People will keep using AI to cheat, and as AI improves we won't be able to tell at all and their cheating will look original. But there is a cost. The cost isn't to society, it is personal, a cost to our soul if you will.
That's a great letter. I liked this bit:
When the God of the Bible looked upon what He had created, He did so with a sense of accomplishment and saw that 'it was good'. 'It was good 'because it required something of His own self, and His struggle imbued creation with a moral imperative, in short love.
I think that's just it. Putting aside all else, when we don't do it ourselves we don't have that sense of satisfaction at having struggled and done it ourselves. So what's the point?
That reminds me of the post I just read from @coinjoe (here). He put some degree of effort in and fixed his garage door instead of just letting the fixit guy do it. Forget the money saved, the effort to do it himself rewarded him.
I have no doubt ChatGPT and AI in general will just keep improving and improving until they can do everything better than us, including songwriting. At that point, our own efforts may look dull and unoriginal when compared to the wonders AI can give us. We will be in a world where we won't need to do anything and all our needs will be provided for. I would tend to believe this utopian future is coming more than I believe the dystopian visions wherein the rich take even more power and enslave all of us to an even greater extent.
Yet is it really utopian? I think that future would be incredibly dull. The human spirit needs to work to feel alive. Not work as in this soul-crushing 9-5 daily grind that we all hate, but work as in some kind of creative activity that gives us a sense of accomplishment when we do it.
I see a future very similar to the Star Trek one. Where despite technology that can do everything for us, people choose to continue working at jobs they love. There will always be people who just sit back and let AI do it. But for the people who have looked inward and realized the joy to be gained by struggling to do it ourselves, they will still attempt the work.
Yes, as @jhymi also says above. There's a joy in creation - if we hand this all over to AI, we sacrifice the satisfaction we feel after nutting through a problem. I've thought a lot about the peace we get out in the bush when we are constantlyproblem solving: getting water from the creek to boil for a shower, where to get wood, lighting a fire, making the food we have last the week, and so on and so forth. The joy of making a meal. Fixing a bike. All that stuff matters, and we're losing those skills at a steady rate. It's definitely dystopian for me to consider a world where all my needs are met. Do nothing and be happy doesn't compute for me, and I can't imagine this is what anyone really wants. There's only so long we 'relax' without the human need to create.
Yes. I look at young people going back to old world skills - carpentry, woodworking, film photography. They find value in it in a world that's automated, easy. I hope, like you, there will be a critical mass of people who do this - not because they're luddites in the basic sense (anti tech, rather than fighting for the rights of people to earn a living) but because they recognise that creating in this way - because it is 'good' is a necessary part of being human.
Hey, thanks for the mention buddy. You are correct, I did save money, but the satisfaction of doing it myself with my son was a great feeling.