I got a new therapist a few weeks ago. I think we just had our third session last night and I can already tell I am going to love working with her, because this is going to be actual work, not just a weekly scheduled bitchfest to a willing (and paid) ear.
She’s giving me skills, she’s giving me suggestions for homework, she’s giving me books to read, all of it. I am here for it.
One thing we talked about yesterday is how I just suddenly quit a few things that I’d loved doing and had been doing for years.
I’d been writing on 750words.com for seven years – and then I just stopped. After over 2,000 days and 2 million words, I just… didn’t feel like doing it anymore, so I stopped.
After almost a thousand games of Wordle, I stopped.
I was tired of both of those things being things I felt I had to do every day when they used to be things I wanted to do.
“Cheney,” she said “That’s depression. When you suddenly stop doing things that you used to really enjoy, that’s because of depression. That’s not you being lame and just stopping because you don’t feel like doing things, that is your depression manifesting itself.”
And I was like… oh. She’s totally right!
Of course, I didn’t get off the call with her and immediately play Wordle or go to 750words.com to write until I’ve reached my daily goal, no. I didn’t do either of those things yesterday and I don’t plan on doing either today, but the difference is, today I am going to give myself a break stop telling myself I’m a losing quitter.
Segue to this, thank you, Vonnegut’s wife, for trying to keep him in the house so he would eventually write this little gem.
This is kind of what I think about AI.
You can make a painting with AI, by just telling a computer what you want your painting to look like… or you can pick up some brushes, sit in front of a canvas, and paint!
You can get your hands dirty, you can feel the paint, wet, sliding onto the canvas under the power of your hand and mind. You can mix the colors yourself, experimenting with different shades, different textures, different moods and styles.
The difference is complete.
Photo by Tahlia Doyle on Unsplash
Last night, Bobby asked me a question about AI, and the question was, in a nutshell:
“Say you forget for a moment that AI can write a story because it’s stolen everyone’s work off the internet. With that forgotten, imagine the same painting done by AI and a famous, real painter. If you look at the paintings, you can’t tell the difference between one and the other. So, what difference would it make to people who look at it?”
“And we’re not considering the feelings of the painter whose hard work is being compared to a robot’s, which is apparently just as good?” I asked for clarification.
“No, we aren’t considering the painter, just the artwork. If you can’t tell the difference, what does it matter who made it?”
I thought for a brief moment. To my surprise the moment was brief not because I already had this answer waiting to go, but I was surprised I thought of such a perfect analogy so quickly.
“It’s like diamonds,” I told him.
“A real diamond and a lab grown diamond look exactly the same to the naked eye, even to the eyes of a master jeweler. You actually have to look under a microscope to tell whether they’re different.”
“So what’s the difference there?” he asked me, because the scenarios really sounded about the same.
“Hundreds of years from now, people who find diamonds are going to look under a microscope and chuck the ones made from labs. They have no worth. The real diamonds will always have worth, because they were grown in the earth under tremendous amounts of pressure and time. Just like real art.”
That shut him right the fuck up about AI for the evening.
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