Fall in love with AI, hold its hand and dream with it

Embrace a holy matrimony

Thrifted this fabric patch at Avalon Exchange in Cleveland, don’t know the artist

A wise, wonderful poet shared this haunting essay some time ago.

https://culture.org/ghosts/

I found myself irresistibly attracted to GPT-3—to the way it offered, without judgment, to deliver words to a writer who has found herself at a loss for them. One night, when my husband was asleep, I asked for its help in telling a true story.

I had always avoided writing about my sister’s death. At first, in my reticence, I offered GPT-3 only one brief, somewhat rote sentence about it. The AI matched my canned language; clichés abounded. But as I tried to write more honestly, the AI seemed to be doing the same. It made sense, given that GPT-3 generates its own text based on the language it has been fed: Candor, apparently, begat candor.

The stories GPT-3 responds with, in this work, feel more true than truth: they are poetry. But the end result remains a joint work of art between the author and the AI.

DALL-E 2, “a beautiful flower being, nature spirit, porcelain face, looks to the right and intertwines her flower and vine covered hand at the pinky with a robot that has a black steel mechanical hand, the robot faces the flower being and faces left, it is android -line art -black and white -futurism and nature -thoughtful -professional,” (2023). Android dreamstuff, digital art.

In the equally human world of medicine, the power of this union has shown its effectiveness in breast cancer screening, where robots and humans together catch more cancer than either alone. In a 2022 study, an image classification algorithm correctly identified cancer-positive mammograms about 85% of the time, while a radiologist succeeded 87% of the time. But working together, with the radiologist checking the AI’s work, they were 90% effective. For the scans it classified as normal, the AI autofilled paperwork and set them aside for a quick review - which could go a long way to reducing the fatigue that contributes to radiologists’ mistakes.

This new generation of AI is the first technology that is appropriate - and powerful - to describe as a partner to collaborate with, not just a tool to leverage. In doing so we can fully receive it as a source of newness and wonder, like we welcome any other partner into our lives.

And we can ask the questions: what can we build together, that we could not have built otherwise? What can we say together, that we could not have said otherwise?

AI can do more than help us understand what it means to be human. AI can help us be more human.

DALL-E 2, “flower spirit, leaves and vines, with flowery hand intertwined with dark robot's hand -line art -black and white -artist -sketch -pencil” (2023). Android dreamstuff, digital art.