There’s a scene in the recent Top Gun film where Tom Cruise is getting a rollicking for an audacious stunt he pulled.
The General tells him that soon they won’t need pilots anymore. Pilots who eat, sleep.. who disobey orders.
He says, “Your kind is headed for extinction.”
At which point Tom Cruise turns to the General and says, “That maybe so sir, but not today.”
Let me tell you, as a pilot that line stirs my loins in a way few women ever could. And not just because it’s Tom Cruise!
Because it’s true.
We know that one-day automation will take over the reins. One day the pilot will be made redundant.
But not today.
Not Today.
Today, the industry still needs pilots.
Despite the extraordinary technological advances in aviation, the machines we fly are far from perfect.
Most aircraft are programmed to maximise efficiency, but in doing so they fly very close to the margins.
I’ve seen the autopilot exceed those margins on several occasions.
The truth is pilot oversight and intervention is still required. We have to monitor the automation like a hawk.
This is what’s lost on many people — what many in the industry want to sweep under the carpet.
Increasingly automated machines require pilots with more experience and training, not less.
Why?
- First, they require a greater amount of knowledge to understand. (Duh!)
- Second, if something does go wrong, because of the sheer level of complexity, it invariably requires a particularly skillful response.
Yet, an over-reliance on automation has made the so-called “weak link in the machine” even weaker.
This is what’s known as the automation paradox.
The very advances that have significantly improved safety standards have made us worse at our jobs.
It’s perhaps the aviation industry’s most significant issue today.
The Automation Paradox
“I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization.” — Agent Smith, The Matrix.
Now, why am I telling you this?
Well, because we face the same threat as writers with the advent of ChatGPT and the rest of it.
It’s the automation paradox on steroids.
Let’s be upfront about what that means.
AI is hot on our heels in terms of being able to outwrite us. It can already do it faster and with fewer mistakes (at least, grammatically speaking).
I had Chat GPT write a children’s book the other day using an idea I’d been sitting on. I fed it the idea and said, “Sing for me, baby!”
And honestly, it wasn’t terrible.
I gave her a few more prompts — told her to write it as a rhyme book, and voila! I had something approximating what I wanted in a matter of minutes. All it required was a few tweaks and I was away.
At first, I was elated. I had dollar signs in my eyes. But then I felt this crushing wave of depression wash over me. (As you do.)
I thought, why bother taking the autopilot out? I mean, if the robot can sh*t this out in a matter of seconds, why sit down and do it manually?
Even if it can’t fly better than me yet — it won’t be long before it can, right?
Why not head over to Myjourney, get some AI-generated artwork, and then format the lot in a quick and dirty ebook? Why not put it on amazon kindle and watch as the meaningless dollars roll in?
Other people are going to. They are going to make good money doing so. At the same time, they will flood the market, making it harder for other folks who have done it the hard way.
Right there — while asking these questions — I had my answer. It’s wrong.
Uncanny Valley
There are serious ethical considerations here.
In case you didn’t realise, writers and artists are the very sources from which AI feeds. Using AI-generated content may amount to plagiarism.
That’s point one.
Point two is this: When — if — many artists/writers are forced to look for other work, what do you think Chat GPT and the rest of these AI tools will ultimately feed on?
Themselves.
There’s a term I came across in this article on the subject called “uncanny valley”. It that refers to the “unsettling relationship between the human-like appearance of an artificial object and the emotional response it provokes.”
It’s that gut instinct that something feels off. In literature, this effect is particularly disconcerting given AI’s inability to imitate what we might call the human soul.
This is what’s at stake.
If we allow AI to replace the real artists of this world — who have always acted as a mirror for the human soul —we may lose sight of ourselves altogether.
The Value of the Human Soul.
Here’s the good news. The value of the human soul just went up 1000-fold.
There’s a tweet by Kent Beck that highlights this point well. Following the first time he used Chat GPT he had this to say,
“The value of 90% of my skills just dropped to $0. The leverage for the remaining 10% went up 1000x. I need to recalibrate.”
This is the million-dollar question: What is the 10%?
Well, I’ll tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t some highly structured post with perfect grammar. It’s not 6 simple ways to lose belly fat this summer.
No.
It’s writing that bleeds onto the page from a person’s heart. It’s writing that comes straight from the gut and punches you in the face .
AI is miles away from being able to replicate this kind of writing. Why?
Because it’s an algorithm that predicts what word should come next. It’s not writing. It’s doing math. As a result, it lacks the ingredients that really make a piece of writing sing: depth, nuance, and personality.
Maybe one day it will be able to replicate this kind of thing. That maybe be so sir, but not today.
Not today.
And then, I ask, what happens when all is said and done?
I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t care less about what a robot has to tell me when it comes to the things that really matter.
I care about the person with real-life experience. About the soul brave enough to place their heart on a page. That’s what I care about. That’s who I want to hear from.
You, dear reader.
You.
Why We Write
“I write for the same reason I breathe — because if I didn’t, I would die.” — Isaac Asimov
Does this mean we should avoid using automation? No, not at all.
As a pilot, I love having the autopilot engaged. I think, “Thank the Lord I don’t have to hand fly this aircraft for over 12 hours straight.”
I get to take it out for the best bits and let the machine do the rest.
That’s how we should look at AI — as a tool to help us do some of the heavier lifting while we get to take our pens out for the best bits.
We should embrace that. If we want to take advantage of the opportunities that AI presents we must remain open. But we need to remain extremely cognisant at the same time.
We must do our homework and understand how it works — what it’s suitable for and most certainly isn’t. We need to make sure we are using it ethically. More than that, we need to be careful not to place too much faith in it.
If there is one thing I want you to take away it’s this: The skills we automate are the skills we lose.
The great danger is that we rely on automation to think for us. The great danger is we give up on writing altogether because the bot can do it better.
Because guess what?
The real rewards from writing have nothing to do with money or ego-inflating (or deflating, in my case) stats.
It’s what goes on internally that matters.
It’s how it helps us organise our thoughts. It’s how it helps challenge and update our limiting beliefs. It’s how it helps us process our emotions and grow as human beings.
It’s how it helps us see who we really are.
These are the benefits you get from writing that no amount of AI will ever be able to do for you.
Not today.
Not ever.
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