on being authentically intelligent in a world of artificial intelligence

the worst thing you can do besides being downright malicious is being artificially intelligent.

with open ai’s introduction to gpt-4 in 2023, the term started aggregating like a diseased pandemic that happened 3 years prior. it was novel. back then, in high school, you had to frantically scour through chegg and a bunch of sites with a blurred paywall. now, you can have a google tab that will give you answers once you drop in the 10 screenshots. even my chinese mom who is as frequent with all news and politics was astonished.

don’t get me wrong, i frequent ai in my daily life. to think more fluidly, to automate the mundane. i think a lot of people do. three days ago, i came home to a text from my roommate’s email telling me that her phone got snatched by two guys on the bus home in san francisco. when i got back, she told me it ended up at the pawn in oakland. first thing next morning, we’d go to t-mobile and then the apple store to get her phone.

we arrived 6 minutes away from the t-mobile, freshly aware of the pride parade going on at market st. the worker tells us, “you have to get a new phone before activating your carrier line.”

during the one hour lyft detour to apple marina, i took out my laptop. thought. thought about how right after the worker said the reality, my friend just sighed and said “yeah so chat…”. thought about how whether or not trusting a poorly trained model over your own conviction is calling it self-sabotage.

this might’ve been the cognitive dissonance she needed. either way, off-loading hard but stimulating decisions in your life just merely dumbs you down to be a bot. you are one with the artificial intelligence. trained on poor data, can’t think for themselves, and just exist to serve.