#like yeah you just automate your workflow. everyone does it. why “AI”.

[hungwy]

maybe i dont have the 'growth mindset' necessary to work in the industry but my first thought upon reading this was "kill yourself"

[just-a-leech-boy]

This isnt the essay tbh. I'm just thinking out loud. Idek man. End of the fucking world. We're all doomed

I am very hung up on the fact that two main modes of human expression: language and visual art, have been automated, and more importantly commodified.

I go to university. From personal observation of my fellow students, the use of chatgpt to do incredibly simple essay work is endemic. Literally every single person in my history class last term used it to write summaries of the reading. Even people who I know are smart, have said they used chatgpt to create outlines for essays. I don't understand the purpose of this; surely you are able to think through an outline for an essay? Surely this does not need to be automated. Chatgpt is cheating, to me. You cheated. You didn't have the thoughts you were meant to have. You let a computer do the thinking. Why are we here?

I think there is essentially a move away from thinking itself, especially with the fact that addiction to short form video content is completely real. I think people my age, but especially people younger than me, are mostly unaware of its addictive nature, and essentially everyone has no means to break free from it. I remember when I was a kid, and how my brain worked then, how thinking felt before I was addicted to my phone. Do the children now, who were given the internet as babies, even know that it is different?

I think it's the end of thought. No one wants to think. No one wants to read, no one wants to write. No one cares if things are good, they care if it's fast, or if it makes money. I think now with AI we are set on a path towards the degeneration of human intelligence and creation, all in the name of capital.

...

Okay next bit is gonna be like, shittily written cuz it's less clear in my mind.

People always say that AI lets them have a "more efficient workflow". Id be interested to hear if these people actually work less than they did before they started using AI. Or do they just do more work for the same amount of time and the same amount of money? Or is it just that they're able to do more work for more money, for the same amount of time? I never hear anyone say, "ai has given me more free time". Wasn't AI supposed to free us for more important things? Like writing, and art, and talking to people?

A lot of stuff people are using chatgpt for is just insane dystopian shit that makes my head explode. On Reddit one of the top uses was making up bedtime stories for their children, praised for its "novelty". The fuck??? You have allowed the connection to your child be automated by a machine. That machine does not love your child. It did not choose those words to make them smile or laugh. You could not, out of love for your child, spend 5 minutes, pondering a bedtime story?

One major reason there was backlash against the Vietnam war was the fact that it was being photographed. The photos of the horror of war were enough to move a generation. Now, photos of war and of atrocities are just part of doomscrolling. Our awful little habit. We basically see children dying every day, multiple times a day even. I think this in itself is unnatural. I don't think it's possible for a person to feel empathy for anyone on their screen anymore. There is just an oversaturation of images. I do not think we were meant to live in this way.

This is what I mean when I say it is the end of any meaningful human connection. There will be no exchanging of thoughts, of empathy. We will not have thoughts, we will not have creativity. We are slaves to the machine and to techno capital and putting things on the Internet so ads can be put beside them. That is the only reason we are here. Is to look at our screens and make money for other people. Not to think, not to love, not to make anything at all.

...

Anyway yeah uhhh. I think. It's the end of the world. But in a slow and pathetic sort of way, where it's fine really, but I just think. Maybe nothing will ever be real or beautiful ever again.

Okay that was a lot of words sorry.

If you think otherwise, please tell me your thoughts because i do not think there is much hope for this.

There's a big essay in my head about the perception of reality, social media as it is today, ai, and something about nihilism and empathy. I think uhhh. The end culture and human connection. Idk