AI and Contempt
“The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.”
– Ted Chiang, “Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art”
“I must be myself in what I say; I must myself be implicated in what I say, and what I affirm must show me really true to what I affirm.
– Foucault, Michel. “Parrēsia”
As I have written before, Generative AI certainly has many legitimate use cases. But I believe that genAI is a grave problem when used to replace the writing process or fundamentally compromise writing as a tool for learning, discovery, truth-telling, and what Foucault describes as the “care of the soul.”
Often people who criticize the (mis)user of genAI focus on how this shows an utter contempt for the audience. In this instance, we imagine the (mis)user of this technology essentially saying:
I care so little for you that I won’t even speak my own words to you. I’m so lazy that I don’t care how I come off, even as I ask you for some favor or make some request. I will not sit with the problem of communicating to you and craft a message that will allow you to hear me in my own voice. You are unworthy of my time, my effort, my unique human meanings. I want this interaction to be over as soon as possible. I think of other human beings in the barest instrumental terms: you are a tool for my use, a gatekeeper who controls something I presently want.
But, the more I think about it, perhaps it is much darker than that—perhaps what we actually witness is an utter contempt for the self:
I have no words in me; my thoughts are worthless and trite; I fear that, deep down, I have nothing to say, nothing to contribute. I am not a man, but a pale wispy ghost nearly faded from the Earth. I care nothing for knowledge, or discovery; I do not wish to be known or recognized by anyone; I hate being alone with myself and the thoughts that appear when I am not sutured to a screen; I fear anyone glimpsing my secret, true self; I have no integrity, honesty, ambition; there is nothing unique or peculiar or interesting about me; deep down, I believe that I am nothing, and always will be. But do not grieve my state, because I am only dimly aware that I could be otherwise: I am content in my role as a consumer of prepared ideas and experiences and feelings; I am a tourist, a receiver of gifts; and I have no desire to grow, or become, or transcend myself.