I fall into the category of people who are wary of AI. I do not find joy, pleasure, peace or excitement in the poetry of ChatGPT; I’m actually creeped out by this notion of language algorithm that isn’t human, but tricks you into thinking that.
The quest for titilating technology that makes life ‘easy and efficient’ in my mind, comes at a cost. The cost is an addiction to seeking power, pleasure or distraction outside of the Self; leaving the human heart alone and desperately isolated within.
There are many who do not think like me. For their reasons, they find the world of AI thrilling and exciting. They believe in expanded use-cases that weave AI software and hardware into our bones and genes, into our homes and cars, into our weapons and currency.
A lot of the narrative and opinions around AI is that ‘it is the future’. Many have jumped on this band-wagon, hoping to carve out a piece of ‘the future’ for themselves.
But to me, it isn’t the future.
It is the present - because only here and now do we have the ability to inform the direction of our collective future.
The Present
A lot of us generally accept that we are slaves to our phones and to our technology. This is our relationship with our tech.
The AI question for me is not about if it is good or bad or if I like it or hate it.
The question is: what aspect of the Self is our tech serving?
This is a big and messy question with all our tech - current and future.
Is your phone the brilliant piece of blessed tech that allows you to talk to all your besties in a group-chat, even though you are in different countries?
Is your phone the tool of your self-denial and suffocation because the second you feel a difficult emotion in your day, you reach for it and scroll through 2 hours of TikTok videos to distract yourself from yourself?
Is it both?
We do not have to wait for the future to ask these question of ourselves.
Neither, do we have to wait for the future to learn what our actual intentions and motivations are. That’s all available right now with a little self-discovery.
The quest of beautiful and intuitive design and engineering towards efficient products is a great purpose. But to choose efficiency in isolation, ignoring every other variable - the human, the shadow-consciousness, the environment, the planet, the electromagnetic fields around us, our health and human connection - that seems like engineering from discord and division.
Something that can be easily co-opted to serve greed and other nefarious agendas.
And yet, I know I cannot explore this subject, or any, if I resist or fight any part of it.
That Which Already Is
Technology does this weird thing in our world.
By its nature, technology amplifies what is.
Not what we wish it to be.
What is.
What already exists - known and unknown, conscious and unconscious.
When I pondered what this looks like in my world, I noticed a few things.
I realized that in moments where I really want to be seen, heard and loved, I interacted with my phone and laptop in a certain way - lightly desperate for attention and rather impatient.
This way is very different from the moments where I remember that I am already loved, where I felt received and whole. Often, when I remember that, I receive texts from my friends just as I’m typing to them. I know what it is to exist in a moment of delightful synchronicity through space and time; and my phone is part of that with me!
I also noticed that when I carried stress or exhaustion or frustration in my nervous system, I used my devices to self-soothe. It did seem to work, but I also noticed that my evenings had a restless quality to them. I would feel impatient and unsatisfied and would reach for late night snacks.
But when I learned to take those same frustrations and stresses out walking with me - feet grounding into a patch of grass at a neighbourhood park, fresh air in my lungs - the experience became different.
I learned that I could reflect, breathe and connect to the roots of my stresses. I would find patterns and past stories. Then, with breath and some focus, I could move the emotions and stories within my body and release them through an energy practice like Yoga or Qi Gong. It took some guidance and practice, but, it wasn’t difficult.
After that, any interaction with my devices was simply neutral.
The funny thing is - I’ve worked in tech for years. So, I have spent as much time loving it as I did hating it. But, as it turns out, it isn’t my phone, Siri, or the future of AI that I have these issues with.
It is aspects of myself.
Consciousness and technology have an interesting mirror relationship, in that: how we use our tech shows us what level of consciousness we are in, in that moment.
This can be as informative as it can be hard to see. Often, we do not want to see our addictions, our biases confronted, our meanness (or that of others), our real exhaustion, our ill-health, our lacks and failures.
Having moved through a lot of that, I still found that I had these issues - these fears around the planet becoming cold and controlled and people becoming cyborgs.
I eventually realized that a lot of my issues around the practical use of AI - ChatGPT and the likes - were that it takes away from the human interaction; or more correctly, what I perceive as human.
This opened up the question of what each of us believe human to be.
Is Human…
Messy?
Unknowable?
Greedy?
Loving?
Absent?
Painful?
Joyful?
A parasitical meat-bag on the Earth?
A Soul incarnate?
This has become medicine for me now.
Every-time I hear something about Chat GPT or AI in the world, I’ve started to smile within at my larger human question.
Maybe the contemplation of our humanity is the most human thing of all.
At least for now, it takes my focus and energy away from the ‘cyborg world view’ and towards an inward saunter of human-ness.
In the strangest and most unexpected way, my dislike of articles and videos that speaks of AI excitedly, has become a meditation.
Perhaps, we should thank the champions of AI. They are helping us re-discover the most simple, elegant and magnificent invention of quantum consciousness.
That which already is here - online and activated right now.
You and I. Our bodies. Our Beings.
Organic bodies, with mechanical parts and electrical pulses. Built with solids and liquids and gases in all their own chambers. Imaginative intelligence fed by sensory inputs in a variety of forms. Self-healing, regenerating and self-learning. Quantum-level central processing unit that can think, muse and dream.
And so much, we are yet to know.
So, if You and I are all this and so much more, then maybe we can choose, each of us, what place technology has in our world.
We can choose what aspect of the Self it will serve.
We can create our experiences from our own inner power, choices and sovereignty.
We become the Masters of our software and devices.
And maybe then, we will come to create, use and know tech that serves the Earth and her Humans, harmoniously.