Why Does Technology Scare Us?

Written by Swalé, Founder, Iuncta

How many times in history has technology been predicted to wipe away civilization? At this point, a global catastrophe — like one that would make humanity obsolete — is past due, don’t you think? If a broken clock is right at least 2 times a day, how are we still giving credibility to the doomsday clock, when it hasn’t been right once?

Listen, I’m well aware of the fact that words are powerful, and I’m familiar with the law of attraction through which things are spoken into existence. But I don’t have the capacity to emit enough positive energy into the Universe to counter the fear and scare tactics being used to manipulate the general public, especially as it relates to bleeding-edge technology. I can’t help but think that it is for social control.

You cannot swipe through any social media platform today without being convinced that generative AI will leave you and everyone you know, worst case dead, or, best case jobless; that’s unless you’re a prompt engineer. I literally just scrolled past a clip of a podcast that opened with, “If you are a creative, you are in trouble,” with another podcaster following that up by yelling into a microphone only an inch from his mouth, “Everybody is getting fired! Everybody is losing their job!”

Why is there this much conviction for something still that much unknown? Don’t get me wrong, I personally believe in a lot of the promise of artificial intelligence, even though I recognize its inherent bias and also know that a lot of what it generates isn’t true or actual fact.

Knowing that, I think it still has the potential to redefine industries and cause a paradigm shift like no technology before. But with that said, you cannot convince me that it will destroy the world or replace creatives. That’s just not how it works. Let’s focus on the latter. If you ask me, AI will replace the people who think it will, and when it’s done with those people, there are plenty other subsets of people it targets. Don’t get me started on how AI is a threat to black and brown history; before they get to creatives, I’m basically saying they’ll be the last to go.

I may be simplifying this way too much, but AI’s success metrics are measured by its ability to mimic humans: The closer it is to that, the more advanced it is considered. What’s interesting though is that as much as we define it as intelligence, it is in actuality designed to regurgitate existing content that it nicely formatted. It’s almost glorified plagiarism — again oversimplifying — which is easy because it’s pulling from an internet that is filled with content previously generated by humans, the same content created by creatives. If there are no creatives to continue making new content that the AI can pull from, it’ll eventually start repeating itself without any evolution. Then you’ll start seeing the same responses over and over again because, as much as we’d want to believe it isn’t the case, generative AI is finite. Humans are AI’s power source; if you take away the human…you get my point.

It is important that we recognize this because the fear mongering that has always been a part of technology is today causing highly skilled individuals to question their ability to have value in the future, as if one day they’ll wake up and AI will be more human than they are.

Don’t ever lose sight of what makes you you, what makes you human. Remember that AI is trying to be you, not the other way around. And if we do end up facing the possibility of catastrophic mass extinction, it will be at our own hands before it is an AI-powered robotic one.