The Boston Globe asked, recently, "why so many people assume generative AI systems such as ChatGPT will mark the beginning of some new phase of human existence."
The Globe provided an answer, too: "AI doomsayers and AI boosters are both so caught up in the moment because they are fundamentally impatient with the reality we find ourselves in."
Better grammar would have ended that last sentence differently, as follows: "... impatient with the reality in which we find ourselves." Ending a sentence with a preposition? Not the way I learned the language. Grammar aside, however, isn't it actually true that many of us are feeling "impatient with reality"?
If you want to read the whole essay (paywalls permitting, of course), click right here. If you want to think about the question I pose (aren't many of us "impatient with reality"?), then I recommend that you consider the possibility that we have the "Yips," as discussed in my blog post yesterday.
Having the "Yips" means that the abilities that we have previously taken for granted (like the fact that we, ourselves, actually create the reality we most immediately inhabit) now seem, somehow, both difficult and problematic.
If contemplating Artificial Intelligence causes us to be impatient with reality, and gives us the "Yips," I'd like to suggest that this is because the idea that reality is not a human creation runs directly counter to everything we, intuitively, know about our human situation, and our whole history.
We ultimately live, of course, in the "Natural World," a world we did not create and into which he have been rather mysteriously delivered. Most immediately, though, from the Garden of Eden on forward, the world we most directly inhabit is a world that we human beings have created ourselves, in what might be thought of as a three-fold process: (1) thought and vision of a possibility yet unrealized; (2) action; (3) reality.
"Rinse and repeat," as I think some shampoo advertisement once advised.
When we start doubting that we can still do that - create the realities that reflect our dreams (or our nightmares) - which is something we have taken for granted, from time immemorial, it's no wonder we're "impatient" with that kind of world.
Not to say, "spooked"!
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