Have you tried ChatGPT? This has been the buzz around me for the last two weeks. Everyone seems to be doing it.
The reviews rolling in are mixed. There’s no doubt that it is revolutionary technology. Some people I know are all for it. Full power to the AI future… to infinity and beyond! Others are side-eyeing this new toy/tool with more fear and suspicion. Fair enough. We’ve all seen that scary science fiction movie where the robot overlords end up running the world, consuming human bodies as their fuel source, right?
And this is only the beginning. Only, the beginning of what? That is what we don’t know. And the unknown part is what feels scary.
I was co-working with a friend recently, who was using ChatGPT for word-smithing: effectively copy-pasting and revising marketing language for a new workshop offering. Make it shorter. Make it more friendly. That sort of thing. He marveled at the speed and comprehensiveness of the chatbot’s output, and he excitedly said to me, “We don’t need writers anymore! You are irrelevant now.” A moment later, he adds as an afterthought, “Sorry.”
I chuckled to myself. It’s as if he suddenly remembered he was talking to a human, and that he might have hurt my feelings. I wasn’t disturbed by hearing this comment, by the way. And it also wasn’t the first time I had heard it. Ironically, I even thought to myself, “Oh, this is going to be good material for my writing.”
The thing is, I don’t believe it. Not for a minute.
Writers aren’t becoming obsolete. What is happening is that what it means to be a writer is up-leveling. This is amazing news for writers who are at the top of their game and interested in improving. And yes, I will be bold and arrogant enough to include myself in that category.
Computer-generated hubris isn’t a thing yet as far as I know, so look there I am already differentiating myself. Ha ha.
Oh, and self-deprecating humor, another human specialty.
What I believe is that high level, quality writing will become more and more valuable. What AI will do is take away the more mundane, boring, routine and robotic tasks out of the job market. Writing that requires sifting through mountains of information, it can be done in an instant. Writing that requires analyzing data across a huge population, it can be done faster than you can blink.
What AI does is make Google searching, synthesizing and summarizing the database of the universe into a routine task that you can complete at warp speed. It is fantastic at regurgitating and remixing existing things.
I think this is a good thing for humans. If we use this technology correctly, we have the opportunity now for AI to catalyze a return to more of our humanity.
As AI starts to take over the mechanical, repetitive work functions — including recognizing patterns, organizing information, and predicting things — it will certainly push many humans out of the work they are doing now. But it will put humans out of the kind of work that has us dying in drudgery.
In other words, there’s no reason to be afraid of AI, if what we’re interested in is evolving into higher-level human beings. AI can free us from drudgery to do exactly that. The fear comes from uselessly trying to compete with AI, and coming up short as slower, lower-capacity machines.
This is a big change. And change is scary. But when the dust settles, I believe that a higher functioning, higher consciousness human is what will be left standing. There are still many aspects of humanity that AI cannot replicate yet, and many that I think it will never be able to replace — even if it learns how to mimic a cheap and cheerful imitation version with some level of accuracy. The work for humans to do in the future will be the kind of work that requires the uniquely human capacities for empathy, energy, sensitivity, healing, heart, intuition, insight and creativity.
AI is great at regurgitating knowledge. But only humans can access knowing.
AI is great at consolidating information. But only humans can transmit wisdom.
AI is great at digesting collected stories. But only humans can fully embody lived experience.
AI is great at making predictions based on recorded history. But only humans can dream up future realities.
Humans and technology are co-evolving. As “artificial intelligence” becomes increasingly powerful, another kind of “AI” will be called forward. Humans will be required to “access imagination” more. It’s a uniquely human ability to be able to envision, enliven and create entirely new things. It’s a uniquely human possibility to imagine and invent and make quantum leaps in ingenuity.
Humans will stay relevant to the extent that they’re able to stay clear and connected to higher intelligence, beyond the material and physical realms. In other words, only human beings in their being-ness can channel their soul-sourced divine assignments and hold a certain frequency.
Being human means to be living, breathing, growing, changing, dying — all at the same time. That means that by our very organic nature, human beings are always creating. Always.
The nature of being human is to be a vessel for consciousness and a vehicle for creativity.
We forgot about this basic nature somehow. Human creativity has largely been sidelined for the last few hundred years. Of course it was still happening, but it went under-noticed and under-valued while the flashing lights were diverting our focus somewhere else.
We’ve been massively distracted by all the shiny objects. We’ve gotten caught up in the pyramid scheme of extractive capitalism. We’ve enslaved our life force energy to toxic industries that exploit the Earth, all while trying to turn humans into soulless machines.
Enough of that. There’s no need for humans to compete with AI. Trying to compete with AI is like trying to run a footrace against a rocket ship. But there’s an opportunity here for us to learn how to rest and let AI do what it does best.
The tasks that AI is good at, in my view, are activities that do not support us to be the most “human” beings we can be. The kind of work that AI is going to take away from us is work that deadens, depletes, and separates us.
How amazing! We don’t want to do this work anyway. Not really, deep down. It’s only because we’ve gotten so estranged from our own humanity and so isolated from a sense of safety in community that we cling to this mundane work. It’s because we’re afraid of losing some false sense of security.
Being human is a totally different game. And it’s time to play.
We can let AI take over. It will take over things that humans no longer need to be doing — the things that we were never meant to be doing in the first place.
Moving forward hand-in-hand with technology, we return to reclaim our roots in the Earth. Paradox maybe?
What about the workers who will be automated out of their wage jobs en masse, you might be asking? Well, in my opinion… (and opinions are another uniquely human thing), not only do we need to stop trying to compete with AI, we also need to stop thinking we’re any better or worse off than any other humans.
We’re all on the same ride on this Earth-spaceship together, all part of the same global human family.
It’s not that the “one-percent” will be untouched while the masses are suffering. Whoever “they” are, they’re just us vulnerable as “us”. Each of our fates is inextricably tied to that of every other living thing on the planet. We all breathe the same oxygen and drink the same water here. If we still don’t get the truth of interdependence by now, after 3 years of pandemic schooling, it’s going to become more and more (painfully) obvious soon. We’ll see.
I see AI as an equalizing factor. It’s disruptive to everyone, across socioeconomic classes and across industries. Rich and poor alike. Knowledge workers and laborers alike. No one is immune. We are in a time of transition and we all need to re-skill to align with the ways and places humans will be needed in the future.
More handmade work. More heart-connected work. More intuitive healing work. More tending to the Earth work.
Let’s take our false idols down from their pedestals. Let’s stop chasing the mass-market, machine manufactured objects of status and significance. Instead let’s put value on the lovingly poured slow drip coffee, the hand woven bag, the original artwork, the soulful songwriting and the personal healing.
Where we pay attention is how we spend our life’s precious currency. This impact of this daily choice, made collectively and repeatedly, is what determines the purchase of our shared future.
This AI technology r/evolution calls on us to be more human again. It asks us to rest more, consume less, and connect more deeply from the heart.
It’s time to go back to the ancient future. To live in a supportive local community of authentic intimacy. To make doing business (and designing value exchange) into something personal again. To bring genuine heart connection back into the way we move and choose everything in our world.
The way to keep humanity relevant, is by valuing things that only humanity can do.
Including human-created writing.
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Calling it now. I think we're screwed. The union of AI and automation is going to destabilize American society and the global economy in socially catastrophic ways. 5-17-23 (6:20am)