Hunger and Humanity

I found a lot of value in seeing my old notebooks. There’s something special there honestly, something special about having those physical artifacts of my past self. There is something special, almost spiritual, about human made writing. In those pages and pages of passages that went nowhere, I felt the passion of a young boy who wanted more than the world would give him. I found a spring of words that flowed onto the page with reckless abandon. I felt the love of writing that overwhelmed my past self and filled up notebook after notebook. That is human passion. That is Hunger.

I’ve been thinking a lot about generative AI too. Generative AI cannot replicate that passion. Generative AI may be able to form sentences and generate images, but there’s a pureness to a poorly written fanfiction of a young teen’s two favorite characters that I don’t think an LLM could ever replicate. I have no proof, but I feel it. And I may be wrong. Either way, I want to use this post to talk about something a bit more serious and tangible. 

Why Generative AI terrifies me

There recently was a generative AI model that, with still images alone, produced an image that I personally could not tell was generated by an AI from a quick glance. Even with closer inspection I found it difficult.

Recently, one of my professors said that he didn’t understand the dread or fear that some people had towards the progression of generative AI and technology. That image gave me fear. Let me bring you into my mind for a moment…

One day, an African-American man is shot and killed by a police officer. The officer says that the man was the aggressor, but witnesses say that he was complying and the officer shot for no reason. A video is released by the police station claiming that it is the bodycam footage from the arrest. In the footage, the man is shown to be the aggressor and based on the footage, the cop would be justified in his actions. The officer is allowed to continue his patrols, cleared by the footage. Later, the footage is investigated and it is determined to be altered by AI. The police station claims that AI was only used to make the footage clearer so that what happened could be seen better. How would the truth be determined?

America is a racist country. I wish this were not true, but it is. I could speak about the racism towards Immigrants and Muslims and Native Americans and Indians, but even if we are only talking about racism directed towards Black Americans, I have seen too many (forgive me for the harsh wording) police executions of innocent Black people, wrongful convictions, and hate speech from even our elected officials to think anything else. When I see generative AI being able to create convincing images and videos that are currently convincing enough for people on facebook (and may eventually be hard for me to discern), my mind can only think that this technology will be used for propaganda, used to further oppress those who are already oppressed, used to sway the minds of the people.

Isn’t that terrifying to you?

See you later.