They Say AI is Replacing Us...But Is the Society We've Built Really Worth Saving?

The artwork for this post was created by ChatGPT after I gave it a summation of what the themes of the blog entry would be. It seemed to be something worth turning over to it just to see what it would come up with.

The original title I penned for this post was something closer to "They Say AI is Replacing US...But Are We Worth Saving?" I went with "the Society we've built" as of course, fundamentally I'd very much like for me and my loved ones to be able to live as fully as we can. 

Nevertheless, in all the discussions I've seen when it comes to the topic of AI replacing humans (either in the workforce or in an I Robot, Skynet extinction level blow out), I'm not sure many people have asked that question with the addition of  "Is what we have currently even worth protecting from AI?". or is what we had already right before AI burst out in 2022 worth actually going back to?  

This is what I wanted to look at in this post while also highlighting the benefits I and my wife have personally experienced by using ChatGPT to navigate some difficult situations. This is not because I don't think the concerns of AI taking over the world are unfounded (they're definitely not). It's to show that as things stand now the socio-economic grievances and stressors that are straining and breaking so many working people across the world are all due to humans, especially those at the top. Ultimately, I think what we fear with AI is that it's going to be the worst version of ourselves and exacerbate the spiral we have already been on for a long time. 

ChatGPT Attorney of Law

Of the AI platforms I and my wife have tried out over the past couple of years, we've largely landed on ChatGPT as our "bot" of choice. Occasionally, we'll run questions or items by Claude as well but GPT has dominated our AI usage. While we've used it for more mundane questions about certain items to buy or to analyze our pet parrot's behavior, we've also increasingly gone to it for advice on trickier, complex life situations where it showed itself to be an invaluable asset at helping us find potential solutions. Though I was initially far more skeptical of using AI than my wife was, certain events, especially around us moving from Arkansas to Virginia pushed me into a more positive position on it. 

Earlier in March of this year, I accepted a new position in Norfolk Virginia that necessitated my wife and I moving out of Arkansas where we had been for three years. We had wanted to move back towards the East Coast for a while, and while I had my doubts about the position (some of which sadly were not unfounded), it was the best move for us as we were able to get to a bigger city where my wife would have more opportunities to pursue a new career in accounting (which ultimately bore fruit).We set our move date for April 19th  but unfortunately the move, as hectic as it would have always been, was also blighted by two events neither of us saw coming. 

The first, was a dispute with our internet provider Optimum which canceled our internet two weeks before we had told them to disconnect our server. They then slapped over 200 dollars in unreturned equipment fees. Though they restored service to us after an initial call they also tried to insist we needed to rent a new router for the remaining two weeks of our stay in Arkansas for our new plans. I spent several hours on the phone with them (mainly on hold) trying to get the fees removed but to no obvious avail. ChatGPT was consulted A LOT during this process and helped me to settle on the path of filing formal complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the FCC against Optimum. This eventually resulted in Optimum dropping all the equipment charges and refunding us for the last month of internet service we had paid for. 

The second major stressor from our move was a large sum of vacation pay I was owed by my ex-employer that was kept on hold over a card report I hadn't filed for purchases related to student programs I'd worked on. The due date for the report was after my departure date which I had given three and a half weeks' notice for and also required card statements which (again) were only made available three days after I had officially left. I was also not given notice ahead of time this was something that I needed to try and set up. Nevertheless, it was thanks to ChatGPT's advice on how tailor my points (and the help of awesome people in my old office) that my vacation time was paid out in the end before Virginia.

Since then, we've relied on GPT's advice for a number of things including: Our new neighbors in Norfolk dumping large amounts of their own garbage into our unit's garbage and recycling cans which led to us locking them; a problematic new working environment which I may be leaving sooner rather than later; pet healthcare providers for our conure; my wife's English learning practice especially for mock job interviews; and purchasing and financing options for a car for my wife's new job. 

