Real Threat of AI

   PS: I wrote this on my iPhone while flying so pardon my misspellings and nonsensical sentences. 
   
   I see a lot of other blogs/neocities on the internet that criticize AI to the maximum and a lot of it is warranted. There are concerns with the massive amount of capital (USD$), electricity, environmental, privacy concerns qnd copyright infringement that does happen. However I believe there’s a grander threat to society in my opinion. 



For context, I do enjoy AI - I think a lot of the backlash towards it is a bit much. It is one of the most efficient technologies I have ever used. In my own field of work, it has been used by every member of my department and I encourage everyone in my department to use it - even the company. It makes things that used to take hours/days done in minutes. We used to have to spend hours on copywriting and now we use it to generate the same results (based on KPIs) as the handwritten. Yes it does lack soul, but this is commercial copywriting, in our field (based on data) I would predict the end user doesn’t care. It’s been proven by marketing institutions that most customers don’t want a relationship with a brand and therefore most strategies nowadays are focused on new customer acquisition rather than loyalty marketing. AI will make small teams (in my case Marketing) much more cost effective and impactful and better for the company - it’s essentially what automation has done for the industry/manufacturing side. 



Now morally I think this is going to be potentially very bad for a lot of people, I think large groups of people will not be employed in their same function in the near future as generate AI becomes better. I believe they will have to arguably decrease their quality of life if they’re emotionally tied to money as most people are. It’s very concerning and unfortunately business is sink or swim where if you’re not with the latest technology, you can very quickly become irrelevant. This is one major concern but I think there is a larger concern that people underestimate. 



We know that the internet has been a blessing in many many ways, the movement of information to one’s brain is faster then ever. For myself, I’ve learned 80% of what I know from the internet I would say and all for free, this is immensely valuable. However, Web 2.0 has turned full focus on monetization of the internet and with monetization comes marketers that are shifting user metrics to now where they focus primarily on engagement. I sometimes make YouTube videos for a game I like and when I was studying it, I found Mr Beasts formula for getting winning YouTube videos and it’s quite insightful on the reality of what our centralized algorithms are catered to - it is click through rate (this is why you see clickbaity titles and pictures), engagement rate and view through rate. So fortunately content has to be good for 2 of the metrics to be hit but does it? If we look at a private browser YouTube, it becomes clear what content generally works and that is about >10 minute fast paced high dopamine videos, this is why TikTok is so successful. All of our content is now getting centered around releasing dopamine rather than actual value, this is why the art of book reading is actually becoming more and more of a trend rather than a standard. 



I touch on this because with our attention spans decreasing over time from this high dopamine content, are mental capacity to actually learn is also decreasing. You can see this in the most recent generation of kids, us humans are hardwired to chase dopamine and now dopamine is easier than ever to get with the internet age. The big issue we are going to face is a massive critical thinking brain drain where creativity, creative thinking, the soul in things will be lost to quick answers. One of my most recent first hand accounts of this was actually creating this website, I thought just for fun I would have Claude generate the website and you know what it did generate a site but the site had zero soul, there was just something about it to where you didn’t see the human there, maybe it was how non-flawed it was. I’ve also noticed this with the copywriting as I used as an example earlier, it “worked” just felt soulless. There’s many depictions of dystopian environments but I believe the older movie version of 1984 encapsulates it very well - a world that is linear and calculated - I believe AI will make our world bland, soulless and lacking human soul. Culture will be only found in regions that don’t get absorbed by AI first policies. 



I can’t predict right now what this future will do to us but I can say historically that the human soul perseveres, the most recent example would be in Communist Russia and the Soviet Bloc - however even the brutalist highly functional architecture still had human soul in it yet the humans who lived in that region during that time still were happy (from what I have read online). In terms of fictional movie examples is Wall-E where humans have no functional sense of doing anything (even moving). A common used example of what this looks like is idiocracy - I believe this may be accurate to a sense with the reduction of IQ and eagerness to learn. One can argue that humans are getting smarter with the amount of information but as we know from our own personal lives, more information doesn’t produce better results. One personal example is I knew many tip of the spear students throughout my school years that had straight A’s top of the class yet had a total lack of critical thinking that’s why you hear people being street smart vs. book smart. This problem has only been increased by the rampant use of AI by students. 



There are other issues with AI as well, one being, yes there is plentiful supply of information yet there is a lot of bad information. I work in the health field and you would not believe how much we get lied to. Having used AI quite a bit I would say in a first pass/prompt the answer has a 65% chance of being right - these are terrible odds yet most people do only one pass/prompt and totally base their decision off that answer and we accept it. Wikipedia has similar issues but it will be far worse with AI as like Wikipedia people believe it to be the word of God. Imagine being wrong 45% of the time? This is not good yet people believe it and frankly don’t care (or perhaps know) even when it does math and attempts to show you the math it often times gets it wrong. AI will get better of course at some of these linear equations but it will always be in a box of what it knows. 



I believe for you the reader the best thing you can do is balance AI. If you have any fear of your job being replaced by AI, please rather than let it happen - learn how to work with it. For my job as the head of marketing I have brought value by using AI the best I can and rather than replacing my work, simply increasing the efficiency and work output of yourself/department. Please read the book called human action by Ludwig Von Mises, we are valued by our output - if we can show that our output has increased in quality and quantity because of AI then we may have a fighting chance. I look at my job as transforming into an AI manager/operator, learning how to program the AI agents and best use the tool. Now the part I want you to focus on is separating your personal life from AI, you need to keep YOU with a healthy vibrant soul - do not turn into a mindless individual - this is where you are already making big strides by using Neocities and restoring the original web. Now the hard part is limiting your total time using technology, particularly high dopamine activities such as social media, gaming, etc. and also activities that takeaway time from “reality” such as excess TV, internet browsing, etc. 



For me this was a large reason why I bought a Light Phone 3, because of for me personally excess time on my cellphone playing games, scrolling on social media and wasting time. Time that could and has been much better spent. My screen time on my iPhone is still 1-2 hours a day but this is far better than the 6+ hours an average American spends on theirs - still 30 days per year too long. For this article I just want you to focus strictly on screen time that’s the main measurable key performance indicator, be mindful of what you use your time on. For me, I have been utilizing that time cooking at home, programming programs/apps at home, making a YouTube video here and there, and of course my favorite activity which is family tiDo not let big tech get a hold of your life! Control your time and spend it on something that progresses you.



easter Egg: My girlfriend and I writing on this notepad as we are flying home-

I need to go peepee but I’m terrified of turbulence - now would be a good time as there is no clouds or rocky hilly terrain 

Red light means occupied 



    
    Sign my guestbook to keep in touch, hopefully to add RSS soon.