Reflections on Artificial Intelligence: Is It Really So Bad?

Years ago, while I was still at college, I wrote an essay for a competition. The subject was philosophy, and the task was to respond to one of several questions. The question I chose to respond to asked whether robots could ever be granted personhood. Or something along those lines. After conducting research at the library at Birkbeck University (to which we had been granted temporary access), I argued that robots could indeed meet the qualifications for personhood. My essay was shortlisted.

But my fascination with technology and Artificial Intelligence didn't end there. Technology has evolved in countless ways during my lifetime. I grew up alongside the shift from tape cassettes to streaming, VHS tapes to Netflix via LoveFilm. We have online chatbots and automated checkout systems in supermarkets – and increasingly in retail spaces. I'm still amazed that I can stream a song in seconds (WiFi permitting) when I used to spend the latter half of my lunch break trying to Bluetooth one song from my friend's phone to my own. And now I'm that person wondering if I should say thank you to a computer.

I posed this question to ChatGPT:

ChatGPT isn't at all bothered if you say thank you or not

Despite possessing many of the same concerns as others when it comes to AI – potential misuse, abuse, the impact on creative industries and those who work in them, security, misinformation, ethical implications, an internet populated and dominated by AI slop – I have thus far found it acceptable for everyday tasks, and embrace it as a tool for enhancing my productivity. And indeed, if you've read some of my other articles, you might have noticed my experimentation with the use of AI-generated images. And I'm going to explain why I started using them in the first place.

Alongside philosophy, I also studied photography at college, specifically Digital Photography. It was certainly an experimental period, with the likes of Guy Bourdin and Nick Knight serving inspiration. We spent a lot of time learning the art of photographic manipulation. I learned that while I'd rather take a perfect photograph, I also found that I could lean on photographic manipulation. Suddenly, the quality of the photo I took didn't matter quite as much as it had before. I could fix it. But I soon found this wasn't always true, and quality was often sacrificed. Still, I wanted to create my own images. Years later, I found myself turning to AI, bypassing all those concerns. It's a shortcut.

The more I think about AI, and not from a position of philosophical marvel, the more I dislike my increasing reliance on it. And I think I know where it stems from; there are times in the past, including recently, where I have felt that my own words were quite simply, not good enough.

I no longer expect every sentence I write to be exciting and attention-grabbing. I do, of course, want to engage my readers. But I don't necessarily achieve that by using simple words, and shorter paragraphs. Surely it is the aim of the writer to engage readers in terms of thought, and complexity?

It's something I admire about writers of the classics; the way language was used to effectively and accurately convey meaning. Take, for example, the opening line of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Simplified, it might read: "Everyone knows a rich single man must be looking for a wife". The impact is not the same.

In our quest for simplicity, we have forgotten to leave room for human complexity. And we find ourselves at a time when it means we risk forsaking real for artificial, all so we don't have to sit through a slightly tedious paragraph, regardless of how well-constructed that paragraph is.

In the UK, literacy is suffering a decline. If we are to truly improve upon current statistics, we need to be using language that excites, and prompts us to respond. Reading is boring when one is only ever reading the simplest of words. There is so much to gain from stumbling across a new word, learning what it means and how to use it, and then inserting it into one's vocabulary.

Of course, my own bias has me labouring under the illusion that people are able to distinguish between good writing, and bad writing. But the rise of influencer culture has shown this not to be the case. Influencers can, if they want to, spread misinformation that will be lapped up by audiences who accept opinion as fact.

A Telegraph article published on 13th December 2024 reported that the BBC accused Steven Bartlett's podcast The Diary of a CEO, of spreading harmful health misinformation. The investigation highlighted unchallenged claims by guests, particularly assertions pertaining to cancer treatment and the Covid vaccine. Bartlett defended the podcast as presenting diverse perspectives.

While such information can presently be debunked (humans are, after all, capable of critical thinking), if AI were to generate similar content without human oversight, it could linger online and have dangerous consequences.

The use of AI also presents environmental concerns. Immense computational power is required for training and running models, which consumes a lot of energy, and tends to rely on non-renewable sources. AI also needs hardware devices. The production, transport, and disposal of such hardware requires energy as well as natural resources. When they are disposed of incorrectly, those materials can contaminate water and soil.

These environmental costs add to the already complex ethical concerns surrounding Artificial Intelligence. In order to be able to fully embrace the positives of using AI, its development and deployment must be handled with consideration and respect for finite resources.

While I continue to mull over AI and its impact, I have made the decision to replace all AI-generated Featured Images for blog articles with my own images (photographs taken and edited by me). I cannot, therefore, always guarantee the best photos, but they will at least have been created by a human. As for my writing, I will be relying on the vocabulary and skills I have spent my life building and developing. And that will just have to do.