People needing people

I had thought that I would essentially move on from AI to capitalism, but with current events was feeling the need to spend some time on protesting. 

Today's post could work as a transition, or as its own thing.

https://x.com/CoraCHarrington/status/1933188476213571990 

I’ve felt this since folks went all in on Grammarly, like it wasn’t flattening everyone’s voice. Going from letting software automatically check everything and going along with its edits to letting software just write the thing for you, may not be so large a gap to many people.

I saw this because I follow Cora, and also it is goes along with what I have been writing about, but the thread she is responding to has its own points:

https://x.com/roryisconfused/status/1933050364103962815 

A big divide in attitudes towards AI, I think, is in whether you can easily write better than it and it all reads like stilted, inauthentic kitsch; or whether you’re amazed by it because it makes you seem more articulate than you’ve ever sounded in your life

The second post in that thread, where kids may not feel the need to develop their own skills, is a big concern, but there is another point here that may just be my common thread through everything.

I don't worry about expressing myself, mostly. I mean, I do worry about getting things in the exact right order so that it is all logical and coherent, but I feel like I have a good sense of myself, I know whether I understand a topic or not, and I am confident in my ability to use words (if not in my ability to pronounce words correctly when I only know them from reading). 

That combination of things helps me now, but they didn't come automatically. 

There was a lot of reading and looking things up, and lots of writing spent trying to understand myself, and quite a bit of connecting with people and nature, and there was growth. I value that for the experiences along the way and where they have led me.

There are so many things that can get in the way of reaching that level of comfort. 

Right now the more obvious problem is people who seem to believe in their own expertise without any logical base for it (is there a level where they do know?), but there are people who do not value themselves enough. It would be easier for them to feel the allure of AI.

It's not about whether they have good grammar skills or good emotional intelligence; those things can be learned. It's that there is a beating heart behind it, with unique experiences and a point of view. That's a wonderful starting place.

Maybe the point of having people with no regard for study or research is that it diminishes effort in general. It shouldn't. People can learn, they can innovate, they can grow, and they are valuable even before all of that.

If I care about you, I want to hear from you, not an artificial intelligence that quite often has been influenced by terrible people.

There were also some interesting things in Rory's thread about how a lot of writing well comes from reading well, which is sad given recent stories about Generation Z not wanting to read to their kids and not liking reading in the third person. I can't help but wonder if this is related to No Child Left Behind and Teaching to the Test and sucking all of the fun out of reading.

There are problems there, though I don't believe they are insurmountable.

Regardless, whether I am worrying about the environment or politics or technology, the thing that keeps coming back is whether we care about and value people. 

We aren't going to be able to fix anything else if we don't fix that.