Our new robot overlords

Everybody’s afraid in the spring of 2023 that AI is going to take their job, render their creativity meaningless, steal their girl, etc. I get it. I could write a book-length treatise on these things (in fact I might, but not here).

Part of this is that humans have been pretty sure the machines would take over for about as long as there have been machines.

The history of music has been a history of evolution and finding new paths. The tech of the last 200 years or so has changed the business of music multiple times, but… Oh look. There are still musicians.

Is it possible that AI is a difference of kind and not degree, that we’re truly in uncharted, unpredictable territory, and that–unlike every other time we were convinced the sky was falling–this time the sky really is falling? Sure, I guess it’s possible. But as heavy influence on my thinking Robert Anton Wilson says:

Personally, I never worry about the thermodynamic fact that the probability of air remaining approximately evenly distributed around this room never reaches 100%. The probability that all the air will suddenly rush to one corner and leave me to die in a vacuum has been calculated as greater than 0% and much, much less than 0.001%, but I refuse to get anxious about it.

Personally, I’m not worried about AI removing any reason for me to be creative. I think the most likely path is that it will become yet another tool artists use to make art.

image: robot Motorhead cover band Compressorhead are not AI, but they are pretty awesome.