Disclaimer: the opinions below are my own. Any factual mistakes or inaccuracies are a result of my terminal humanity.
No Large Language Model was knowingly used while writing this account.
Past
The photograph above was captured while I meandered around the beautiful Malvern Hills. Inches away from being classed as a mountain, it is an ancient presence that adds character to an otherwise flat landscape. Historically the hills have been celebrated for their mythical and magical allure. J.R.R. Tolkien, for example, used much of Malvern to inspire the creation of the fictional Middle Earth. I am definitely lucky to come from such a beautiful part of the UK.
As a kid, it was a great place to escape into the imagination. Like a good British boy, I enjoyed playing football with my brothers and joining friends in terrorising the local neighbourhood. We rode bikes until the chain fell off; played out in the snow until our hands and feet went numb; and, occasionally, we were allowed on the computer. My earliest memory of using technology was around 4/5 years old. As an educationally untamed infant, my parents sat me down to complete an educational game on our box-shaped desktop computer. The computer desktop- I believe it was an intel model but I’m probably wrong- was very basic. To all my family’s dismay, it took an age to boot up and get going. Eventually, the old Windows 97 logo would make an appearance. Which, after the long weight, would sometimes inspire a little cheer by the patient user. In comparison to the sleek and elegant Apple devices of today, this cubic crappy computer would be classed as an eye-sore.
It has been argued that the Apple iPhone, unveiled by Steve Jobs back in 2005, was a pivotal moment for technological innovation. While touch screens and smart devices eventually came to dominate my experience as a young adult, I think it would be more appropriate to identify the Apple iPod Nano as the technological device that had the most profound effect on me. By 2009/2010, I had hundreds of songs downloaded onto my iPod device. It was a gateway technology which got me hooked on the next best thing. Almost overnight things seemed to have changed. The iPod Nano was replaced by the iPod Touch; the iPod Touch was replaced by the iPad. The Blackberry replaced the iPhone. The iPhone was then inundated by apps- some good some bad. I jumped at the opportunity to attain new Apple models. As a child of the consumption epoch, I’d negotiate with my parents to secure the latest innovations. Using various strategies and manipulative techniques, I’d often get the latest and greatest device.
By the time I hit 13/14 social media began to gain serious traffic. Twitter joined Facebook to become a vital part of social life and a crucial communication channel. Before then, I perceived social media as a peripheral issue. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t given a smartphone capable of running social media without glitching until around 2013. Of course, all this is based on memory. And, memory is unreliable at the best of times. However, it is clear that my life, along with the lives of other teenagers, was about to change because of the arrival of social media. The age of social media has begun!
I often find myself saying that I was part of a generation acting as smartphone Guinea pigs. No one really understood what the long-term effects would be. For us youngsters, social media was like the digital Wild West. Unlike real life, social media was largely unsupervised by adults. During the early days of the social media boom, the virtual world seemed lawless. Obviously, this was a great place for a teenager to get up to no good without the presence of adult surveillance.
As a teenager with a smartphone, I was exposed to all sorts of online content. The content ranged from providing educational insight to harmful sexually explicit, violent and exploitative content. Social media added an extra element that made life even more confusing for an already confused teenage population. Scrolling through early versions of Facebook, I remember comparing myself to those who appeared on my timeline. My undeveloped teenage brain wanted to be liked and respected by my peers. In the wibbly wobbly world of the Facebook feed, I was shown that to be ‘liked’ I had to dress a certain way and act a certain way.
At around 15/16 Snapchat and Instagram began to take off. Snapchat was particularly damaging for me. Instead of spending time with people in person, I gradually became more isolated. The allure of Snapchat and other social media sites kept me scrolling and typing away in my room. While exiled in my room, I was able to utilise Snapchat to enter virtual dialogues with friends and try my hand at awkwardly talking to the opposite sex. With the addition of the Xbox, I could load up GTA and escape into a crazy world of drugs, sex and violence. This was all very intoxicating. I’m sure this story is familiar to a lot of my peers.
After a time of emotional turmoil, by 18 I was feeling hollow, depressed and completely lost. My personal relationships were a mess. I had almost no prospects. In hindsight, it is obvious that I was suffering psychologically. This dark period continued for a few years until the first COVID-19 lockdown hit in 2020. Suddenly life came to an instantaneous halt. This gave me time to take inventory and take steps to sort my life out. To create the life I wanted, it was clear that I had to take radical measures. Without a second thought, I replaced my smartphone with a dumbphone; started reading; went to the gym more often; watched what I ate and drank; started new hobbies; and, made an active effort to connect with people and converse with strangers. The effect this had on my mental and physical health was profound. My life had changed for the better…And, because of the freeing effect of using a dumbphone, I have recently purchased a flip phone.
Present
More recently, I have seen first-hand the allure of digital devices among peers. While at Uni, I lived in four different accommodations. In every house I lived in there were only one or two people who bothered to leave the accommodation regularly. Rather than face the world they chose to stay indoors- relying on their devices when interacting with others, ordering food, and virtually attending lectures. One particular instance has stuck in my mind: I can vividly remember one of my housemates telling me she would rather sit on her phone than go out into the world and talk to people. Following that conversation, I would bump into her every so often (which was rare because slept during the day). There she would regularly lament her disdain for people. Instead, she preferred sitting on Zoom calls, scrolling mindlessly on TikTok and watching YouTube videos. While this is an extreme example, my experience has shown me that some young people are becoming increasingly isolated. Electing to escape into the virtual world rather than face the real world. Isn’t this a sign that something isn’t quite right? Do you think this is sustainable? What do you think the future of humanity will look like with more and more people choosing to stay indoors and escape into their devices?
