The AI Problem

I've been thinking long and hard about the use to AI in our society. Frankly, it's up there with PLR (AKA Private Label Rights). It's a cheat.

People have spent years perfecting their skills in the arts.Working hard. Finding their voice. All in order to provide something unique to society and culture. But now, anyone can create something by stealing the work of those artists who put in the time to learn how to paint, write, sculpt, etc.

To quote Dr. McCoy, "According to myth, the Earth was created in six days. Now, watch out! Here comes Genesis! We'll do it for you in six minutes!"

And as Dr. McCoy feared in The Wrath of Khan, humankind overstepped themselves. The Genesis planet destroyed itself in the sequel.

The Marcus team took shortcuts to provide the Federation with a faster way to terraform planets. The Klingons feared Genesis would be turn into a weapon. They were  both right and wrong at the same time.

Does any of this sound familiar?

To further exhibit Big Corporations' plans for AI, Apple recently aired a commercial where all artists, scientists, and well, all of humanity are crushed between the two parts of a laptop. It's not a comforting feeling.

My laptop cannot make the perfect chocolate chip cookie. It cannot conceive of mixing chocolate and cinnamon because that's something Mexican abuelas would do, and AI carries white male biases.

Give me a damn robot that will clean the bathroom for me, so I have more time to create! I want to come up with new cookie recipes. I want to sew outfits for my OOAK character dolls. I want to write stories.

AI is taking away our fundamental humanity by taking away our imaginations. So, no, I don't agree with it. My inner McCoy says this is a very, VERY bad idea.

At a Crossroads?

I'm sitting here, munching on breakfast, which happens to be leftover cabbage and chow mein noodles from the kung pao chicken I ordered over the weekend. I'm looking at my business plan for this year, and wondering if I'm making the right decisions.

I'm not asking for advice here. There's a little niggle inside my brain that's trying to tell me something. But I can't really hear it yet. Do I need to slow down? Speed up? Change projects? Change careers? Change zip codes?

Or could it be the ten-year itch?

You see, I have this habit/need to change careers every ten years. I jumped from IT to law to writing fiction. Generally, the trigger is boredom. Except I'm not bored. At least, I don't think I'm bored.

I want to know what happens next with all my heroines. If I don't write their stories, no one else will.

Or maybe, I'm just unconsciously freaking about doing my taxes. The numerical equivalent of my parents asking me why I write.

I don't know what happens next, but a decision will be made. Because punting the decision is a decision in and of itself.