I really liked this piece. It sums up how I feel about AI. I am 74, I’ve always been mentally ill but I also have intellect (and access to decent mental health resources) which has saved me from being psychotic, hallucinatory, and/or delusional. I have done a decent amount of reading about AI and as a senior citizen I have come to the realization that I do not want to participate in Chat GPT, Grok, or any of that ilk. I fervently hope that AI will become a useful tool to future generations. However, with all the reading I have done about social media and how the tech companies have purposely designed their algorithms to be addictive, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the companies developing AI are doing the same.
The reason I am pointing this out is using AI to make life comfortable seems to be one of their strategies to hook human beings into becoming addicted. As a mentally ill senior citizen who is very self aware, the lure of AI for my age demographic is it can make life so much easier to navigate. If you’re a senior citizen, especially if you’re on your own without a family support system, life can be incredibly difficult. So yes, the ease of AI is a siren song for my age demographic. Well, guess what…not for me…I am very aware of how my cognitive abilities are changing as I age. If I want to maintain my cognitive function into my 80s and even (hopefully) into my 90s, I need the challenges of life to keep my brain fit. If I give in to an AI lifestyle because it will make my life more comfortable, then I will slide down the slope of checking out of the world or in a worst case scenario, dementia. I refuse to allow that to happen.
What’s interesting from a societal perspective is that the comfort arrangement works excellently as a mechanism of political control…. but the elites are unraveling it via rapacious greed. Historically, it’s a novel and recent idea: a big, satiated middle class will work the engine of labor without complaint… so long as they can afford pleasure and shiny things in their off-time. But now, the elites cannot even control themselves to cede a sliver of their unusable wealth (they literally cannot spend 75% of it) to placate the masses. This article is a good exhortation to consciously seize back your own sovereignty, but a lot of people are going to have no choice soon OR…. we’ll end up with a bunch of types who lash out (we are arguably already at the latter).
This is an excellent eye opener to seeing the reality of what is happening. The status quo is such a strong deterrent to both seeing reality and desiring any change. Those of us who benefit from the status quo have not been listening to all the voices warning us of inequality and injustice. DJ rightly noted that the elites have lost their desire to throw a few breadcrumbs to the masses. Perhaps we are waking up to the fact that we are no longer benefitting from the status quo. It might be a good time to work towards transformation.
I really liked this piece. It sums up how I feel about AI. I am 74, I’ve always been mentally ill but I also have intellect (and access to decent mental health resources) which has saved me from being psychotic, hallucinatory, and/or delusional. I have done a decent amount of reading about AI and as a senior citizen I have come to the realization that I do not want to participate in Chat GPT, Grok, or any of that ilk. I fervently hope that AI will become a useful tool to future generations. However, with all the reading I have done about social media and how the tech companies have purposely designed their algorithms to be addictive, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the companies developing AI are doing the same.
The reason I am pointing this out is using AI to make life comfortable seems to be one of their strategies to hook human beings into becoming addicted. As a mentally ill senior citizen who is very self aware, the lure of AI for my age demographic is it can make life so much easier to navigate. If you’re a senior citizen, especially if you’re on your own without a family support system, life can be incredibly difficult. So yes, the ease of AI is a siren song for my age demographic. Well, guess what…not for me…I am very aware of how my cognitive abilities are changing as I age. If I want to maintain my cognitive function into my 80s and even (hopefully) into my 90s, I need the challenges of life to keep my brain fit. If I give in to an AI lifestyle because it will make my life more comfortable, then I will slide down the slope of checking out of the world or in a worst case scenario, dementia. I refuse to allow that to happen.
What’s interesting from a societal perspective is that the comfort arrangement works excellently as a mechanism of political control…. but the elites are unraveling it via rapacious greed. Historically, it’s a novel and recent idea: a big, satiated middle class will work the engine of labor without complaint… so long as they can afford pleasure and shiny things in their off-time. But now, the elites cannot even control themselves to cede a sliver of their unusable wealth (they literally cannot spend 75% of it) to placate the masses. This article is a good exhortation to consciously seize back your own sovereignty, but a lot of people are going to have no choice soon OR…. we’ll end up with a bunch of types who lash out (we are arguably already at the latter).
This is an excellent eye opener to seeing the reality of what is happening. The status quo is such a strong deterrent to both seeing reality and desiring any change. Those of us who benefit from the status quo have not been listening to all the voices warning us of inequality and injustice. DJ rightly noted that the elites have lost their desire to throw a few breadcrumbs to the masses. Perhaps we are waking up to the fact that we are no longer benefitting from the status quo. It might be a good time to work towards transformation.