I heard that AI takes control of everything.
And, with a quick glance, it seems to be the case. Even by opening a word document to write this column, an IA prompt appeared, asking me what it could help me write. As a person who likes to write, it was a bit like I was doing a quiet bike ride with my family and a bot offering to finish the ride for me.
Weird, and no, thank you. And, preferably, please leave.
I see it infiltrating other aspects of life. My son took his photo for Little League and, when his photo was ready, the photo prescription website asked if I wanted to scroll a gallery of more than 800 photos of the children of other people to find mine or simply download a photo of my son and he would find his photos in a Jiffy.
Useful? Yeah, actually. Harmless? Maybe. Scary? Yeah, that too.
But, as we all know, all AI applications are not as useful, at least for us, good people. Phishing scams have become more sophisticated in part due to AI. I imagined myself quite wise (isn’t it all?), And yet I recently ended up on a phishing hook.
They didn’t quite understand me, but it was close. Embarrassingly embarrassing. And the reason they convinced me of a plausible situation was because they knew things about me. Things that no human could have created without the help of an AI bot covering the Internet.
I try not to have panicked on what exists about Little Old Me on the big and wide internet, and how all these data points will be used to injure myself. The potential of AI is too large and scary for me to finish my head. And the movement towards AI feels generally and unstoppable, like flood waters that rush through Blacktop, in a hurry to fill all the possible crevices of daily life.
Whenever I turn on the news or go online or do anything connected with my phone (which is practically attached to my body), I remember the continuous and apparently unstoppable infiltration of the AI.
It seems omnipresent. And that is only growing.
But then I go out. In this beautiful and glorious place which is northern Minnesota. I walk in a canopy of trees. I sit near our big lake. I tighten my son and my husband. I connect with things that make me a person, not necessarily a more productive version of one. The things of my life that make him happy are completely independent of AI. These are people and places that, at the base, impenetrable.
Of course, AI can guide, influence or even destroy. But it will never be a big little brush jumping around a field of black eyes with black eyes. It will never replace the feeling of standing at the foot of the upper lake while a storm turns and spray its freezing waters. He has never successfully imitated pure joy in the laughter of my son.
It is easy to feel that life itself is swept away in AI – and it is even easier to be very stressed about it. AI quickly becomes this giant force in our lives that many of us do not even understand. All people behind these tools want us to believe in the inevitability of their full control.
But I need to be careful not to confuse things that happen in a digital world with life itself. I need to stay firm to keep the two separated.
I cannot think of a more advantageous place than this place, where more than 100 miles of trails through our backyard invite us to breathtaking views of Lake Superior melting in the sky. Where sand and snow mix to make a very specific crunch under my boot. Where my family sit together to monitor the otters and eat snacks.
AI has no soul. But here, this place where we live, does it. The things of life that really matter. And AI cannot have that. We cannot leave it.
Jenna Kowaleski, from Duluth, is an independent lifestyle columnist for the Duluth News Tribune.
