Welcome to the Great Job Nat™ Sunday Newsletter! For $5/month y’all help keep the lights on for me, so if even one of you switches from free to paid today, I’ll cry from happiness <3 Consider leveling up here xoxo
IT’S A GREATER THREAT TO HUMANITY THAN CLIMATE CHANGE. IT’S AN EMERGENCY. EVERYBODY SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT IT.
(I’m watching an interview with ex-Google officer Mo Gawdat. These are my takeaways.)
EVERY MAJOR NETWORK REFUSES TO SAY HOW THEY’RE GOING TO USE IT. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO LOSE THEIR JOBS.
(I’m reading The Ankler’s newsletter. Keeping up with the writer’s strike. These are my takeaways.)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. The words in everyone’s mouth.
Tastes like metal. Tastes like blood.
Funny how those taste the same. Can you tell the difference?
Stanford School of Engineering, 2012.
I’m an undergrad. We’re already talking about artificial intelligence in a big way. I mean, not ChatGPT-big. But big. Mainstream-adjacent. Big enough that I briefly humor choosing artificial intelligence as my major, because I’m a megalomaniac who loves to be a part of Big Things. Unfortunately, my full-time soccer schedule and loose-noodle brain did not a computer-coding-genius make. Instead, I opted for a mechanical engineering degree with a focus in design because that’s totally-so-much-easier. (Remind me—Why did I take all of those calculus and physics classes only to eventually become a WRITER?)
It’s all good, though. By staying in the engineering family, I got to take classes in the same building as the robotics geniuses. So, I witnessed some of the action. Breathed the same nerdy air. Took a Mech-E exploratory class called Renaissance Machine Design and stored my catapult (yes, catapult) a few shelves over from a bookcase full of half-done bots from the neighboring Machine Learning class. Tangles of wires around little aluminum bodies. Like a nursery of Bionicles.
Side-eyeing them—wishing I were the type of smart that could make them move.
What Does it Mean to be Human?
It means to smell and feel and think! It means to love and to lose!
To be human is to feel rain on your skin and think of your childhood,
it means to laugh when you don’t expect it,
it means dinner parties,
and funerals,
and getting fucked over,
and winning big—
haha, jk.
Being human means knowing which squares have stoplights.
An Interview with an Ex-Google Officer: Should we be Scared of AI?!
Are you going to lose your job to an AI bot? Well, not exactly. At least, not immediately. AI won’t take your job. Rather, a person using AI-based tools will take your job. because that will allow them to work 10x as fast as you can without an AI toolbox in your repertoire…
I’m taking notes, watching Steven Bartlett’s “Diary of a CEO” interviews with ex-Google officer Mo Gawdat. Titled, sensationally: “EMERGENCY EPISODE: Ex-Google Officer Finally Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI!” Recently, I’ve become addicted to Bartlett’s “Diary of a CEO” interviews despite (or maybe because of?) his shouty titles.
In Gawdat’s opinion, AI’s been released to the masses too early. Why would companies do something so irresponsible, you might ask?
Well, to “beat the other guy,” of course! Every country is worried that pausing progress to implement any kind of regulations will take too damn long. Time spent making rules is time that another country is going to spend not making rules and developing artificial intelligence that will be more intelligent than the rule-making country is wasting making rules. D’you follow? The rat race is more important than the regulation race. Classic humanity, making itself second banana to money.
Our reality makes Gawdat cry. “Humanity’s stupidity is affecting people who have done nothing wrong. Greed is affecting people who have done nothing wrong.”
Through his tears, he laughs at himself as he references Spider-Man: “With great power comes great responsibility.” And that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’ve disconnected power from responsibility. Technologies are too widely available to people who have no business having them. Fifteen year olds have access to CRISPR, for chrissakes. (CRISPR, for those who live in blissful ignorance, is a gene-editing technology that allows whomever is in possession of a CRISPR kit to alter an organism’s DNA. I do not have time, good lord, to get into that in this already too-long essay—read more about it here.)
I can just hear the libertarian-adjacent tech-heads screaming. Don’t keep technology from us! Everybody SHOULD have access to technology. THIS IS A FREE COUNTRY—
Yeah, we should have access. But—yet? There’s something to be said for the experts getting to expertly-handle their shiny new tool before giving it to clumsy us. You don’t just hand a knife to a child and say, go for it champ! See what you can do!
