Reflections On Language and Generative AI
Is there a moral conundrum in using AI to respond to the various mundane messages and pleasantries we send back and forth to one another? How about using it to respond to the less inane, say, a message to your mother describing why you won’t be able to make it for Easter dinner? These questions came up while speaking to some friends today. Fascinating thought experiments, and for many of us, present realities.
Much of our communication as humans hinges around a sense of propriety, rapport, affinity - but with the advent of the internet, and more specifically social media, our circles are growing larger. I think that we all feel this subtle dissonance though - we speak to more people than ever before, and yet so many of those interactions feel transactional, empty. A conversation with customer service, a work email to ask for some report, a call to the insurance company to square away some bureacratic item or another. We are innundated with a deluge of communication and notifications from all corners and the expectation is, even with our ever-diminishing societal patience, that we respond to all of it. Given all this, it comes as no wonder that we are all chomping at the bit to outsource so much burden of language creation to the machines.
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This isn’t meant to be a long reflection, but I do find myself filled with more questions than answe. What will happen to our language? I’m a capable engineer, and even so I was bested while assiting my 7th grade cousin doing math on paper without a calculator. I just don’t have that facility anymore, a lifetime of punching away at TI-89 keys has led to the slow but complete erosion of my basic long division and cross-multiplication. If there is any similarity in the way that our brains function with language, then what happens when you let your muscles of language creation atrophy? As we move from simple autocompletion of a sentence to the generation of entire blocks of text, paragraphs, essays - what will happen to our ability to spontaneuously express our emotions, thoughts, desires?
Not only do I think about the atrophy of language for our poets, liberal artists and natural language sects - but I find myself even quesitoning what of our engineers and programmers? I use ChatGPT as an assitant all the time as I code - but these days, with these reflections, I find myself being more hesitant to do so. I think there is a non-romantic rigor and neccessity in training the brain to consider the minutae. Like doing finger strength and grip exercises in the gym - working the muscles which construct architectures and systems, but also understanding the details of time efficiency of a loop and the heterogeneity of this particular array.
It’s all important, I don’t have any premonitions about what will be - I battle my own cycniscism here. But what I do hope is that we as a species learn to consider the many truths, to not blind the eye of objectivity with culture wars and technofanaticism. That we strive to nderstand that multiple realities can exist at once. Is is possible that generative AI will build constructs the likes of which we have never before fathomed. It is also possible that it may fuel that growth with the diminishment of our humanity. Perhaps.
