I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Wednesday Writing, I consider my writing practice and skills and how to improve upon them.
I don’t read much online that inspires me or grabs me lately. It could be that too much of what I read is AI generated, and doesn’t represent the difficult human work of turning actual thoughts into sentences, paragraphs, and an overall argument. It could be that I’ve been spending too much time reading about war current and past to try to understand the current geopolitical unrest, when I should broaden my perspective.
But yesterday I came across an article that spoke to my heart, starting with the title: I am an idiot, by Julie Zhuo.
“I am an idiot” is a thought that comes to me regularly. I have done so many idiotic things in my life! And so has Zhuo. She’s going to lean into it:
It’s time I stopped with the fear of being an idiot.
Let me sink into the notion, cozy into it like I would a plush set of slippers.
I’ve been an idiot too many times to count. I’ve blurted out the wrong things, chased the wrong trains, and assumed I actually knew exactly what I was doing.
I suspect I’ll grow even more idiotic, as we ricochet faster and faster into a future none of us can predict.
So call me an idiot. I’ll agree.
Zhuo ties the question of artificial intelligence into the article:
The machines are getting smarter with every model.
At first, they overpowered us with their calculation speed.
Then, their fluency with the world’s accumulated knowledge passed ours.
Soon, their prediction will sharpen. Their taste will catch up. Their judgment will improve.
I am an idiot, yes. But as time goes on, we all may well be.
I find this part of the article the least interesting and the least persuasive. It jolted me out of the transcendent insight of the article into yet another awestruck reflection on the power and potential of artificial intelligence.
The key insight from the article is a meditation on what it is to be human: to feel like you don’t know what’s going on or what to do or why you just did what you did when it proved, after the fact, to be so incredibly moronic.
AI that can find more and more security vulnerabilities, program a computer better and better, or produce a poem on command? That doesn’t impinge upon our idiocy, or on our brilliance.
Clown-activist Wavy Gravy said, “We’re all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.” That’s true, no matter how capable artificial intelligence becomes.