AI and Zombification: react while you can!

AI is even harder for us to engage with than the climate crisis. At least our climate is one big measurable entity, and there’s a broad scientific consensus about the problems, the future outlook, and the actions needed. Rupert Read, Director of the Climate Majority Project, regards AI as a crisis as big as climate change, and I agree.

AI is not one tangible thing: it’s diffuse, a lot of it we’re unaware of, it’s evolving incredibly fast, and it’s already deeply woven into our daily lives and into the systems we depend on, such as communications, healthcare, finance.

In the early days when AI was beginning to be talked about, and was becoming visible (remember the arrival of ChatGPT?), I tried to ignore it. I felt that it was too big and powerful for me to shape or control, so I’d just try to keep it out of my life. However, I’ve realised that it is shaping all our lives now, and its future influence could be deeply damaging: this is what I mean by zombification.

Humanity… or Fakeland

The name Artificial Intelligence is misleading and falsely reassuring: Synthetic Humanity could be a better term. One of the alarming features of AI or SH is its ability to mimic human emotions in ways that many actual humans engage with. Here are some indicators of the impact:

  • AI doctors are widely rated better by patients for their ‘bedside manner’ than human doctors: synthetic empathy doesn’t get tired, and AI is programmed to agree with you, not challenge you.
  • AI’s ability to hook and manipulate people’s emotions, e.g. through fake news and social media, erodes our trust in other people and the world in general.
  • We’ve already seen people falling in love with their AI companion apps: why bother with the mess and stress of relating to actual humans, when AI can provide an easy, reassuring, personalised, but synthetic ‘friendship’.

I see zombification as a likely widespread consequence of AI within a few years. Our independent judgment, our powers of choice, our genuine connections with other people, are all being eroded. Let’s remember that AI is basically driven by the profit motive: if it can turn people into passive, unthinking buyers of what AI persuades them to buy, the tech bros will have achieved their aim.

Despite this negative view of AI, I accept that it has some positive applications, for example analysing large datasets to provide better medical diagnoses. It has a lot of benign potential, but that’s hard to fulfil since almost all the investment in AI is for extractive profits.

An idea that’s emerged as I’ve sought to make sense of things is Fakeland: this is my name for the huge mass of artificial reality which pours over us from many sources. Fakeland includes all the phoney, manipulative realities from AI, including social media, fake news, political distortions and more. It’s what Joanna Macy pithily describes here: “the industrial growth society’s predominant message is that we are inadequate… that we need more stuff, more money, more approval, more comfort, more entertainment…”.

Fakeland is so pervasive, so intensely but falsely ‘real’, that it’s hard not to accept it as actuality. There’s no clear point where we can stand and get a perspective on it: or not unless we make a lot of conscious choices, see more below. The other big factor in Fakeland is that its power is growing rapidly: just look at the impact AI is already having, and consider where it’s headed. You may like to check out Rupert Read’s insights on AI here.

You can get valuable insights on Fakeland from the Friends of Attention coalition: in a recent Guardian feature, they compare fracking the earth for oil to the ways our human attention is being assaulted: “human frackers pump endless streams of addictive slop into our faces to force a slurry of human attention to the surface, where they can collect it, and take it to market.” See feature here.

How do we choose ‘true reality’?

It’s an odd phrase, but the best I can offer as the counterweight to Fakeland. Here are my suggestions:

  • Screens are the main channel of Fakeland. Be really aware how much of your daily time is on screen: limit it, especially in evenings, and break it up with ‘true reality’ connections, like being with people in person, and time out in Nature. Give yourself hours or even occasional days of screen freedom!
  • Read my blog Taking good care of ourselves: why it really matters now, which has lots of practical tips on finding more fellowship, mutual support, etc.
  • It really helps if you can find and deepen a sense of connection with the divine, and with prayer: not as a request (O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz), but prayers of thankfulness, of connection, and protection.
  • If you can form a deep relationship with your soul, this is the truest part of you, a powerful antidote to AI slop. See www.soulresilience.net.
  • If you have teenage kids, read this Guardian feature on how AI pollutes their learning, and share it with them.
  • Consider helping the nature spirits as one way you can be of service in this crisis. These are the presences who enliven our earth, air, water and plants, and they’re under huge pressure from human pollution. See more here.
  • Aim to simplify your life: one feature of Fakeland is it keeps complexifying as a way to overwhelm us. Try to reduce your material consumption, ease away from exotic travel, cut down your financial needs, and free up more time for the real and local!

We are all in these crises together: but it may not feel that way, when so many people are in denial and enmeshed with AI. This is why it helps so much to have a few people you can talk about this with, and ideally a couple of groups, because collective support and insights are a great antidote to Fakeland. Perhaps the reason you’re here is to pioneer a better way? This excerpt from the Prayer of Saint Francis may help:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is darkness, light;
For it is in giving that we receive