What Shouldn't AI Do?

What should we protect from automation?

If you’ve been on social media recently, you’ve likely seen a nonstop flow of AI-generated images and posts. All around, we see content made with zero effort taking over the algorithm. There’s no way for human-made content to compete with it in terms of quantity. And quantity is the most important thing in our media environment.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Although it might be rough around the edges right now, it’s clear that AI-generated content will improve. We will see AI get better at generating stories. We will see it get better at generating songs and videos. There will come a point where there is AI generated art that isn’t quite distinguishable from human art. AI might never create a Shakespeare or a Bach, but it will create art that seems like it was made by humans.

A lot of the criticism of AI talks about the quality of what it makes. People say that AI couldn’t possibly replace a real human novelist or director or painter. There’s something that humans can do that it simply can’t.

And I do believe this is true: I don’t think that AI is capable of writing like James Joyce or composing like Franz Liszt. There’s something that’s unique to the human person that lets us do things that AI can’t quite match. It can create something that resembles these great artists, but it struggles to maintain an underlying artistic vision.

But there’s another question that needs to be asked: What should we do if AI does write novels just as good as human ones? What should we do if there’s no way to tell an artificially generated piece of music from a human one?

Why Shouldn’t We Automate Everything?

If we hink that the point of these things is just to enjoy them as a reader, watcher, or listener, then why not let the robots take over? If an AI can create something just as entertaining or as aesthetically pleasing as a human, what’s the value to doing these things in the first place?

Now, we can talk about many of the things that AI can’t do. It can’t offer you a real human perspective. A good piece of art offers something more than the sum of its parts. At best, it offers a picture of another person’s life. It shows you the world through someone else’s eyes. If AI can’t experience the world, then it can’t possibly tell you about its experience. At best, it can try to copy someone else’s view.

But this still just asks about the limitations of AI. This argument says that humans should keep making art because AI isn’t capable of doing it as well as we can. But is the only problem with AI that it’s not good enough at its job? Is that the only reason not to automate everything?

What would society be like if none of us were taught to do art? Imagine that kids from a young age are told that they don’t really need to draw, write, or play music, because those things can be automated. If we can create these things through automation, what’s the point in doing them ourselves?

It’s important to remember that there are things AI can’t do. But there’s something else important to remember: There are things we shouldn’t want AI to do. There are things that should be kept for humans because the process is just important as the result. We don’t just make art to have something nice at the end. We make it because the process itself is good.

What’s the Value of Making Something?

It’s easy to start valuing the results over the process. It’s not too hard to look at the final product of some effort and judge that. It’s much more difficult to try to judge the work that went into it. But that work isn’t some incidental thing that we can just forget. It’s often what gives something its meaning.

Although we might not be able to see it, there is something different about looking at an art piece when we know the process that went into it: If we know that a sculpture took a decade to make, we feel that it’s more valuable than something made in a factory in a few hours. This is not fake: Even if we can’t tell which sculpture was made in the factory and which one was made by a hard-working artist, it’s still meaningful that this work was done.

Now, most people would agree with this point on art. Very few people think we should let ChatGPT write everything. But should we limit this idea to just art? Or does this say something about automation in general?

If you’ve ever tried baking, you’ve probably learned that it can be a long and difficult process, especially if you’ve tried to make something exotic or complicated. When you try making your own bread or something delicate like macarons, it can be very frustrating. Even for someone who’s experienced and talented, it’s often a test of patience.

And, sometimes, you might realize that what you made doesn’t beat what the bakery has. If you’re just evaluating the final product, what you’ve made isn’t the best there can be. We can’t beat the big efficient machines if that’s our only concern. It might be less expensive than the bakery, but considering the investment in ingredients and time, it’s rare that you’ll come out that far ahead.

Why should we bake, then? What’s the point if the final product isn’t the same? If we want to find something worthwhile, we need to look at the process instead.

When we look at the process instead of the product, we see so much that we can’t get from buying something premade. There’s a chance to learn something new. You can see everything that goes into your food, and you have total control over it. More than anything, it seems to offer a sense of ownership over the process.

And this is not the only place we see this: There’s a certain sense of responsibility and independence you get from fixing something around your house on your own. Organizing your home on your own gives you a sense that it is yours.

Reclaiming Ownership

In a world of so much automation, it’s easy to feel like nothing is really ours. We don’t have the opportunity to see the process that goes into building our homes, making our food, or even doing our work. So much of life is run by anonymous machines that we can’t take any responsibility for.

We shouldn’t avoid automation just because we think we can do better. We have a much better reason to avoid it: We want to be responsible for our lives. We want to be creative and independent. Complete automation takes away that opportunity.

As the world grows closer to this sense of total automation, we need to keep a part of our lives for ourselves. We need to find something that belongs to us and keep hold of it. We’re not just here to enjoy the best things we can find. We’re here to take hold of our lives and build something.