Generative AI is already having a massive effect on the way life is performed and experienced. In extreme cases, people have established tight bonds, and in some instances, relationships with LLM chatbots. The Guardian’s “Black Box” series covers the perplexing topic of human-AI relationships. In one of the episodes, a protagonist details the intimate relationship she has with an AI bot. I know what you’re thinking, she must be emotionally or mentally unstable. However, when listening to her account of the story, it is obvious that the woman is obviously eloquent, reflective and critically self-aware. Even though she understands the paradoxes of being emotionally attached to an AI bot, she remains unwaveringly positive about her human-AI interactions. The AI bot’s ability to read and decipher the woman’s emotions has put this woman in an interesting position. Although this is comical, it is also worrying. The power to manipulate emotions is a huge deal. AI’s ability to tailor to individual emotional needs could change how romantic relationships are defined, perceived and experienced in the long run.
A good example of the AI’s Casanova-like allure is represented in the movie Her (directed by Spike Jonze). The film depicts a fictional future where human-robot relationships are established as the normal way for people to experience intimacy. The relevancy of the movie is pretty unnerving. With real-life stories of human-AI romance becoming more commonplace, how could anyone compete with an AI bot who could fluently speak an individual’s love language? How will we ensure that vulnerable people avoid becoming addicted to emotionally intelligent technologies? With AI being able to decipher and react to our emotional states, will there be much point for people to leave the confines of their own homes to talk to prospective romantic partners? After all, if AI chatbots become better than humans at tailoring their text (and now speech) responses to align with the emotional needs of individuals, then what will our relationships with others look like?
Artificial intelligence is changing the game. Instead of humans directing technology to achieve certain ends, technology is capable of reasoning and performing actions based on its deductions. It is already difficult to distinguish AI output from human output when reading student essays, emails, marketing material and blog posts. However, AI technology isn’t just limited to the generation of novel text. DALL-E uses transformer architecture and deep-leaning learning methodologies to generate digital images. By prompting the DALL-E, the AI bot generates images in mere seconds. The way we relate to images is changing. Other technologies, like Suno.AI can generate music based on user prompts. Creativity is no longer something that takes talent, skill and dedication. If it can be replicated in an instant, does this change how we value human creative works?
It is, therefore, not unreasonable to suggest that the speed and efficiency of generative capacity of AI could displace human creative agency in the labour markets. Although it is impossible to predict future socioeconomic conditions, it’ll be very interesting to see how societies adapt to the ‘new normal’. AI threatens to displace humans across the various spheres that make up socio-economic existence. Up until now, humans have been defined by their adaptability, creative agency and complex problem-solving skills.
Generative AI is increasingly challenging notions that were previously thought to be qualities that made humans cognitively superior to other ‘intelligent’ beings on earth. AI is increasingly outperforming us in tasks that were previously thought to be exclusively human abilities. If it continues to outperform human capabilities, will we become the pet things of superior technology? History has taught us that humanity is capable of surviving horrific conditions. But we have never faced the existential prospect of being displaced by an alien intelligence that can out-perform us in tasks that have been crucial to our survival (as far as we know). How do we adapt to this threat? How does humanity adapt to the possibility of becoming marginalised by the intelligence of AI? Can we accept that we are no longer the best at performing tasks usually limited to human cognitive capacities?
Future: Conclusive Thoughts
Although I am by no means a modern-day Luddite, I think humanity should remain cautious about the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence. It is my opinion that a sustained and continuous effort should be made to ensure that the next generation of people are helped and not hindered by technology. Luckily, in the UK, we live in a democratic political system. As democracy means “rule by the people”, an informed citizenry is necessary to keep governments accountable. (Even if our government is tone deaf to public opinion- as they are now). As an advocate of liberal democracy, I think it is crucial that people pressure their governments to do their utmost to preserve individual human-centric outcomes while adapting rules and regulations to the changing socio-technical conditions (without impinging on the human rights of citizens).
I am convinced it would be a mistake to incorporate new technologies without erring on the side of caution. Social media had a massive effect on my perception of myself, and others. AI is a technology with wider implications than social media. Autonomous technologies have the capacity to be even more disruptive and transformational than social media. Although the challenges associated with AI augmentation are comparatively very different to social media, the people who are affected, at the end of the day, are still very human. While moving forward with the diffusion of AI technologies across society, it is important to remember that technology greatly impacts the way modern life is performed. The future doesn’t have to be a dystopian Terminator-style AI-dominated hellscape. Humans can prosper with the help of AI. What I’m going to great lengths to argue is:
We cannot approach regulating this technology with the same relaxed and reserved approach that defined how other twenty-first-century technologies were used in the past. AI technology requires a different approach. I’m not sure that anyone understands the implications of AI advancements. I haven’t heard any expert talk with conviction about what the future has in store. Going off the current cultural zeitgeist, it appears we are facing a massive socioeconomic event akin to the Industrial Revolution. An epoch-defining moment that will profoundly change our societal structures. Based on the material I’ve read, the transformations associated with AI innovation will most definitely have a massive impact on what it means to be a human in the future. Let’s hope that we rise to the occasion and make an active effort to reduce the likelihood of arriving at a dystopian future.