29 Comments
User's avatar
Annie's avatar

I sure have felt it. And I recommend, if you don't already know him, Iain McGilchrist's many you tubes on this, and his book, The Master and his Emmisary. To me, we - I - MUST go on using my brain (of which your 'sensing nose' is part) and never let the machine calcify it, control it through its 'muscle' becoming lazy. Even if I'm still 'bottom of the class' (as I always was), I must use it (which is actually, now, why I think I was bottom of the class; I was told I must conform, but never seemed able to - funny that....) I will stay curious, thinking, sensing, refusing-to-send-the-ball-back, and dodge any 'actual insanity' button to my dying day.

Thank you for you great wriitng, as ever!

Tessa Lena's avatar

Thank you Annie, and I applaud you!! xoxo

Mark Brody's avatar

A.I. is a seductress. We must learn to tie ourselves to the mast to avoid her temptations. She beckons, and is beautiful, but succumbing means risking never returning. There's nothing like the real thing, as long as we wish to remain human.

Tessa Lena's avatar

Beautifully put, Mark!! Your comments reminds of the song I released 9 years ago. It was about the commodification of music, at the time it was unthinkable that a robot could write an article. https://tessamakeslove.bandcamp.com/track/before-the-music-was-stolen-2

nymusicdaily's avatar

A.I. is the Master Decapitatress

Tessa Lena's avatar

If our creative expression is our essence, outsourcing it to AI is a strange choice. But then again, it could be a statement that says, "my writing is not my creative expression, it's a weapon of securing a following." OR, "I am the boss of this AI who is doing the writing for me, and I am just signing my name." This could be easily resolved by "written by AI, edited and / or endorsed by so and so." Then it would be transparent. I NEED A COFFEE

nymusicdaily's avatar

it's a vampire soul that eats the real soul from the inside. you recognized this and wrote about long before i figured it out

it breaks my heart to consider how much fun people are missing out on. writing a song while going for a run (they can't even go for a run anymore because that would mean getting off the magic rectangle for half an hour)

walking the coney island boardwalk with your significant other in peace without constant interruptions from the ringtone

reaching the smith/9th st. station and looking up and realizing the kentile floors sign isn't there anymore

I NEED A COFFEE TOO

Danni's avatar

I am also baffled and despairing. But not entirely without hope. Mostly I have just decided to walk away from it. Let it control other people. I don't need it to play with my dogs

polistra's avatar

Your point about confiding in the KGB "priests" also applies to the old Roman priests. Confession is blackmail material. Deepstates of all eras understand it, and Altman certainly understands it. NSA made the web so it could read everyone's thoughts and feelings in an atmosphere of Let It All Hang Out.

I've avoided using the openly labeled AI confessors, though there's no way to avoid the web.

Luna Basheve-Singer's avatar

I consider the entire internet to be like Mao's Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom campaign.

Tessa Lena's avatar

Yes!!! By the way I wrote this story over 10 years ago.. https://tessafightsrobots.com/tessa-lena/social-story/

Luna Basheve-Singer's avatar

I just read it. Excellent work, as always.

Tessa Lena's avatar

Thank you!!!

Luna Basheve-Singer's avatar

What do you think of my idea that AI can copy but not create?

Tessa Lena's avatar

Yep. great point.

Rich Moser's avatar

Owed Money Paid Me How?

Bird's Brain's avatar

"Here is an amazing fact: it’s not the sadism of the broken souls who choose to be evil that breaks emotional spines, it’s the indifference and temporary insanity of wobblyfolk those who go under their spell and allow themselves to throw others under the bus."

This is so very true! And it takes a great deal of determination to maintain an albeit somewhat modified faith in humanity once life experience shows us that there are more wobblyfolk than there are steady. The bright side is that it makes us appreciate those few who don't go under their spell all the more.

Tessa Lena's avatar

I hear you. I so hear you!

Al's avatar
7dEdited

Tessa sez: The abuse of today is automated abuse."

“Technology doesn’t have a Hippocratic oath. So many decisions that have been made by technologists in academia, industry, the military, and government since at least the Industrial Revolution have been made on the basis of “can we,” not “should we.” And the intention driving a technology’s invention rarely, if ever, limits its application and use.” ― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

(To be fair, doctors don't take their oath seriously, either.)

Tessa Lena's avatar

Exactly!!

420MedicineMan's avatar

That was a cool experiment Tessa, thank you for sharing that. The AI bots are pretty icky, if they humanize, there's other ways the human nose, of logic knows. Really it's like an avalanche of constant content, drowning the internet ether.

Your Russian prevalence for philosophizing about humanity and purpose is always welcome. You're right about the indigenous peoples way, of where you live now. I read it from you years ago. About finding your mission in life, it's actually one of the core aspects that I found the shortest path to enlightenment in my humble opinion. That and the throat chakra. :)

Tessa Lena's avatar

Thank you for your kind words! My people are awesome. :)

John Day MD's avatar

Thanks Tessa.

Can You Tell The Difference? That's the big question, is it not?

I see a lot of use of AI in blogs and even in comments now. People just use it...

Cyd Ropp, to whom you introduced me, has a Gnostic Christianity blog on Substack https://cydropp.substack.com/p/questioning-the-basics

In the above post she goes through the questions and comments of a lifelong atheist who is questioning atheism and exploring Gnosticism, direct-communion with The Divine.

It is interesting that this reader/listener has Chat GPT analyze the Tripartite Tractate, and the first thing Chat GPT does is completely misunderstand the point of Gnosticism in the first sentence, declaring an "unreachable God", whereas the path of Gnosticism is direct knowledge of and communion with The Divine.

Tessa Lena's avatar

Yep, outsourcing theology and art to AI is one of the strangest propositions human beings have agreed to, so far. We could also say, of course, that outsourcing agriculture to machines, while we could be touching the earth ourselves, is also strange, but now we are used to it as something that has taken place on an industrial scale.. Mind you, I am a friend of technology as an energy that assists us in having good lives. But when we allow it to be used in a way our enemies would use it against us, yikes.

And yes, there has been a lot of it going around for a long time. In the old days of Substack, there were people promoting themselves via being the first comment on every blog. Was it possible to do it without AI? Who knows.

Luna Basheve-Singer's avatar

AI can copy your style; it cannot create it. Nor can it create the personal experiences that become works of art.