I feel the hand of AI getting closer. How can it be a hand, you say? I just read an article where AI was used for analysis because of its soi-disant distance from human interference. Take that AI. Two languages.

Really? Because I see the hand of those who take oppression so for granted, it has become invisible. Something that was invented by mankind, with a heavy emphasis on the “man” part, has somehow become omnipotent and separated from our daily concerns and biases? 

I see the invention of a new religion, right there. Giving invincibility to an inanimate, invisible thing, that only some experts can translate or speak about. 

Sounds familiar. 

Margaret Atwood said that “powerlessness and silence go together.” 

My job uses AI to assist with emails. It’s learned all the jargon. It’s useful in many ways, because I work and live in a world of “circle back”, “loop you in”, “stakeholders”, “clarifications.” So many words, all as meaningless as the meetings they are used to organize. More dangerously though, is their promise of to facilitate communication. What it does is make sure there is only one language. If you don’t “get on board” it will be your fault when no one understands you. 

There are articles about how AI is learning to cheat, how it can be racist, sexist. Those who operate it, steal words. My website keeps getting 300 hits in a day, randomly. I doubt it’s due to a sudden surge in popularity.

“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose”

Charles Bukowski

First power came to conquer people. In every country, they came for dialect; now they come for individuation. A world where power dictates language and then thought. That’s the outcome of propaganda. Most Americans think they have the best healthcare in the world. A land where guns keep you safe. Those pesky statistics about school shootings and maternal death rates going up. Children and women. Collateral damage in the quest for freedom and “life?”

In the same way “thoughts and prayers” have become a shorthand for meaningless reassurance, soon language as a means of expressing the self will be irrelevant. Which language do we use? The one we are given in auto-correct, or whatever wellspring of connected impulse still exists? 

The self may already be fading. But  as Charles Bukowski said, “If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose” 

If a group has been created that has been trained to fit in, a group that worships science and feels threatened by impatient, untrained humanity or messy emotions, contradictions or complexities, and works in headlines and “likes”, their arrogance has convinced them that they are the only ones who can translate the future for the rest of us.  AI is the voice of this god they are creating. 

Where will we worship?