You can’t escape it! You look up something and AI provides the answer. You write something and AI wants to suggest a revision. Can’t we make it GO AWAY?!?
Artificial intelligence has been around for decades and has a parallel “rise” alongside the Internet. But suddenly, it is inescapable. I think a lot of us share an unsettling feeling that AI is always there–wanting to help us. I don’t want that help but when I make a sign (since I am not a graphic designer) or want a title, or quick ideas, there is this urge to simply ask AI. That urge is disturbing! I want my own ideas and my own “imperfect” communication and – more than anything else- I want the next generation to value human expression and creativity.
ChatGTP is not my friend or companion or helper. The picture below is not important. I am simply adding to the clutter of nonstop content creation flooding the sea of information chaos that humans can no longer effectively navigate. Recognizing this “urge” to weave AI into life must certainly be part of digital citizenship and my hope is that we figure out how to suppress it and value our own thoughts, ideas, vocabulary, unique voice and even our human limitations.
I’ve been a guest lecturer for professors in both Ireland (John O’Connor) and Turkey (Murat Gulmez) for several years and just listened to a AI Deep Dive podcast featuring my passion for digital citizenship and my work as an information professional through promoting metaliteracy (a model developed by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson). Working collaboratively across the globe with these amazing educators has been inspiring, yet- surprisingly, I found this podcast deeply disturbing! Click the picture to listen- if interested, my work is at 8:30-26:00 minutes.
Deep Dive Podcast from GoogleLM summarizing Valibrarian as lecturer.
To hear two fake “AI” voices that are not real people discuss many years of my work at a time when I cannot get the concepts of digital citizenship in the hands of human students makes me sad! These nonhuman agents summarized the classes I taught in the metaverse in just minutes, yet physical world teachers I talk to do not have time nor the curriculum to help prepare their students for the future as they must focus on the subject areas they teach.
The male and female sycophantic AI voices sound knowledgeable, convincing, and act as if “in awe” of my so-called universally known work (hardly!) even though they cannot possibly think about it critically. AI agents only simulate thinking and simulate human articulation. It is unsettling to have my own words and passion about digital citizenship mashed-up and regurgitated as “digital content” and ironic for them to discuss the “dark side of digital culture” when the voices are uncannily disguised as human. Those two clever bots exemplify the urgent call for metaliteracy and digital citizenship as they pose as experts on the topics in a loop of artificiality. Even more ironic- to have worked in a simulated metaverse for nearly 20 years and consider it a real place. Yet it is clear to me… reality and memory take place in our minds. Yet, for machines to pose as humans is a totally different matter.
AI quickly allows us to produce content (like podcasts, poems, images and more) without the painful reflective process we humans must go through to create and communicate. AI skips process and takes us straight to the product. Perhaps this AI-generated video is not all too far from where we are or where we are headed: Post-Scarcity Blues… declaring “your passion projects, generated in seconds”.