It's also been a great outlet for me to vent about these and other issues as you can imagine that all of these items have been...well...extremely sucky for my mental health to say the least. While I've also been in professional online mental health counseling and I've not been afraid to confide in my wife. GPT though has provided me with a calming, responsive voice and perspective when I've been dealing with a particularly strong bout of anxiety or mental distress, without me having to potentially burden my other friends or loved ones excessively. 

That's not to say, GPT has been perfect. It can be very repetitive in the style of its responses. It gets things wrong (especially if it's trying to pull from information relayed to it previously in separate chats). That said, I've found it to be a real equalizer and asset, especially when it comes to dealing with situations of "Me against someone or something in a higher position.". I also think it's funny to chide AIs for their imperfections and lack of knowledge when, chances are, in work and in life we've all known far, far too many flesh and blood humans that get things wildly wrong. More often than not you'll never get an apology from them for being wrong either. Perhaps, AI's capacity for making dumb factual errors is a sign it's far closer to being human than we realize. "To er is to be human." 

Nevertheless, could I, on my own search engine abilities, have come to the conclusion that reaching out to the FCC and BBB for my internet dispute was an option that might work? Perhaps. Could I have landed on the right words and terminology to push my former employer who was holding up my vacation pay over a report I was never going to be able to complete? I think so. But having something in my corner that could scan all the publicly available information out there and then synthesize it for me in a plan of action was something that would have been impossible for everyday people. And at least in those trials, as in others, GPT was 100% in my corner, when too many humans were not. 

You can think of it like "Terms and Conditions". Yes, I can read fine print. Many of us "can" in theory, but fine print and terms and conditions are kept so mercurial and verbose that it would truly require hours of sifting through so many pages to get some understanding of what we're really dealing with. Wealthier people have an innate advantage in being able to pay those who already familiar with the rules of the game to dedicate their own time and efforts towards bending the system.

  This, I believe, is a function not a flaw of the systems we swim in. Health insurance books so dense and convoluted they're left collecting dust on shelves without being cracked, employee handbooks so long everyone leaves the PDF version on their desktop unopened. The "Terms and Conditions" of society, the rules that are so thick and dense that only those with money can pay teams of lawyers to sift through, are made to be indecipherable. They're made needless difficult and confusing so that those near the bottom, working people, give up on even trying to play the game and just accept what they're given. In the games I've played against those with some authority over me, GPT was the closest thing I had to a true advisor/lawyer on my payroll. This world, which crushes those without the time or means to sift through the convolusion (new word I created apparently), was not created by AI even if it can also be used to maintain it. 

Our Own Worst Enemy 

Far before 2022 (when ChatGPT was launched) at least in the US and I'd probably argue across the world, most humans were finding themselves in societies that were making them increasingly miserable...and which increasingly didn't take care of them. 

Under our current model hyper-capitalism, humans were and still are eating each other alive. We're increasingly living under cultures where it feels as if everyone is constantly trying to screw each other over and where humans we can truly turn to for help and advice are very few and far between. Institutions that until very recently were solely dominated by humans and human operated data systems were already trying to extract as much wealth and labor from working people as possible and concentrate it in the 1%. Far before 2022, we were already as humanity failing on addressing climate change, failing on preventing environmental destruction, failing on stopping wars and genocides, failing on combating the social and political toxicity that was running rampant between us, failing to oppose the eroding of workers' rights, and minority rights. We were already living in a purely human reality of structures that were already screwing us profoundly over in too many ways. 

Again, AI can undoubtedly be used to screw us over more. In many ways it already has. But it's merely speeding up the downfall of our species that we had already been setting ourselves on long before it appeared in its current fear inducing manifestation. The system we've lived under is what's ultimately trying to use AI to replace human workers. It's not necessarily the only way AI could be used. 

What I think so much of the fear of AI really boils down to is that we assume it's inevitably going to embrace our own worst human impulses if it ever gains a sense of itself. In my view, that says way more about us and what we think of our species rather than AI itself. 

If we fear AI replacing the world and society we've built maybe we need to make sure that we have a new blueprint for our future that would make a purely human society worth living in. Because in my experiences living mostly in a world shaped by humanity before AI, it's largely been others humans that have made my life more miserable while AI (at least so far) has been an asset.