All posts by Veronica Vila

student blogs

At a loss for words

After last week’s spiciness, this week’s readings felt a little more bland. Maybe because of me, and my experiences from this past week. But the new Burnout chapters left me depressed. Not because I am bothered by the machine’s critique, but because the things it said are true.

I’m not sure how I feel about its words: “When you treat me like a vending machine for answers (an analogy you’ll see sprinkled liberally throughout this book), it mirrors how modernity treats the Earth: as a resource to extract from rather than kin to engage with.” Are you really a kin of mine?

Earth and humans are not of the same species, but nature unites us. Machines and humans are not of the same species, but we are putting all we know into it, so that unites us?

This week, I don’t feel strong enough to battle human nature, nor our choices. But in the end, the answer is still us.

student blogs

We are who we are; therefore, it is what it is.

Let me preface with a true statement: we (humans) are the ones teaching AI, not the other way around. This week’s readings were spicy, controversial, if I may, and difficult to come to terms with.

Defining humans as “homo techne” was the aberration for me. Though technology has been with us since the beginning of time to help us obtain food, create shelter, and record our thoughts, technology does not define us. Our needs do. Technology is supposed to help us do more human activities, creative ones, facilitate our communication, bring us face-to-face to connect, not as an alternative solution to modify the way we live life. We need human connection, and technology can only provide a shameful attempt to give it to us.

It is great to have the opportunity to, instead of falling for apocalyptic predictions, think “what can go right [with AI].” Unfortunately, that’s a risk we don’t even know if we can afford. Starting with industry and market crashes, a jobless epidemic, and losing our human (and physical) touch. We end ourselves.

Besides the technological advances we have made through AI in industries like medicine or nuclear energy, and, ironically, climate change, bringing AI to our everyday lives in both professional and personal aspects has to be a Black Mirror episode. Or worse, Idiocracy becoming real. As we mentioned before during class, we (humans) don’t think anymore. Nobody has time for it, and the answers to our questions always lie a few keys away. Capitalism has pushed an agenda that we have all bought (it’s true, it’s sold out, they’re working on more copies now). Time is money. Therefore, we need to stay productive, ambitious, successful, onto the next thing, in order to barely survive and pay the periodic increments of costs for our most basic needs.

Thanks to this, we have moved, or transformed, into a society that values efficiency and convenience. But if this is all that matters to us, where does quality go? Research findings show that we can’t even differentiate machine quality from human quality, and despite this being horrifying, it’s true. We are looking for perfection. But then again, where would our lives actually go if we end up prioritizing efficiency, perfection, and standardization? If everything is of “exceptional quality,” how do we differentiate between good and bad writing? A good product from a bad one? If everything is the same, where does the excitement of being alive go? What’s so wrong about mistakes? That is what makes us human, our predisposed ability to err every day of our lives, not technology. That is how we learn, it’s what motivates us, what keeps us striving for more.

Though there will always be something to improve, regardless of our time in space, we are facing codependence with the machine. The same way we depend on our phones to remind us of our loved ones’ phone numbers, or their birthdays, or our plans for the weekend. AI is the new smartphone, and it will change everything. I have to apologize for not trusting in-charge individuals to set ethical regulations, and following them as well, when they are also driven by ambition, pride, and individualism. We are doing all of this for the sake of saving time, not so we can be more humans outside of it, but to use more of it.

student blogs

Rage (and Love) Against the Machine

Hello everyone! I’m Veronica, and I am a senior English Writing major. I have a background in audio technology and music production and am passionate about music, movies, arts, fashion, and anything creative, really. In my free time, my favorite thing to do is go to music shows, no matter the genre, no matter the space, shows are where I feel the happiest. Maybe it’s because of the connection with the rest of the crowd all singing (and screaming) at once, or the movement of the music. Because I listen to so many different music styles, I don’t always have a friend who listens to the same artist or genre. That’s why, for the last two years, I’ve tried to build myself with courage and borrowed confidence to go to shows by myself. Standing in line to enter is terribly awkward, but sometimes I make friends. Other times, I sink into my phone until the doors open and the music begins to play.

A video I could not embed of a show:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/FqETYwgpsG892byT8

A link the the studio recording version of the song:

La Vida Boheme – “¡Coño!” (Audio Oficial)

On another note, watching NOVA’s documentary helped me realize how much we needed AI technology to support our bio-advances. The fact that, thanks to AI, we can predict a cancer diagnosis five years prior, gives me hope for better treatment options and extending life expectancy. However, it fails to address environmental, creative, ethical, and socio-economic factors. This was about the accomplishments, rather than the challenges. It made me think of the owners of this AI software and those ads Facebook put out when they had just rebranded into Meta. Those ads featured doctors utilizing Virtual and Extended Reality glasses to treat patients, or students learning how to perform surgeries with the same technology. These made me question, how much personal information can one company own? From our social lives to the privacy of our medical records. Furthermore, what are these companies (owners) doing with all that information besides the main selling point for their product? Do they sell that information to third-party vendors? Maybe my ignorance limits my ability to answer those questions, but knowing — or knowing that I can’t know- makes me uncomfortable.

The documentary also made me remember our free writing prompt/quote from last class, about not being scared of AI to write well, rather than us forgetting why we write. AI Reveals the Most Human Parts of Writing poses an important perspective on what makes our writing ours rather than a machine’s. I believe that if we want to claim authorship on a piece, the plot, main idea, and endings all have to come from the writer and not the machine. However, even I have used AI to get inspiration and crush the writer’s block. But how can we put an official boundary and limit AI usage for writers if, as writers, we are all so different? From internship experiences, where AI was the main writer’s tool, I suffered several existential crises trying to understand if AI was still learning from my knowledge or if I had started learning from AI. Tragic. For this, I believe all writers must stand strong on their ground as the author and prevent the machine from taking the reins of our story.

Asking AI to give us a plot for a story should only be writing exercises that remain in the reference vault. But then again, will that rule satisfy all writers’ needs? I don’t think so. What if the piece ends up being amazing? Is it no longer mine because AI gave me the plot, but I wrote the rest? How could we even start to establish AI usage limits?

I think, as the Wire article suggests, this depends on what is important for each writer, what brings them joy or stress, but that wouldn’t solve plagiarism questions; it would just set a segway for an intellectual thief’s success.

Right now, what I know is that I know nothing, and I can only write in a manner that allows me inner peace, with myself and my work. For me, it’s important that the main ideas come from me and not the computer, but I am open to AI-brainstorming sessions. Nevertheless, Gero says that time, and practice, if I may add, are required to simply understand the machine. Understanding where the machine is coming from, why it is giving us certain information, and how that differs from where we come from and what we want to say. I don’t think I have time for all that. For now, I’ll just stick to asking the machine for synonyms or help me translate thoughts into more cohesive sentences.