can be made that what we call AI is artificial, but I subscribe to the philosophy that, since we are part of nature, anything we create or modify is natural, including food dyes, nuclear weapons, microplastics, and computers with their programs.

This isn't a very useful philosophy, though, except insofar as it reminds me that not everything we make is "bad" and not everything we find in the wild is "good." So I'll continue to use "artificial" to refer to something some human made.

It's the "intelligence" part I have a real problem with. It's hard enough to define that for humans. It's even harder to define it for nonhuman animals, such as dogs or housecats, neither of which would exist in their current form without human intervention, and can thus be considered "artificial" in a way.

Since we don't know what intelligence really is, labeling a complex computer program thus is questionable at best. And I should also note that AI has been around in some form since the early days of computing. We gamers have dealt with various levels of AI in the form of game NPCs, and let's not forget they programmed computers to play chess, a game that used to be considered to be something only an intelligent entity could win.

I'm splitting hairs, probably. But what we call something matters. You can call your dictatorship a "Peoples' Republic," or your fascist political party "socialist," but that's just propaganda. A lot of the hype surrounding AI is propaganda of another sort.

Many of us have been using AI as writers for a while, now. Spellcheck is a rudimentary AI; grammar checkers, a more advanced one. I never want to be dependent on either, because I'd rather internalize rules and styles for myself, but I've used them.

I've also, obviously, used what we call AI for graphics (notably above in this blog), mostly because I have no artistic talent whatsoever. What I've never done is have a Large Language Model write for me. I mean, sure, I've played with them a bit, but only to satisfy my curiosity; none of their output has made it into my writing here.

As for whether it's a good thing or not, well, we hardly ever get to see things in black and white, ones and zeros, all or nothing. What we call AI is technology, and like almost all technology (and a lot of "natural" things), it can be used for good or evil or anything in between. You know, like nuclear fission can produce relatively clean energy, but it can also be used to blow shit up real good.

I don't trust any report on it that sings its praises. I also don't trust any report on it that concentrates solely on the downsides.

It has its problems, absolutely. Like any tool, it depends on how we use it. You can use a hammer to build, or smash someone's head. Since its current form is pretty new, though, and people don't like change, you get a lot of fear surrounding it. It's like how in the early days of civilian GPS, people freaked out about it getting them lost, as if no one had ever gotten turned around following a paper map.

Thing is, like it or not, it's here, and it's not going anywhere until the power goes out in the coming inevitable global apocalypse. What I'd urge everyone to remember is that you have no control over what other people do with it; you can only control what you do with it.

Notes: ▼

Written for "Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2025"  [E]

Prompt: AI/ChatGPT: A pest or a blessing for writers? Give us your thoughts.

648 words, excluding dropnote