34 Comments

I’m totally with you on this one Birgitte: interacting with algorithms and with AI dehumanizes us, distancing us from more deeply satisfying (albeit sometimes frustrating) relations with real humans. I know that one way I’ve responded to the dehumanizing aspects of the proliferation of digital interactions is to push myself into the kinds of interactions that require human, face-to-face interaction. I’ve taken to working for a local bakery, running their booth at a nearby farmer’s market, and this has led me to get to known a bunch of people who come to the market weekly to get food and other goods grown and made by their neighbors. There’s a little girl who has come to know me as “the muffin man,” and we have an ongoing joke, me and her mother. It’s one of the most satisfying interactions of my week. This is a deep essay. Thanks.

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Yeah we humans are complex and complicated, but that's precisely what makes life worth living. How lovely you're spending some time at the farmer's market—we have a few here and I feel blessed bc of it. I've also gotten to know some of the vendors... one makes these amazing honey lollipops my daughter loves, and sometimes they slip in a few for free. Why? Because they know me. I have yet to see one algorithm give another a free honey lollipop.

p.s. gotta love little kids. "Muffin man" made my day!

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We Can't Afford Healthcare for American Children Because We Keep Bombing Everyone Else's for the Love of Jesus and Israel . . .

https://cwspangle.substack.com/p/we-cant-afford-healthcare-for-american

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The way you talk about scattering and atomizing made me think of something ... My new grad degree is in visual and critical studies and we've been talking a lot about the diaspora as it relates to art. The root of the word diaspora is disperse and it made me curious to think about this fragmentation caused by the algorithms as creating a kind of non-geographical diaspora. Not a fully formed thought yet but that was my initial reaction to reading this. <3

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I think you hit on something there Kathryn!

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So much to absorb and process here, Birgitte. Thank you. I do feel the continual shift away from in-person, in depth connection is harmful to my mental and physical well being. After periods of over participation in social media, I sometimes feel unwell, tired, and sad and have to ask myself, "why am I supposed to be in these spaces again?" FOMO is a beast. And not a particularly friendly one.

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Meg, hear you loud and deep. It's bad when we can feel a digital experience in our very bodies. You know, I used to feel some flavor of FOMO years ago, when I was trying to convince myself I should tweet and post things on Facebook, but there was an innate distaste for the stuff, not unlike the castor oil that previous generations were forced to ingest while being children. Maybe bc I'm not a digital native? Maybe bc I instinctively knew posting digital photos and text on a platform like Facebook would eventually constitute a perfect database of preferences, behaviors, fears and desires that the corporations could easily analyze and monetize? That was before Snowden. Shocking to me was how people kept at it AFTER Snowden. Stunned speechless, was I.

The more we reconnect (even here on Substack!) and begin to have real conversations again, the sooner we'll come back to being human. The only thing that's keeping me from inviting you and so many others I've connected with here to a dinner party is stupid distance.

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If only tech companies would start developing teleportation devices. Until then, our hearts will grow fonder.

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Lol I dare not imagine what would happen to our bodies with the devices that the likes of Altman would come up with. I mean, if the LLMs scramble and liquefy the writings and images they ingest...............

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Sep 25, 2023Liked by Birgitte Rasine

Hi Birgitte,

As a techie who used to have hands in such systems your words run true at every step. I've only been on Substack for a few days, but the quality of (human) writing I've found has been quite inspiring. Your tips at the end made me pause. I feel you there. Don't forget the humans. Indeed.

But only if we can discern them. I've read a few articles on the Stack that were obviously written by AI. Not surprising of course, but the gushing comments that followed certainly were.

Thanks for your thoughts.

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Welcome to the community! Substack certainly has more than its fair share of excellent writers. I'd be curious to know which pieces seem to have been AI generated. To your point, it's our loss if we can no longer distinguish human writing from AI. Some kind of "made by humans" label might need to be incorporated at some point, much like the "organic" label on our food...

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I can't start pointing fingers. I've only just got here! How do we know if we are talking to or reading output from a robot? This is a question we should all be asking. Google, Microsoft and Adobe have formed C2PA to address this problem and provide some sort of labelling as you suggest, a few others like chatgpt are looking at watermarks. But I have my doubts if this can be policed or enforced. There is a tsunami of new AI content out there, at times being produced at an industrial scale. Just look at the AI company revenues to get a taste of this. It's a gold rush. If the AI content has not been human edited, you can currently spot a few quirks that distinguish it. But this will soon change as the AI gets better. Yikes!

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Hey Birgitte,

Something that may interest you is how AI systems are training their systems on your writing. It's already started. Read about this important topic in my post https://boodsy.substack.com/p/the-ai-bots-are-coming-for-your-substack

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Sep 23, 2023Liked by Birgitte Rasine

I enjoy the opportunity to connect in person with people. Some of them I know, some of them I am meeting for the first time like it happened this week at an event in San Jose, California. There is no doubt that they are human.

Using the telephone is the next desirable medium to connect with people, with text, email, or social media as the last one.

We have choices to communicate with people on Earth.

