The Age of Comfort

When Earth's entire history is boiled down to a single year, human beings have only been around for 23 minutes. It took us 23 minutes to develop from homo sapiens scavenging through African grasslands, peaking our heads over the stalks, wary of predators in the bush, into the modern humans we are today, typing at keyboards rather than crafting stone tools, worrying about rush hour traffic and that big meeting as if our boss will tear out our jugular like a saber tooth. Hundreds of thousands of years boiled down to 23 minutes.

When I went to Costa Rica, I encountered a relative of ours, one that went a different direction evolutionarily, perhaps an hour ago in this shortened time frame. In the forests of that gorgeous country, I came across a wild troupe of capuchin monkeys. They were docile, used to being fed by tourists. I had a peach and cut-up apple in my bag (since I’d heard they were not fans of bananas, despite popular belief). Two young males, accompanied by their mother, rested at the base branches of a tree, chirping and grooming one another. Upon sight of us, they perked up, climbing the branches overhead, extending their five-fingered hands so similar to ours, waiting for me to give up some fruit. I remember being so enamored by them, so amazed at how human their expressions are. Our little cousins with tails and hand-like feet. One of the young males perched on my shoulder, still too young to pay caution to a creature ten times his size. I avoided looking him in the face, afraid I’d accidentally transmit something with my expression in their language. He was comfortable there, on my shoulder, playing with my dress, my hair clip, going so far as to try and crack a peach on my head. His mother (who was wary of my boyfriend and did not like him going near her children, I assume because of his height or perhaps his beard), eventually climbed down herself, perhaps to make sure I was not eating her children, or maybe to mingle with the beast giving out free food. She took some apple slices, and once her son had left the perch of my shoulder, she grabbed my fingers. She was curious, moving them around as if there were uneaten pieces of fruit hidden behind my knuckles. I’d never seen other primates quite so close. Never interacted with them in such an unrestricted way. I’ve always loved animals. Ever since I was a child. As my parents, who probably got annoyed at one point or another that National Geographic was on TV 24/7. Those little capuchins reminded me of just how much peace being in the presence of animals brought me. It was that hour in the forest, actually, that has motivated me to try and work with animals again. Fear not. I am still a writer and still plan to write my books for as long as there are ideas rummaging around this loud brain. In the grand scheme of time, I am an inconsequential piece of dust floating around the universe that will be alive for less than a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. So, I’d like to leave behind some of myself before I go. Whether that be writing books or working with monkeys. Which brings me to my point.

If we use that same time-frame model to track the progress of artificial intelligence, it took AI less than a second to out-perform us. In actual time, if we use the 1950s as the decade in which AI research became a recognized field, it took AI about 70 years, a single human lifespan, to render our skills worthless. That’s it. 300,000 years of human evolution beat by 70.

Discouraging for an artist of any kind; seeing hyper-consumerism render skills that took blood, sweat, and tears to develop into cheap online trends. People say, “AI mimics, it does not create. It steals. It is fraudulent artwork,” and I agree. To a point. Because the definition of creativity is the ability to take already existing ideas and reassemble them into novel combinations. I’m not saying that a sculptor is a thief because he took stone from the earth—I’m saying that we are inspired by the artists that came before us. Our styles, our voices, and our creations do steal from our influences. But there is something to be said for the value of intent.

Within these 23 minutes or 300,000 years of existence, whichever you prefer, we as a species have always been inclined towards creation. Survival came first. Once we were able to control such sources by manipulating our environments, we began to create. Art, in its introductory remedial forms, music, paintings, stonework—we took from the world around us and we created the firm forms of self-expression that had no express purpose. That’s where most of art’s beauty comes from. Because it exists to exists, like we do. Where the rest of its beauty stems is in how it makes us feel, in the soul put behind it. In the intent and in the effort.

I spent years of my life at my computer, at notebooks, a slave to the blank page. It demands to be filled so there I sat, developing arthritis in my hands, reading books and watching lectures about structure, grammar, character psychology, scene funnels, and all the mechanical facets of writing. I went to university, taking courses on philosophy, literature, science, marketing (unfortunately), history, etc. I tried to collect as much of the world as I could passively, from a desk, infusing my stories with their influences. And you can feel it. My soul, working behind the page, a two-way mirror.

When I first read stories about AI, it was through fiction. William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Asimov’s I, Robot. A commonality across most of these stories is that they caution us, not about AI, but about the monstrosity that exists in people. They reveal this capacity for evil that exists in all men, juxtaposed against the existence of human-like artificial intelligence. When we create, we project. It is impossible for artificial intelligence, created by us, to not contain, well, a little bit of us. That’s what frightens me about AI. Not its capacity to take over the world, or start a mass-genocide against humans, or cause a post-apocalyptic landscape. What frightens me about AI, is the same issue I have with any technology.

It replaces human effort. Which can be a good thing. When technology can take over physically laborious tasks, do our taxes, find cures to diseases, grow crops more efficiently, or clean a floor on its own, it is making our lives easier within reasonable measures. Because those are tasks of survival. It’s the scavenging for food and ridding the bush of predators. When technology verges into the territory of replacing human effort—by painting, by writing songs, by writing stories—it trespasses into our humanity. Steals it. Mimics it. And it does so without intent. Without effort. Without humanity itself.

Among discouragements made of bureaucracy, anxiety, and impostor syndrome, artificial intelligence has added it name to the list. But there is no option other than to keep writing. To actively refuse to use these platforms that insult the artists of the past and the artists of tomorrow.

I aim to have my next two novels completed by September 2025. One of which is about an artist. A man named Dorian, who can paint the future. I can only hope his voice will capture those who share my fears. I will also (hopefully) be working with animals again starting in August, and I’m certain they will not only influence my work, but most likely inspire a great deal more of it.

I end this newsletter with a quote from The Burnout Society by Byung Chul Han.

“The acceleration of contemporary life also plays a role in this lack of being. The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints. Ultimately, the dialectic of master and slave does not yield a society where everyone is free and capable of leisure, too. Rather, it leads to a society of work in which the master himself has become a laboring slave. In this society of compulsion, everyone carries a work camp inside. This labor camp is defined by the fact that one is simultaneously prisoner and guard, victim and perpetrator. One exploits oneself. It means that exploitation is possible even without domination.”