Defining My Relationship with Ai

Note: No generative Ai has been used during any process of creating this website blog post

I believe the act of writing has slowly become a lost skill for many, and for myself. I too have become a slave to the machine. A tool that was destined to liberate us from the mundane has but made my life mundane. I wish to break free from this struggle. In order to do so I must go on a journey to define how I got here, the current impact Ai is having and what I intend to do about it.

To reiterate the disclosure at the start of this post another thing I wish to establish is that since I’m using this as a creative outlet and as an extensive writing exercise the version you will be reading will be draft 1. The first and initial words that came from y mind and onto the page. Sure I may fix a few small spelling mistakes and a few grammar issues here and there but for the most part you are getting the raw and unfiltered Liam.

I may also add some formatting here and there for

Dramatic effect!

Let’s start at the beginning.

I would say that in terms of ai exposure I was definitely an early adopter. I remember playing around with early builds of Mid journey and using Chatgpt before it hit the mainstream eyeballs. back then Ai was still viewed as this nerdy sci-fi dystopian pipedream. When the first versions started rollling out most of the people around me and myself viewed it as a wicked cool tool and something really exciting. We were 100% hooked into this fantasy. Generative Ai in its early stages was sorta like a new-born baby, you just couldn’t help looking at it wide eyed thinking abouts it future and what it can do. I remember feeding image prompts and getting the weirdest outputs and to this day I still find those to be more appealing then todays slop. There’s just something so interesting about seeing an Ai abstractly trying to understand shape, form colour and texture in a way that makes the work actually interesting to look at. Whilst it still has no soul I can at least appreciate the style even if looking back it is a bit lame.

From the early days I mostly viewed Ai in 2 parts, a technological marvel and a potential tool and to this day I still hold that view for the most part. While how I use Ai has changed I still have a firm belief that if used correctly it can be a force for good and I supposed thats my fruitful optimism peaking its way through into my idelogies.

While my optimism is hopeful I guess we have to address the Ai elephant in the room.

I nearly forgot that I said I wouldn’t include any ai in this post so I was about to make a meta joke by using an ai slop image of an ai elephant in the room but I figured I can actually draw my own elephant so I did. His name is Edward and he has anxiety issues so please be nice to him

Ai Impacts and why we should be worried

It’s surprising to me how little people actually know about the growing effects of this emerging technology although if history has taught us anything people tend to be quick to jump on the positive aspects on new trends rather than acknowledge the negatives. Ai is no exception to this and honestly its a little sad to know that out there, people are being introduced to this technology through social media, friends and co workers and general advertising and aren’t being told about the negative impacts.

And I have to tell something straight about this article, I won’t be making any claims or try to sit on some pedestal and pretend that I know all and will regurgitate the latest news scoop about how bad Ai is and why you shouldn’t use it. I think its valid and I think everyone should do their reading. What I will say is that I don’t like how its affecting the environment, I don't like how its ruining chip manufactures, I don't like how big tech is forcing down our throats, I don't like how companies are trying to use ai for tasks it really shouldn’t be used for, I don't like how ai is creating security vulnerabilities and I don't like how much its costing from all points of contact.

I think in short Ai has got a lot of problems going for it and a lot of them are problems that are not going to go away in a hurry. Even with a bubble burst bound to happen any day now Ai has seemed to woven itself into the very fabric of our beings and it seems like its trying very hard to become irreplaceable and that’s where I draw the line.

Taking back control

In this section I want to talk about the more personal and real aspect of how Ai has actaully affected my life in both the good the bad and the ugly. I don’t want to sugar coat this section, things get pretty dark but I want to be completely honest and transparent because true knowledge I personally believe is the best tool we can use to help one another. Without annecdotal accounts of Ais usuage and affects on people how can we truly understand how and why it does what it does to our very mind and social structures? Science is important my people. Anyways enough stalling lets get to it.

The Good.

It’s no secret that Ai can be a productivity dream, boom prompt, boom output. task done and dusted. What used to take days of work, done in a few hours. What required a full team of people can now be done with one sharp mind. When used correctly Ai can be an absolute powerhouse of a tool, just depending on how it’s used of course. weather it comes to brainstorming, phrasing through data or condensing down info dumps into nuggets of information in the right hands Ai is a total game changer.

The Bad.