As humanity starts settling beyond earth, it is going to be harder to see them in person, or even talk to them on the phone, but for that, let us be prepared to continue to improve the ways that people connect.

This wave of AI will pass like the previous ones did.

Let us be a cork in the ocean and stay afloat as each wave of adversity in human connection comes and then goes.

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Most of us I would say do... I have not heard anyone I know, yet, tell me they're glad we're fragmenting as a society. On the contrary. But perhaps it's precisely this empty extreme that might wake a lot of people up and start the pendulum swinging back toward the center again.

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Will humanity settle beyond Earth or even survive a few years, replaced by digital demons?

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I believe that humanity will thrive on Earth and outside of Earth.

We will need some digital companions to accomplish it.

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What a journey! It was fascinating and a bit distressing to hear about your experience writing this post behind the scenes, thank you so much! The title "The datafication of the human being" would be an excellent sequal for this series which sounds important to your ruminations on technology and impact of digital on our human condition.

There's a lot of real data on what loneliness does to people on a level of health, well-being and life expectancy. It's also I admit a very emotional topic for me as well. As civilization goes further down the rabbit hole with virtual reality, generative A.I. and video obsession and especially gaming it will continue to have a profound impact on us, and yet remain on the fringes, margins and under-reported in part by the lobbying of major tech corporations.

Recently Roblox had issues around diversity and very few women in positions of leadership there, and you know it's all really connected. More women need to talk about not just women in tech, but the moral impact of these products on us, on our kids and how they are growing up differently from historical baselines.

Now Neuralink is looking to start human trials. A brain computer interface (BCI) is on the horizon and how we codify and normalize surveillance capitalism is only in its infancy. Our mental health data and genetic data is being collected in addition to all the millions of our other data points these companies have access to by our digital behavior. It's not just about the profound disconnect, but what all of this data capture leads to in a world where more robots and more immersion in digital is as inevitable as the decline of institutions, rituals, intimacy, friendships and communities we used to take for granted that help us cope in life's ups and downs.

Suffice to say that I'm worried what is in store for GenZ and Alpha cohorts who will experience this at far more dangerous levels than perhaps we are today.

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Yes and I think we're only starting to see the impact on our health and well-being... ironically, through data. It feels like we're Alice walking through the looking glass doesn't it? And it does seem every time I tap on the news there's some new advance in AI that pushes us deeper into the datafication rabbit hole. Shall I say, the dragon's chasm. Especially now with the BCI efforts. We have plenty, plenty of problems on the world stage, and should be leveraging the mind-blowing tech that AI really is, to solve those. Great example today was a Note posted by @Simon K Jones, linking to a story about AI used to read ancient scrolls without having to open them, which would absolutely destroy them. youtu.be/Z_L1oN8y7Bs

I share your worries and concerns Michael, and I'm glad that you're one of the voices that keeps the conversation on its toes. Certain interests would rather that we shut up forever, but we won't.

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Curious to hear more about this delicious sister publication...

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Watch for a riveting yet unsurprisingly dark session of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. I believe the transcript is here >> https://agowani.substack.com/p/big-chocolate-goes-to-washington

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No idea how the guy who wrote it up managed to get inside the halls of power

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This atomization is part of what pushed me out of higher education. It’s precisely what academic assessment endeavors to do. I wrote about this some time ago on Inner Life, with a potentially amusing reference to a feud that Willa Cather had with one of her professors on the subject. https://open.substack.com/pub/innerlifecollaborative/p/numbers-trouble?r=16vgt&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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Josh, interesting to hear you see a parallel in academe. Perhaps the algorithmic path is emblematic of a deeper disconnect in the human soul.

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This is one symptom of a deeper transactional malady in academe. The teacher who flings heart and soul into the craft is not worth as much as the drudge who hews to brand pillars and the myth of continuous improvement.

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I always appreciate a little "peek behind the writing curtain", Birgitte. Thanks for this!

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You are most welcome Andrew. And thank you for always being so active and supportive, I've seen your comments on many other Substacks, that does not go unnoticed :)

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I really like to amplify thoughtful work, and fortunately, there is no shortage here. Mainly, I'm grateful to have intelligent conversations that are more meaningful that trivial social media stuff like dopamine hits and cat videos, or even worse, short clips that just sort of tell you what to think.

Anyway, thanks for standing against all that! I've got your back.

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Like they teach you in martial arts, take the energy of your opponent and redirect it :)

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What they teach you in martial arts is how to kill somebody.

Buddhism is the source of this knowledge.

The founder of the Yuan dynasty was Kublai Khan, who ordered all Buddhist temples in China to be led by the Shaolin Temple . . . eight princes during the Ming dynasty converted to Shaolin . . .

China was primarily a Buddhist nation until the Mao Dynasty . . . Falun Gong is repressed because it is an offshoot of Shaolin Buddhism.

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Amen to this comment!

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“I fear the Jewish bankers with their craftiness and torturous tricks will entirely control the exuberant riches of America and use it to systematically corrupt modern civilization. The Jews will not hesitate to plunge the whole of Christendom into wars and chaos so that the earth should become their inheritance.” ― Otto Von Bismark

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