It was an evening like many other evenings in Mumbai. I was sitting on the sea-wall of Marine Drive and Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ was playing in my headphones. The wind had tousled my hair and the redness of the setting sun had entered my eyes. As the ball of fire landed in the Arabian Sea, the crashing sound of the waves combined with Cohen’s deep, hypnotic voice to complete the magical moment. Memories of other unforgettable sunsets flooded my mind: on the Malecón in Cuba, on an active volcano in Bali and during a self-drive safari in Uganda’s largest national park. Then I got distracted and opened my email. A new mail had arrived, full of warmth and harmony. But at the end it read: ‘Would you like a more casual version of this, or one tailored for a one-on-one conversation with your manager?’ Over the past few months, I have often doubted my ability to write and communicate. But I later realized that the emails and social media posts I was impressed by were not actually written by humans. When I receive emails written by AI, when I see team members using it for work, when I read LinkedIn posts and WhatsApp messages written by ChatGPT, I don’t know how to react. Should I spend my time and energy responding to emails and messages written by those AIs? Should I also be replying using ChatGPT, thereby creating a paradoxical situation where one machine is talking to another machine pretending to be a human? How can I create virtual relationships that are based on answers generated by AI, not real humans? How do I compete with the blog posts and newsletters that Claude is creating? What will happen when books made from Perplexity take over bookstores? In 2024, Oxford chose ‘brain rot’ as the word of the year. This means the degradation of our brain due to excessive consumption of low quality and low value content on social media. Now if we add AI to this, the brain rot increases manifold. I know the consequences of ignoring technology and being left behind the world. When I was starting out as a digital storyteller, I saw this happen with my friends in traditional media. But AI is not just some new medium or tool; It is questioning our very existence as creative individuals. I put down my phone. Shades of orange and pink colors were spread in the beach sky. I realized that no technology can ever fully recreate this indescribable pleasure – the joy of sitting here, the experience of inhaling the salty air of Mumbai, the moment of watching the sunset descend into the sea and the strange feeling of peace even amidst the hustle and bustle of a metropolis. For more than a month and a half I devoted myself completely to learning the German language. Devoting myself to learning a new language for five hours every day was exhausting, but it was also energizing. New synapses were forming in my brain. Yes, ChatGPT can translate instantly, but it can never create the joy of knowing the secrets hidden in languages. My small form of rebellion was not to distance myself from AI, but to recognize my own brain rot. Earlier this year I realized that shorter format stories were impacting my ability to work on longer-term projects. So I began to consciously prioritize deep work and slow, sustainable productivity. That evening a mesmerizing crescent appeared over Marine Drive. The lights of Mumbai’s skyline started twinkling, the wind picked up, the crowd slowly dispersed. Sitting in my place, thinking about all the complicated ways we cope with change – I felt raw, confused and incomplete – but also alive! No technology can take this away from us! Should I spend my time responding to emails written by AI? Should I also be replying using ChatGPT, thereby creating a situation where one machine is talking to another machine pretending it is a human? (These are the author’s own views)
Source link
Shivya Nath’s column: No technology can take away the feeling of living from us
