Maudlin, Menacing Unreality
We are self injuring as a society with AI.
I went looking for the three Notion mobile tools - Notion itself, as well as their apps for Calendar and Email. I also wanted to see if there was an Exa.ai specific app.
What I found is … disturbing, but unsurprising. Fostering AI psychosis is a bit like drug trafficking - easy money that the unscrupulous want to access. And the overall assault on reality we’ve been facing the last decade or more is … well … just read.
Attention Conservation Notice:
Thoughts on AI psychosis, loneliness, Qanon, and alternate reality games. I’m trying really hard to not sound like the credulous 1980s Satanic panic adults who rigged cassette players so they could listen to music in reverse.
App Store:
This is what I found, just because I was seeking something AI related. Nine of twelve apps have female faces. Four are something for girls changing their appearance. Seven are various flavors of “let’s pretend AI chatbots are people”. And just one little productivity app, among all these things that are preying on Zoomer insecurities and loneliness.
Phases:
Let’s revisit those phases of the image from Simulacra & Simulation.
If a girl or a young woman wants to adjust their appearance, that’s not unusual in our society. Makeup, hair styles, clothing … back when I first noticed the opposite sex, they all had “mall hair”. Not everything from the 1980s is cause for nostalgia. So they are offered AI ways to mask and denature a profound reality - breasts too small, nose too big, all those concerns that plague girls who are becoming women.
I spend my days “talking” to machines, but my use cases are … I’m not making friends, I’m delegating work. Specifically:
Claude Desktop handles my health tracker.
Antigravity provides an integrated development environment.
Perplexity is handling more of my search/research with each passing day.
So there are a nutritionist, a programming assistant, and a research assistant. The point to Notion is getting orchestrating all this out of my head and into a system.
Contrast those with what Apple’s App Store is offering. I can see where it would be fun to venture into a virtual world based on some fiction one enjoys. When I was in my teens, that’s twelve to twenty five, neurologically speaking, boys played Dungeons & Dragons, we were more inclined to long running Champions campaigns, and Shadowrun became available just as I was aging out of that world.
I happily spent many hours participating in worlds that were pure simulacra, but I did so around a table with half a dozen other guys my age. These AI chat environments are not a reason for young people to get together, they’re a further wedge between them and any real social connections.
These apps are end stage simulacra, and they’re having the same effect on their users that solitary confinement does in America’s overused prison system.
Intentional Games:
I am back to working on Shall We Play A Game?, albeit in a fitful, unorganized fashion. This is a world, a chance for others to experience how I see things, and it’s becoming a framework upon which others can build. There was not an AI angle to it when I started back in 2020, because ChatGPT did not exist yet. The onslaught of artificial intelligence is forcing me to rethink how things are done. There are problems that are complex and intriguing for humans, which simply fall to pieces when AI comes into the picture.
So I am trying to create an environment that is a bit like Shadowrun, in that it offers something for those who are jacked(online), wired(modified), or awakened(magically/spiritually aware). This is a healthy, fun activity for me, an endless brain teaser that has me reading, writing, hand drawing maps, and most important of all interacting with my fellow Cicadians.
There’s a dark side to such pursuits. Years ago I spent a couple months trying to help Emmy winning immersive entertainment creator Jim Stewartson safely maneuver a conflict environment involving Qanon. Today Jim is wrapped up in things he can’t escape, while I’m serving as Brand Defense Strategist for Cicada 3301.
One of the people involved in trying to make the Cicada 3301 collective hold the bag for the Qanon mess took a life wrecking hit last week, and it was purely an own goal. They always had the choice to simply say “I was wrong and I’m sorry.” Instead they continued until something happened from which they will never truly recover.
That same “own goal” principle is in effect for another player from that world. They’ve done serious, brutal harm to the lives of many others. Unlike the prior person, who until as late as last week could have simply taken the next exit ramp, there’s no escape from the negative karma that is ripening for this one. I teased a bit about this in Other People’s Stuff. The hints don’t matter, what’s done is done, trying to conceal it would be a violation of Title 18 § 1519 Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy.
Conclusion:
Each of us inhabits our own little world, but most of us spend time in a variety of environments where our world overlaps with those of others. The reduction in these overlaps, first exacerbated by the pandemic, and now by AI, is a serious public health issue. And like the Qanon conspiracy theory cult that preceded it, this menacing unreality has a political component.
Overall, I’m delighted with the effects AI is having on my health and career, but I’m in a lucky minority. There’s nothing in the way of ethics concerns or harmful intent in my chosen course, but everywhere I look, I see others engaged in a race to the bottom.
You, constant reader, should be getting yourself ready for a post-AI economy. If you’re unsure of what to do, Get Your Free Perplexity. We’re tooling up now and we’ll be trying various ways to employ that AI framework in the first quarter of next year.