I’m at the kitchen sink rinsing plates when my son gives a startled shout and rushes in.
“Mom! Look what’s in the hall closet!”
He shoves his phone in my face and shows me a picture of our closet with a huge rattlesnake coiled inside, ready to strike.
My stomach seizes with fear, and I yelp, dancing around the kitchen, crying, “No! No! It can’t be!!”
It wasn’t.
It was our hall closet. I recognized all the items inside. But the rattlesnake was AI-generated.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
This was just one of several incidents I encountered this week where something I saw, or thought I saw, on social media turned out to be AI. Younger people are having a blast with this new technology. They can even conjure up a beautiful blonde sitting next to them on the couch and snap it to their friends.
But I can’t shake a growing sense of unease.
AI has been around in some way, shape, or form for years, but now it feels omnipresent. The words we read. The images we see. The information we rely on. The assignments students turn in.
And are we better because of it?
Even I, an educator and a writer who used to be staunchly opposed, am now conceding it’s a valuable tool when used to help formulate and shape the raw material we input. A 60-page schoolwide action plan can be done in an afternoon once the information is compiled. A weekly meal plan, complete with recipes and shopping lists, can be generated in moments; a dreaded task that used to take hours of my time. And on, and on, and on.
What’s bothering me now are the made-up images flooding social media feeds. The highlight reel wasn’t enough… now we’ve entered a world where we have to debate whether something is not just perfect, but too perfect, to be real. When what you see is increasingly fake, you start to doubt reality. You start to miss the ordinary.
Meanwhile, we stop using our brains to dream up the amazing and exceptional; to do the work of thinking, computing, and composing. We are entering uncharted territory with eyes wide open, believing what we see. Creating, connecting, and exploring are no longer enough. The thrill now comes from taking the unbelievable and putting it out there for everyone to consume.
We’ve developed a tolerance for the authentic in all its forms, and now we’re devouring the artificial, hoping it will be the substance and sustenance we’re longing for. But what I fear we’ll be left with is an empty space where thought, creativity, and connection used to live.
What happens when we start to depend on what’s unreal to make us laugh, gasp, cry, and long for something? When we look behind the curtain and see only a machine whirring busily to satisfy the masses?
What happens when the world is not enough?
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It’s the main reason I’m back here. I want real people – real connection.
there’s good and bad in everything. Ive seen AI swallow up creatives, and many other professions, including those in the medical community and leave them jobless. But i also realize how much easier it is to do my banking, make payments, connect with people anywhere in the world and look up anything i desire in the blink of an eye. Yes, we have to admit, most of us have become dependent on it in some way, shape or form. Not sure what the answer is here excpet to remain vigilant, and teach our children to do the same:)
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how to use AI. Everyone seems to be using ChatGPT and love it, have yet to learn that also. A part of me wants to, another part doesn’t care to.
The AI fake things that pop up on social media are annoying as you don’t really know what’s real or not these days. However most of those pop ups aren’t from anyone I know and I can just scroll past quickly.
Who knows, there may come a time I will catch up with this ever changing world. 😂
It’s only a matter of time before even some churches start to use AI to write sermons. Never has going off grid been so appealing ❤️