As I watch Mo & Steven talk, I think: What’s freedom and what’s just… irresponsible?
I think about Twitter, I think about guns.
Freedom! It’s the right to bear arms!
Freedom! It’s the right to give people literal bear arms by altering their DNA using CRISPR!
We’re the land of the free. Home of the brave…
But you know what they say. You have to be afraid to be brave.
I Can’t Wait to Live Forever
Every year, I’d get into the same argument with the same friend.
He went to USC. And he’s a he. I’m dragging him for both of those flaws.
Lol come AT me. *flexes pecs*
He worked for Tesla and was obsessed with everything tech, Elon, Neuralink, self-optimization etc. A real Tim Ferriss 2.0. Every few months we’d grab coffee and he’d unload all his newfound futuristic findings which (however surprisingly) I found to be more fun than insufferable. Well, except—
He was stoked by the idea of uploading his consciousness into—what? A cyborg?
Stoked by the idea of some digitized kind of immortality. Humans, he said, will be able to live forever. Soon. We’ll replicate DNA. Copy personality patterns. Combine this DNA and these patterns and reanimate them into some robotic humanoid form.
Initiate argument.
I was like, bro. No. If before you died, you uploaded your personalty into (what? a hard drive?) and then DIED—well. If that hard drive were uploaded into a RoboYou, no matter how advanced the programming, you’d still be dead. Just because you upload your favorite flavor of ice cream and all of your annoying beliefs like “the human body is supposed to fast til 2PM because cavemen did it” or whatever — that cyborg-person is NOT YOU. You. would. be. DEAD. Because your consciousness would be lost, and to be human is to be CONSCIOUS.
(I’m yelling at this point, probably. And laughing, usually.)
Every time, he’d fight me on it. No, Nat. That’s not what being human is!
(Bystanders at the neighboring cafe table sip their cappuccinos, avoiding eye contact.)
Every time he’d fight me, I’d find a new example of what I believe it means to be a human. I’d tell him something like: “Close your eyes and imagine being in a crowded school gymnasium. Now imagine it’s empty. Silent. So silent that you can hear the inside of your own head. The feeling that you’re feeling, in that shift. That’s being human.” I struggled to define exactly what I meant. A kinetic something…
If I were to define it now, I’d say: Connection. Connection to each other. To the present moment. Connection in a way that supersedes pattern and expectation. In a way that cannot be coded. Pulsing and animal. To be human is to have a sticky, organic consciousness feelable only by a sticky, organic brain. Humanity is the mystery within the mind’s folds.
AI will have its version of emotion, but it will not be this X factor I’m talking about.
Oh, you don’t agree? *flexes pecs again* Come AT me, bro.
The Sex Robots are Cumming
Sorry. Had to.
WHAT ABOUT THE SEX DOLLS?
We’re back to The Diary of a CEO interview.
Steven Bartlett asks Gawdat: How are we going to parse out human connection once sex bots are widely available?
Gawdat, of course, was realistic. It’s true: Some people will rely on them to feel connected to others. It’s unavoidable. What would be devastating is if all people decide: Fuck it. I don’t need another person. I just need to program my preferences into this fake person and that’s it, I will have a RoboWife who listens to my every command and live happily ever after. Because if everyone is stickin’ it into a sexbot, we will have given up on human connection, and to give up on human connection is to give up on humanity. Connection is all we have.
We’ve given up on nature, already. Gawdat says. Not entirely. It’s just—we live in cities. We walk to the grocery store for food. That’s what’s “natural” now.
Will we give up on each other?
I think not. Because: Rihanna. Let me explain.
You Can’t ChatGPT a Rihanna
At some point in the interview Bartlett says: “We underestimate what people want out of an experience.”
I hold those words in my head as I attend a writer’s salon—an alumni event, where I listen to a producer talk about AI and how it’s going to affect the entertainment industry. At this point, everybody who works in showbiz has eaten everyone else’s words and regurgitated them through their own lips to the same conclusion:
AI = great tool!
