A Small Click for a Massive Slap

In my article "Autophagy, when AI feeds on itself" (https://lnkd.in/e2vJp7c3 — absolutely worth discovering if you missed it), I wrote the following:

[...] The data is telling: the proportion of artificially generated content in top search results has increased by 47% since January, outlining the contours of a profound transformation in our informational landscape. [...] Research conducted by Dr. Sarah Chen's team at Stanford suggests that an optimal ratio would be around 60% authentic human data to 40% generated content, a proportion that allows us to benefit from AI's power while preserving the anchor in human experience. [...]

These two passages gave me the starting point for my Friday mood piece...

GEN-ER-A-TIVE AI!

No one questions anymore the implications of this profound mutation that consists of outsourcing our brains to machines. Why would we? That would be like asking a goldfish to worry about water quality while admiring its new plastic castle. So much more important!

Obviously, not everything is bad, quite the contrary. AI brings and will bring us undeniable wonders, precision medicine, climate solutions, augmented creativity, etc... a cornucopia of progress at the click of a button! Provided, minor detail, we know how to use it without ending up like those drivers who blindly follow their GPS right into a lake. "But the GPS said to continue straight ahead, so I continued..." Brilliant technology in the hands of those who (still) know how to think remains a miracle. For others? A simple cosmic irony in the making!

For example, what can we say about this modern farce that recruitment has become? On one side, HR managers delegating selection to AI tracking keywords. On the other, candidates optimizing their resumes with other AIs to seduce these same algorithms. Splendid machine-to-machine dialogue where two artificial intelligences flirt through proxy resumes, while the humans concerned anxiously wait to find out if their digital avatar has passed the filter. The apotheosis? The day of the interview, when two human beings finally meet and discover they have no idea who is facing them, having completely outsourced their professional identity to machines.

And I've lost count of the pseudo-experts in AI who roam LinkedIn webinars with their alarmist presentations entirely generated by... AI. These digital prophets of doom, with their polished slides and shock phrases, solemnly warn against the dangers of a technology they themselves use to write their own warnings. An abyss of irony that they alone fail to perceive, too busy monetizing their prefabricated concern to an audience that applauds the performance without realizing they're witnessing algorithmic ventriloquism.

If we continue at this pace to outsource our brains to machines, what will remain in a few years? A nice relic, like those rotary phones we keep for their decorative value. "Look honey, it's a vintage human brain! Should we put it next to the fax machine?"

Just the power, immense and dangerous, to press a button, a small click and a massive slap in perspective, but who cares? Certainly not the vast majority of people, too busy asking their AI what emotion to feel today. Hilarious, isn't it, this way we abandon our intellectual autonomy with the same nonchalance as a teenager throwing their dirty socks on the floor?

In fact, maybe we should ask the machines, it would save us from having to think about it. Brilliant idea! And why not also ask them to tell us when to breathe, when to blink, and why not, when to reproduce? "Alexa, is this the right time to perpetuate the species, or should we kindly make way for robots?"

Meanwhile, let's continue our glorious march toward our own programmed obsolescence with the blissful smile of someone who still believes that the leash around their neck is actually a very trendy tie.

A small click for humanity, one giant step toward our reconversion into digital pets. Unless we decide, in a surge of collective consciousness, to take back the reins of our own evolution and see technology for what it should be: a tool at our service, not the other way around. Augmented Intelligence and not Artificial Intelligence.