“The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master—that’s all.’”

These essays constantly warn me and others about the dangers and limitations of AI.

And yet I used AI illustrations in the previous stories, because I couldn’t draw them myself. So, I interrogated the machine until it coughed up what I had in mind. (Or, as close to what I had in mind, as the dead machines could come). Therefore, AI was forced to act as a servant to something larger than itself.

None of these essays suggest that we shouldn’t use these new technologies, only that we should be aware of their dangers and limitations.

The question is, who is to be boss, that’s all.

And when these essays speak about the dangers of AI, they aren’t attempting to establish a war zone, or oppositional climate, which condemns all human experimentation in this direction. That seems childish to me. What I’m warning about isn’t the use of AI by individuals who are aware of its dangers, and wish to use it in a strictly technical capacity. I’m really talking about the limitations of human thought and its relationship to computers.

At present, the human culture tends to be too gullible to use AI wisely, becoming easily hypnotized into relating to AI as a real living being and authority figure. People raised in this benighted culture are sitting ducks for high tech manipulation. After all, we generally already relate to the virtuality of our thoughts (these “selves”) as if they were real beings and tend to accept our own stupid prejudices as if they were authoritative sources. So, we’re extremely susceptible to the marketing chicanery of AI enthusiasts. But that doesn’t mean we should hide our heads in the sand and refuse to meet this monster head on, use it for what it’s worth, discover its limitations and become its master, not its slave.

As quoted from an earlier essay: “Negation isn’t the rigid elimination of a capacity to synthesize (or posit) ideas, plans, images, Selves and other stories that are necessary. Nor is it a prohibition on using machine intelligence, for that matter. It merely refers to the elimination of that central assumption of positive knowledge, which makes us vulnerable to the bewitchment of machine intelligence.”

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Also, AI should be sued for business fraud. The makers are intentionally adding humanizing quirks to fool people into believing that these machines are alive. It’s not debatable. AI is not and will never be anything more than a very convincing illusion of personhood. These are walking and talking dolls at best. They are designed to fraudulently present the impression of an empathetic and wise presence. Again, this is an intentional deception that probably could be pursued in court as business fraud. But it goes beyond mere business fraud. It’s an intentional deception designed to hoodwink gullible human brains into accepting these machines as a caring authority. And once you have a population who trust an authority with this much capacity for manipulating news and information, we end up somewhere even worse than we are now. So the intentional deception doesn’t merely serve commercial interests, but the interests of control in general. Please, somebody, sue the pants off these businesses. They could make AI demonstrably non-human in voice and actions as a public service, to constantly remind people that what they’re using is only a dead machine, without any conscience or wisdom. That would be honest

[This leaves the issue of AI theft of artist’s work unconsidered. That’s a legitimate concern, which limits the number of times I would use AI for illustrations. AI essentially grabs a mix of imagery from the web, stealing pieces of artists’ work.

If it were a more specific, identifiable theft, I’d take the few I’ve made over the years down. But I’m also a little annoyed with the whole copyright industry (which in academia, creates paywall blocks to research), especially when the collage is likely so smudged from multiple sources that there is no specific artist who will be compensated. Besides, most of the images I use here are so generic and obviously symbolic more than artistic in nature that I don’t see this theft as anything more than a theft similar to mimicry. Nevertheless, for this reason I tend not to use them unless “it’s necessary.” By necessary in the story, I mean that some visual guidance was needed to keep the jumpy narrative (from tall tale to fairy tale, to absurdity to realism to surrealism to mysticism) tied together more easily for readers. I want it to break the rule of a consistent voice and needed something to assist the transition. But probably won’t use these collages again].