A.I. and you
An Ink reader forum
There are days when I think the A.I. revolution is overhyped. Yes, it will be big, and things will change, but life is life and people are people, our problems and our virtues have shown remarkable consistency over millennia of upheaval. This, too, shall pass.
And then there are other days I look around and have the feeling of watching one of those videos taken 27 seconds before a tsunami washes over a small town in Japan. I sit on the subway in New York and look across at human beings and then up at all the advertisements hawking human irrelevance. What will these people — me, you, and everyone else — do? What happens to people who are not needed? When the richest people in the world are beginning to call for tax relief for poor people, you sense we may be on the cusp of a world without work for most people — an apocalypse with the unusual characterstic of being totally optional. We should call it “A. Why?”, perhaps.
We’re going to be thinking more and more about the social and political and cultural questions raised by A.I. in this newsletter. And as we do, I wanted to begin with you.
Here launches a reader forum in which we want to hear your thoughts about A.I. — your fears, your optimism, your experiences.
In the spirit of all our subscriber forums, I expect this to be a place of genuine inquiry and exchange, no meanness, only curiosity.
How have you encountered A.I. up close in recent years, and how has it shaped your point of view?
What questions do you most wonder about — perhaps questions we can pursue here?
Are you more like me on the days when you think this, too, will be just another thing? Or are you persuaded of the this-changes-everything-forever story?
Do you have unusual use cases — medical needs, eldercare — that perhaps give you a different perspective from the mainstream?
What do you think is missing from the larger national conversation based on what you see where you are?
This is not a story that can trickle down from on high. It’s a story about a collective choice — many collective choices — we are making and will continue to make.
Tell us how you’re thinking about it all:
What I notice most in the AI conversation is that the so called leaders in this revolution cannot clearly articulate the destination we are going to end up at. There is no clear vision from them while others are noting possible apocalyptic ones. It’s like those who are starting to drive the bus just want to start driving and hope we end up somewhere better. The scary part for me is that they really might not care because they have a perspective that their wealth, interest and power will keep them from suffering the same harms as the rest of us.
I’m living with secondary progressive Multiple Sclerosis, and AI has changed how I think about access.
MS damaged my dominant hand. I used to be a professional illustrator. Then illness changed my body, and for a long time I thought that part of me was mostly gone.
That is where AI became interesting to me.
Not as a magic trick.
Not as a replacement for human creativity.
As a workaround.
AI-assisted tools helped me make a graphic memoir about living with MS. The tool did not have the experience. The tool did not live the story. The tool did not know what it felt like to lose your hand, your leg, your job, your old identity, and then try to build something honest out of the wreckage.
That part was mine.
The memory was mine.
The choices were mine.
The edits were mine.
The final judgment was mine.
But AI helped lower a wall my body had put in front of me.
That is the part of the AI conversation I wish more people talked about.
Yes, there are real concerns about replacement, fraud, job loss, and cheap slop. I get that. I do not think those concerns are fake.
But for disabled people, AI can also be accessibility infrastructure.
It can help someone write when their hands do not work.
It can help someone organize thoughts when brain fog is brutal.
It can help someone speak, draw, communicate, or participate when the old routes are gone.
For me, AI did not replace my voice.
It helped me get my voice back into the world.
I made the graphic memoir available here, if anyone wants to see what that kind of AI-assisted accessibility workflow can produce:
https://morethanms.miguelallamani.com/