By Jeanne Denney
This year, the conversation about AI has become almost deafening; it arrived on all my devices as a new authority about everything. Meanwhile, my own body is confused by these new relationships that aren’t really relationships. Because I’m writing a book on the nature of our core human experience, I felt compelled to share my experience. And no, I did not use AI to write this.
Over the course of this year, I have had any number of arguments with friends about AI. Mostly they are with men. I usually argue that AI excludes much of our innate knowing and predict that it will be disastrous for our natural way of communicating and relating. It is smart but essentially ignorant and soulless compared to our innate intelligence. I point out, “There is no there, there!”. It is dangerous because it can seem to be so deceptively human, or worse, god-like. “This is too much power.” To which my friends usually respond something like: “Don’t be a Luddite. You can’t stop progress” (which it is assumed this is). Or “Better to learn to work with it than stop it . . . it is just a tool.” And lastly . . . there’s nothing you can do to stop it anyway.” Under these responses, I can sense what feels like a perverse glee, maybe like the false joy of being dominated by something much larger, a “negative pleasure”. It creeps me out (mild, visceral disgust).
At least in my world, there is a difference in response by gender. Mostly the folks in these conversations are fascinated, taking it entirely for granted that this is progress that nothing can stop. Make the best of it, etc. It feels like a trance to me. I notice that it puts my own mind body on alert, as if to threat. I am uneasy; my energy rises in readiness. Meanwhile, most of my female friends shudder or shrug when AI is brought up. They change the subject. They are avoidant, disinterested, and possibly in denial. I find the gender response curious.
I may dislike AI even more than others because I am a poet. That means I am terribly sensitive to language and the spirit within the spoken word. My body has responses to inflections, intonations, pauses, and pace, but even more to the energy of connection and history behind a word. I can still get lathered about the bank machine commanding me to “Have a nice day.” Or adopting the personal pronoun “I” or pretending to be sentient or concerned. “How can we help you today?” For me, blessings, concern, or compassion are attached to felt energy that my body understands. Exactly who, I ask, is wishing any good upon me? The answer is always no one, actually. Like plastic flowers, these words on the screen are trying to remind me of something beautiful without actually being so. Substituting the false for the real will always, eventually, produce jadedness.
Living words have roots. They pulsate. In our natural state, they result from both body and true feelings. They emanate our shared history with the natural world. To cynically disengage words from any bodily experience, to create bodiless bots expert at the imitation of natural speech and seduction . . . I mean who dreamt this up and why!? What substance were they on? Why are we even thinking that this won’t manufacture cynicism, disconnection and loneliness? Meanwhile, evidence that this is a disruptive force to my own mind/body arrives daily, regardless of any good it does. When I sense AI writing in response to my real, lived human words, it shows up as an annoyance and a feeling of betrayal (tightening in the back of my throat, an impulse to make a fist).
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Photo Credit: Woman with roots: Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