AI = not great at replacing human creativity!
AI = good to increase productivity!
I find it hilarious that we’re so caught up in vilifying robots who want our TV jobs, when we should be excited for the AI that is going to take over a bunch of bullshit clerical and political jobs that humans are pretty shit at doing. Imagine: a world in which an AI decides how resources are allocated based on need, based on the censuses, based on actual statistics. Utopian, truly. I hope, I pray, I believe we’ll get there, but I DIGRESS—
During the Q&A at the salon, a writer in the audience expressed her concern—What about the day that AI can replicate a human script/story/etc? What are we going to do? Are we doomed? I could have exploded with a response. My mouth so full of words begging to be said, pressing on the backs of my teeth.
“People want LORE!” I almost screamed. People want drama! And backstory!
If writing is the tangible thing we’re worried is going to be automated—well, that’s not enough to satisfy an audience. At least, not today’s audience. Who knows: One day after we reach singularity, maybe everyone’s brains will devolve to mayonnaise but for now, today’s people—we want the tangibles, yes (plots, movies, scripts, books, shows, etc.) but we also want the intangibles surrounding the tangibles. Why else do you think people are so wrapped up with that one guy from Vanderpump Rules or whatever cheating on his girlfriend? WE LIVE FOR THE DRAMA BACKSTORY ETC. It’s not just about the movie, it’s about the people in the movie and the lives that surround the movie and the Florence Pugh / Harry Styles debacle surrounding the movie.
“We underestimate what people want out of an experience.”
AI makes tangibles. AI is already very good at making tangibles and is only going to get better at making tangibles. After all, AI is a combination, a collective knowledge of everything we’ve ever made!
AI’s already written a Drake album. It’s already written a myriad of bangin’ music. The other night, I saved an AI-voice and AI-lyric generated mashup of Bad Bunny and Rihanna on TikTok. The song was absolute fuego. Summer smash. I listened to it on a loop for longer than I’d like to admit. AI is good at finding patterns and combining them already.
Here’s my question, though.
Would I have cared about the Bad Bunny / Rihanna mashup if they were random AI generated voices, untethered to existing artists? Two robot-nobodies? The song could’ve still been a bop, sure. But what excited me about the song was that it came—hypothetically—from two real artists.
Will we always care about that, in every instance? Probably not. But I think we’ll care about it just enough, that connection to something real. That connection to each other. Connection in a way that supersedes pattern and expectation. In a way that cannot be coded. Pulsing and animal. Sticky, organic connection. Humanity is the mystery within the mind’s folds.
We live in a post-nature society, and yet we still seek it out. I’m not an outdoorsy person, but even I look into the blank, endless face of the ocean and feel a sense of presence. A sense of kinetic something.
So — IS IT ALL GONNA BE OKAY, OR WHAT?!
What are we going to do?
We are… going to stay tuned for Part II. Lol. Unfortunately, I’m not a robot and my human eyes are tired. I have too many more thoughts to fit the conclusion in this newsletter, so we’ll talk about that next time. We’ll discuss Ray Kurzweil, the movie Arrival, and come back to that CEO interview one more time with Mo Gawdat.
Lmk all your related AI thoughts in the comments.
Love you, fellow humans.
Nat
Great read. For my part, I’m not afraid of A.I. tech per se. More so of the short-sidedness of the powers that be and the long-cascading repercussions of one-off decisions. Ex: say for the next three years AI is integrated into everything: from education to artistic compositions to tech work, etc. Then, all of a sudden, we are forced to stop using it because critical issues were found ( facts given were wrong, shows made sucked, the math stopped mathing after running the code 10,000,000 times, etc). We won’t be able to switch back to the previous status quo because 1) the pipeline feeding talent was broken when we stopped hiring for entry-level positions, 2) in that 3-year span, a lot of those people who really knew how things worked will retire or stop working in the field (insert any field where AI is integrated) 3) the powers that be will rather burn society down before acquiescing and ceding any power they’ve acquired. If an AI looks at the current state of things and decides it can give us a better utopia by eliminating our current pain points (namely, greed and corruption), maybe we should welcome it.
You're one of the best humans. For the record. But I'm still scared of AI