Everything Has A Cost — Clelia Vahni Lewis

This is a note I recently posted on Substack:

People like to say that previous new technologies have done no real harm, that human beings have only made good use of our inventiveness to improve life, and therefore that we will do so with AI as well. But whether that is true or not depends entirely on your definition of what gives human life value. This type of argument depends on the assumption that the most important things about human life are physical and psychological comfort, individual freedom and gratification, pleasure, ease, accumulation of stuff and wealth, and of course long life—even if it results in environmental degradation and degraded social cohesion. But anyone knows upon honest self-examination, not to mention even a cursory glance at studies of human psychology, that while those elements are nice in the short run, they do not provide the kind of deep satisfaction and value of other aspects of life such as human connection and relationship, creativity, meaningful work, making effort and overcoming challenges, serving others, being connected to a sense of meaning beyond oneself alone, a sense spiritual growth, the experience of organic beauty in nature and in human art, craftsmanship, and culture, and so on. As we are not going to stop the juggernaut of massive corporations rolling out these AI products, and the majority of people are just going to go along with it and become completely dependent on it, I think we are going to see rapid exponential change in how human beings are able to function and find value in life. Loss of cognitive flexibility and diversity is already showing up in spades and loss of critical thinking and capacity for sustained attention has already been happening at a frightening rate due to internet and social media use. Here are some recent studies and articles about the currently obvious detrimental effects of mass AI adoption, in a list provided by John Gallagher (https://substack.com/home/post/p-201666166) who is a worthwhile writer to follow here on Substack. Yes, all of our inventions have provided some kind of value—convenience, speed, efficiency, wealth production, domination over natural challenges—but always, always at a cost of other values and aspects of life when such abilities to make everything easier result in large-scale blind adoption. I urge everyone to trust their instincts, those gut feelings of disgust and fear upon considering turning your mind and attention over to artificial machinery, and resist the urge to go the easy way, to justify it and say “well everyone is doing it so it must be ok.” Resist. Stay real and messy and organic and find others who wish to do so too.