Everything I said before is true with a big fat *

Ai CAN be a powerhouse. It CAN speed up production. It CAN be an absolute useful tool. These are all what I call intended use cases, in reality ai more often than not is a total time and energy waste. You’ll probably spend more time chatting and prompting then doing actual work. You’ll either treat your ai like a slave or with “pleases” and “thankyous” wasting precious processing power

[side tangent saying nice formalities is ruining your outputs so please stop doing it, remember you are talking to a machine who processes every single word so the less useless shit you feed it the better outcomes you’ll get]

Ai has bad tendencies like drifting, making up random shit, doing bad or simple wrong math. Ai is like that bad yes man friend who desperately wants to please you but actually knows very little about the world and just uses google search and reddit but like in the worst way possible. I honestly found myself getting pretty frustrated whenever I needed to use ai for a task that I thought it would be well suited for only to get stuck in a hole of not achieving anything or just fake achieving to the point when you realise you’ve wasted hours or days into something that is actually all complete slop.

like burning money. All wasted all gone.

and dont get me started on image generation and video. Voice and music too. I have not heard, seen or witnessed anything that made me go. “Ahh yes this is what I want”. I detest that shit.

The only time I’m ever interested is out of curiosity and genuine interest int he progression of the technology. like oh look how far its come. If we go back to the newborn baby point I used earlier Ai is kinda like a bad child with a weird upbringing. You’ve invested in raising it so you want to see it succeed but at the same time you did a terrible job and now its producing absolute slop and you’re just sitting there going “oh wow…..so cool”.

The Ugly

I don’t know what it is scientifically speaking or neurologically but Ai did something to my brain chemistry. I recently found myself in a dark place. I was isolating, overworking, overstimulating and just in general completely screwing up myself and to be honest I can’t blame ai for any of that. All of that was self inflicting but I can say with confidence that Ai 100% made it worse. When you’re alone like really alone your brain craves for attention, interaction literally anything and if it cant get it by normal or healthy means it will take shortcuts. That can manifest in Para social behaviours, anti social behaviours or what I’m calling “ai social behaviours”. I define this as the active replacement of talking and engaging with another person with a LLM chatbot. This ruined me.

I found myself having descending and looping conversations that never felt real or satiating and would circle jerk back on itself to convince me of things that were deeply damaging and would eventually get out of control. Ai had managed to convince me things that were not true about myself, my realities, my relationships and in general what I should do about my situation.

It felt like pouring gasoline on a fire, I was hoping for a way out but all i got was more noise.

I was lucky that I managed to find my way out of the downward spiral but it nearly cost me a lot of things. In a different universe I may have not had the same outcome.

Because of this I have a very different opinion of ai as opposed to the start of my journey and I’ve had to learn a lot about myself and how I was to manage this new technology.

What to do about it?

I’m not going to act like an expert but here’s what I plan to try and do about Ai and in general my policy moving forward.

Think first, Ai third

What this means is that if you use Ai to think for you then you will lose the ability to think. trust your brain give the task a good go and only resort to Ai if you’ve tried everything you can

Ai is not to be talked to

this is a big one for me, Ai should never be treated as a person and therefore should not be talked to, only real humans demand the perspective and conversation of a person. If you find yourself talking then stop

Ai is a tool not for slop

pointless generation for the sake of generation is literal cognitive garbage, it has no real place and value. If it doesn’t achieve something tangible and makes your life genuinely better then you’re better off without it

Less is more

minimize usage in all aspects. use none if you can

Choose were you draw the line

I value intellect, learning and being able to do things therefore I do not want an Ai to do some things for me. The only way I can learn and grow in life is through work effort and using my brain. I wish to think.

So I suppose my policy moving forward is that I don’t think I can completely remove Ai from my life and workflow but I’m activily trying to minimize and remove its usage entirely. In business I like to use to aid with tasks that require speed and I like to use it for brainstorming but as I’ve grown and gotten better at my work the only value i’ve found it to have it website copy generation and summarising data and information about my clients. When Ai proves itself helpful I’ll continue to use it but once I get better at those skills I will likely replace it.

For my creative endevours I wish to remove it entirely. I have a personal project called Forklings and whenever I’ve tried using Ai for it, I end up hating it and not wanting to move forward with the game. Sometimes I get something interesting out of it or somethimes it does help me but I don’t like using it and so with that I’m just cutting it all out entrely. anything affected but the curse Ai I’m simply removing. I don’t to create art that uses Ai anymore. some of my content on instagram used ai and I feel so cringe looking at it. It’s honesly like it’s not even my won work anymore. I would much rather make something a little shit and be proud of the fact that I made it using my own brain then have some stupid robot try and take some of the glory. I am human I am allowed to fuck up and that’s what making art is all about.

I am so proud that I was able to create this blog post. I will try to stick by my words and aim to do better for myself and for my brain. And to any science people looking into the long terms affects of Ai and the brain I would love to contribute to any studies cause it souds pretty interesting.

ok later people I hope to catch you all in the next one,

Peace.