A word about words, and AI.
{ Part One. }
The mass of AI looks like, say, good wood, but it’s plastic.
~ Anonji
First, an appreciation wrapped in a concession that words can be and are literally life-shaping, for good or ill. They are what makes us broadly, uniquely human, AND what holds us in that limitation. Indeed, where would we be without words? Well, let’s look at them and perhaps see what their true value and role may be in introducing us to our non-verbal being-nature. I must confess, I’m driven away from all mechanical sounds, tiny, tinnie, and whiny like coffee grinders or big, bold, and barking like a dog threatening to attack. And AI sure seems to be attacking with false promises. 😉
AI’s machined insincerities drive me to the nearest quiet place, be it that inner peaceful non-place or a babbling brook behind my home, or to a room where I can hear it; or perhaps a warm, well-lit cafe, or maybe just a quiet space anywhere but around that stacked, dried, and dead data! I like to be amused, maybe astonished, by words lightly gathered together by the human hand, eye, and heart, like fresh flowers from the writer’s own, well-tilled, seeded, and harvested fields. Word collections that nourish and delight, that wonder and wander; that ring true to insightful living; that resonate.
Now, AI is a mediated, amassed data dump, useful for making mechanical stuff, but DOA for use in baking, in cooking something fresh that smells, tastes, touches, and perhaps, tickles the life out of us with its absurdities and imperfections. AI is still-born dead and desiccated by being thoughtfully and artlessly machined to programmed perfection. I like the living word-smithing that’s sincere, that resonates, that rings true. The mass of AI looks like, say, good wood, but it’s plastic. It informs like a bulletin board, like a map that tells you nothing about the territory.
I like my reading served up with heaps of insightful perceptions, like fresh-baked bread that arises from direct, unrefined experience, from unadorned natural ingredients simply cooked or raw; from sweated understandings and appreciation. Living words like that have curves and roundabouts; they may rattle on some and then delightfully amuse, startle, and evoke deeply shared sympathies with their word-smithed reflections – albeit brilliantly flawed by belief, which we’ll now discuss in Part Two. In sum, I reject dead and deadening machine language in favor of living ideas whittled to a sharp point that are, in a word, human. 🙂
~ painting by Carlos Grasso
