In All Uncertain Terms

I know everyone is tired of hearing about this, and I labor under no delusion that I have anything new or groundbreaking to say. Good thing this is a personal blog, and this post is a personal letter, so I’ve got no Big Expectations to meet.

During your last visit you bore witness to me being a little rude and a lot judgmental to one of our mutual friends about her usage of AI in her work. We then went attended a Bible study on Colossians 2, in which, among other things, Paul advises against believers judging one another for human-made rules and traditions. My heart sank, as I was immediately convicted over my doing this exact thing moments before. The Bible doesn’t command regarding AI, and while biblical wisdom is in order, I treated our friend as if my opinion were fact, acting as if I were morally superior to her.

After the class ended, I apologized to her. She was gracious. The next day, the conversation kept replaying in my mind, and I felt unsettled. I felt compelled to clarify why I had reacted so strongly, but also to apologize again, as I felt that the first was a little inadequate. So I texted her. She was gracious again, and explained her perspective. I am not convinced, but don’t believe it would have been fruitful to argue over messages, so I left it alone.

As an Enneagram 2 (I know, I know, it’s horoscopes for Christians, it’s demonic, it’s no better than Buzzfeed quizzes, this other system is better, yada yada yada. . . I like the Enneagram, and it’s helpful for me, so leave me alone), I want nothing so badly as to be loved. Sometimes my mind runs rampant with justifications for why so-and-so doesn’t love me anymore, and this was one of those times. She hadn’t rejected my apology, but my overactive, nervous nervous system said, “She’s just being polite. Your rudeness has permanently broken the relationship, and now she’ll always hold you at arms’ length, never open up to you again. Good work. You’re doomed.” I know that’s not healthy. I’m working on it.

As my mind and stomach began to ache from the worry, both about my friendship and about AI, I sought out everyone’s favorite numbing solution: The Scroll. In an effort to fight my addiction to The Scroll, I have been deleting more and more social media from my phone. And like any addict, my standards lower when the options are few. So I scrolled on arguably the lamest of social media platforms, Substack.

I then received a text from my mother-in-law with an article about the Missouri Governor’s response to potential data centers in the state. His response annoyed me, and the text itself annoyed me. I was trying to get my mind off that stuff, and here was someone reminding me of it on purpose. Someone responded, and their response irritated me, too, but I kept my fingers from the keyboard.

Upon returning to The Scroll, I was presented with a new article by author Jason Pargin, which happened to be about AI. I always find Pargin’s work insightful and enjoyable, so I begrudgingly opened it up and read. Thank goodness, I thought as I finished it, Now I can return to not thinking about AI.

It was then that The Scroll presented me with a Kurt Vonnegut quote. On telling his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope:

“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”

I sighed and closed the app, then whined to my husband about how I went to scroll social media to stop thinking about AI (in hindsight, a stupid plan), and how the only social media I have to scroll is Substack, and how when I went on there, all I saw was stuff about AI from people whose work I admire. This sort of thing happens often. The discomfort of a thought leads me to run from it, and I find it around every corner. One recalls Jonah’s various endeavors to avoid God’s task for him, and the unconventional means of submarine transportation that resulted. I’ve never been one to declare, “Deus vult!” (“God wills”) easily, and my most recent read (The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell) makes me wary of starting. However, sometimes it really does feel as if God Himself says, “No, no, you need to wrestle with this, and I’m not letting you out until you’re done.” Whether that’s true, or it’s just in my nature to be a little obsessive in my worries, who can say?

I’ve since dismissed the notion that my friend secretly still resents me for our conversation, but I have not stopped thinking about AI and its role, if any, in creative endeavors. I think that my gut reactions to this technology come down to the stories through which I view the world. Duh, I know. During the finale episode of the most recent season of Survivor, my favorite player of the season, probably of the whole show, argued in his jury speech that the most important part of Survivor is telling a good story. His vote, he says, will go to whichever finalist can tell the best story about their play in the season, and it did. It’s an opinion I’ve long held, and I was glad to have it expressed by a person in relative authority, having played and voted.

One of the stories I hear and retell about the world is that the universe is run by a Creative being, and humanity was made to reflect that creativity in their own rule of Earth. “Be fruitful and multiply” refers to having children, sure, but it also refers to literal fruit, and to other creative endeavors. We are made to make. I find my life most joyful when I have both time and will to form and reform, whether that is writing, painting, dancing, embroidery, reupholstery, pottery, gardening, or whatever suits my fancy at a given moment. When I express this sentiment, I often have people respond, “I’m not like that. I’m not creative.” It isn’t true. Creation in Genesis is the process of bringing order out of chaos. Yahweh separates light from dark, water from land, and so on. When my “not creative” mother-in-law curates her home to be comfortable and beautiful for her guests, or cooks my husband’s favorite dish for his birthday, or thoughtfully purchases, arranges, and wraps an assortment of gifts perfectly suited to the interests of her family, she is, in my view, participating in the same divine act.

It is in part because of this story that I find the use of generative AI in artistry so repulsive. It strips away the opportunity for humans to do the thing that was meant for us all along: make stuff. Now, yes, we also make tools to aid in the making, but I would also argue that what AI is doing is not actually creation at all, but the opposite. Rather than bring order out of chaos, it makes chaos of order. The words, colors, ideas humans put together with purpose, AI chops up and pieces back together with no purpose at all. It puts my bookshelf through a paper shredder, then glues the little strips together in a way that technically works as a sentence, paragraph, etc., but has no story to tell.

On a more instinctual level, I find it so hard to understand the use of generative AI because I love writing. I enjoy the process of stringing words together, so I struggle to see why anyone would choose to skip it in favor of merely having words on a page. My art never matches the idea in my mind, and yes, it is frustrating, but it’s also good. I like to be surprised, and I like being able to say with my full chest, “I did this.”

When it comes to the stories we tell about specific pieces of art, AI has none. An argument I hear often is that it allows people to make things they otherwise couldn’t.

May I propose an alternative? Other people.

My husband’s grandfather wrote lyrics to a song, but does not himself possess the ability to play an instrument and put them to music. What a touching story it would be were he to reach out to his musically gifted children or grand children for help. They would share the bond of artistic collaboration, getting to spend time with each other and building their relationship, and their contrasting perspectives would grate against and complement each other, resulting in a better, fuller track, and meaningful memories as a bonus. Instead, this song lives on Suno dot com.

I don’t think I’m just idealizing things. The stories we tell shape who we are and who we become. I’ve been told tales of lazy, entitled folks taking advantage of government assistance and community services. I’ve also heard of people just down on their luck and needing a helping hand. Which is the exception, and which is the rule? What I choose affects how I vote, how I treat my neighbor. Oh, sure, I could research statistics, but some answers are never clear. Besides, we can’t all be experts on everything, so we’re all choosing narratives all the time, consciously or not.

There are a whole host of other issues with AI, obviously, but when it comes to its involvement in art. . . That story just does not compel me.

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P.S. This letter took so long in part because I’ve been busy, and in part because I never learned to type. My first school taught it in ninth grade, my second school in eighth, and as I transferred the summer between those two grades, I missed it from both. I’d gotten relatively fast with just my index fingers and thumbs, but decided it was finally time to learn. So I made myself finish this letter typing the “right way,” at a meager eight words per minute, and am reminded afresh of the pain of unlearning bad habits and replacing them with good ones. Maybe next letter I can make it to ten.