Wonderful take on artificial intelligence from filmmaker Justine Bateman. Taken from this article from the Guardian (emphasis added):

Generative AI, says film-maker and writer Justine Bateman, "is one of the worst ideas society has ever come up with". She says she despises how it incapacitates us. "They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years -- to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies -- to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people."

Artificial intelligence is marketed as this means to "save time." I don't deny the usefulness of A.I. to help us to learn and gain knowledge. But at the end of the day, what are we "saving" all this time for? The processes of struggling and making and experiencing are the quintessence of life. What are you saving yourself from? Living?

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