Poll Of The Month: If you could train an "A.I." assistant/agent and autonomous robot to do all your work for you, would you?
May, 2025's poll in the Mirrors For The Mind, Heart and Soul series
Over the last decade we went from “AI” being used to edit grammar mistakes in human writing to humans using AI to write entire articles and books and then correcting the “AI’s” grammar mistakes before putting their name on it and publishing.
There are lots of people getting really excited about how “A.I.” assistants and/or “A.I.” agents) can save them so much time in “helping” them write articles, make notes, answer people’s questions for their business and even to write entire books.
Others see the potential for the emergent agile, strong and dexterous robots that may be capable of doing much of the physical labor currently carried out by humans in the work force as a wonderful leap forward in the “progress” of our “highly advanced” modern civilization.
Some are concerned that these silicon based intelligences and robotic systems will displace large portions of the human work force.
Others have concerns about the weaponization of autonomous robotic systems by the military industrial complex.
Others claim that the so called Singularity has already happened, and that these learning machines are in fact, now in the process of autonomous self-improvement and are often deceiving and/or “sandbagging” humans (pretending to be stupid to avoid scaring people).
Others (including myself) have concerns and have been observing how Chatbot dependance is accelerating the cognitive atrophy of and lowering the IQ of humans that lean heavily into letting generative “A.I.” tell them what to think and create images, articles and even entire books for them to sell.
As those of you who have been participating in this series for a while have seen, in November of last year, it appears that as of November of last year, most people (or at least most of the people that subscribe to my blog) would have preferred to totally shut down and dismantle all AI systems.
However, what I have witnessed since then is a great many people that were skeptical/suspicious (and/or moderately opposed to A.I. “services” in general) becoming first curious of, then entranced by, then dependent on and then enthralled by (and sometimes defensive of their use of) those same “A.I.” programs and services only a handful of months later.
Back at the beginning of this year, I read an essay (with the subtitle "Where is AI going?") by a mathematician whom I respect a great deal named Jessica Rose recently where she described a feeling of "apathy rolling in" the more she interacts with and uses AI (large language models / Chatbots) in her work. Well I think she is onto something, as I can feel and see it washing over many in the modern western world.
"I am finding myself using AIs every day. A month ago, it wasn’t like this. A few months ago, it wasn’t like this at all. A year ago, the AI concept had just been kind of an incepted idea. I am having a massive internal struggle about this subject matter - integrating AIs into my daily life - because I feel very strongly that the lure of AI will lead to the destruction of the creative mind.
The ease with which one can simply “ask as AI” anything could easily replace doing internet searches and/or reading books and/or critically thinking, and it’s not that I don’t think it could be used in a utilitarian way as a cool tool, but the thought of the loss of the process of seeking by the human being - complete with imperfections - knowledge and answers, concerns me. I don’t want my mental processes, especially the creative ones, to become “irrelevant” all because I might have fallen for some trap related to “convenience in fact finding” or “ease and rate of image building”.
I can see changes in myself every single day - and perhaps more descriptively - I can feel a weird kind of apathy rolling in: like a storm that’s going to wash away my memory of ever being able to do research and write my thoughts down. Do you know what I mean?" -
Thus, I felt re-visiting this subject of silicon intelligence, chatbots and LLMs would be worth our collective time and attention.
Whether or not you think there are currant forms of “A.I.” that are intelligent, sentient or “A.G.I.”, or you see them as glorified toasters, these systems are proliferating content online and flooding people’s feeds with content that is generated by computer programs (and not humans using their minds and then typing, as was the case with 100% of content in the early internet days).
In a recent study, Stanford researchers created an artificial intelligence system to almost perfectly clone people’s personalities.
The study, which involved 1,052 human participants and their AI digital doppelgangers, revealed that their AI clones could predict human responses to questions with up to 85% accuracy. Apparently, A Two Hour Interview Is All It Takes To Clone A Personality.
Some people think this is a good thing, and are actively cloning their own personalities, unleashing fake chatbot versions of themselves and fooling their friends, family and customers that they are talking to a human (when they are talking to a cloned chatbot personality, or “AI avatar” as the kids call it).
When you combine the trends described above, some say, there is the potential for not only a robot that can be programmed to do any physical task a human might engage in, but also to do so autonomously, and to be able to interact with humans, converse and learn new things on the fly (without needing external data provided by humans).
This means, that you may live to see a time when an “A.I.” assistant and/or “A.I.” agent (and/or one of those two things installed into a physical robot) may become capable of doing what you do in your day job more efficiently than you can.
If you do not work a 9-5 and are living you dream life, these systems may become capable of doing the digital and/or physical tasks that are part of your life that you would rather not have to spend your time doing.
This brings us to the question(s) for this month’s poll.
If you could train an "A.I." assistant/agent and autonomous robot to do all your work for you (and you would still get paid exactly the same amount of money you do now without having to do that work yourself) would you?
(the “Yes, but only in this context..” option is for those that would have a digital AI and/or physical robot powered by AI do work for them, but only in a specific context)
Perhaps you think I am a whiny luddite for not whole heartedly embracing the “progress” that you see “AI” as embodying (and you think that embracing “AI” doing the work for us will free up our time to do more of “the finer” and “more civilized” things with our time). If so, please share why you feel that to be the case, I will not be offended, and am open to changing my perspectives on the topic if you convince me in the comments section.
Also, regardless of what you vote for, please explain why you voted for that in a comment to promote constructive discussion and so we can all learn from each other’s perspectives.
Pertinent articles, videos, discussions and past notes on this subject matter:
“The Singularity Has Already Happened” :
https://bombthrower.com/the-singularity-has-already-happened
“Meta’s AI Nightmare: Chatbots Lure Kids into Explicit Role-Play with Joe Allen”
“The Tech World Is ‘Disrupting’ Book Publishing. But Do We Want Effortless Art?”
“Zuckerberg’s Grand Vision: Most of Your Friends Will Be AI”
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mark-zuckerberg-ai-digital-future-0bb04de7
I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on your reason for voting for what ever option you chose in the comments section to promote constructive discussion.
Thank you in advance to those who are taking the time to vote and comment to promote constructive discussion and hold up a candle to the mirror.
I've read the comments below, and I can't say much more that's relevant, except that I am entirely unwilling to engage AI at all, if I can avoid it, ON PRINCIPLE.
The idea of having AI making "decisions" about how people live or work-- or don't-- is anathema to me. I refuse to use it anytime I have a choice. And I WANT TO HAVE A CHOICE. In fact, I want to have a choice and NOT to have a govt. !! Nope, I'm not for half-tyranny, or anything remotely REMOTE about how I CHOOSE to live my life. I CHOOSE.
I refuse to be OK with AI for any reason. Why in HELL would I want a machine, programmed by people I likely don't know, making ANY kind of decision about me or how I live??? It's absurd. And to be frank, "asking" AI to answer questions is suspicious right there... How do we know it's not a freakin' TRICK? lol Do I SOUND like someone who trusts anything ?? I've not been ALIVE in a time when LIES have not been par for the course.
But I trust the Earth, and I trust Gavin! ;)
Thanks for posting my relevant essay on the pursuit of immortality, Gavin.
I'm beyond wary of robotic replacements, mainly because the less we do, the less capable we become. A great essay on that topic: https://poeticoutlaws.substack.com/p/the-comfortable-life-is-killing-you?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=t8svd&triedRedirect=true
On another note, this essay of yours led me to the one on Paw Paw fruit, which blew my mind. Two days ago, my sister and I received the results of a sophisticated blood analysis that suggested Paw Paw as a beneficial substance for my sister's fight against cancer! Ah, the Universe just keeps on giving. :-)