October Theme: The Unknown
Big Question: Why are we drawn to mystery and uncertainty?
Week 1: Mystery
What I wrote below is based on the following reflective writing prompt included in Saturday’s Writing Prompts That Stir Up Mysteries post.
Prompt: Creative Shadows
What unanswered questions shape your writing? Think about the recurring themes, conflicts, or mysteries that keep appearing in your creative work, even when you don’t include them on purpose. Then write about those deep, unresolved questions you have about your own life, human nature, your past, or the future, that drive you to create. How does your writing serve as a tool to explore or solve some of these mysteries?
Why did I choose it?
I chose this prompt because most of my writing takes place in ‘the unknown’ or insists on leaving things unknown. I also have too many unanswered questions to list here. But lately, the main unanswered question driving my writing is one that many of you likely have, too: What is AI doing to us as humans and storytellers, and what are we going to do about it?
My Response: My Creative Shadows
Like many of you, I can’t stop thinking about where AI will take us in the next few years or decades… if we’re lucky. And like many of you, I also have a love-hate relationship with it. I love the promise of what it can calculate and deliver for us, especially when it comes to healthcare and tedious and or dangerous labor. But I hate that it’s not yet fully delivering on many of those promises and quickly only becoming a tool for the rich and powerful to gain more wealth and power while exploiting more resources and people in the process at catastrophic levels that will inevitably harm even them.
There is also this vital part of me that is wholly incapable of throwing my hands up and saying, “Oh well, there’s nothing we can do now so I guess we’re all doomed!” Because, deep in my gut, I do also believe that whatever version of reality we collectively articulate best via our day-to-day words and stories will be what is ultimately manifested in the actual world we live in. So, I tend to think of the version of the future world that I want most, then work backward to meet our present moment via my words and writing, as I am also not a fantastical thinker or a naive person who likes to believe she lives outside the confines of the real world.
For me, the blank page is a blank canvas for the worlds I want to create and exist in, so I want my writing on those pages to reflect a real human pulse that encompasses environments that are not only desirable but relatable. Which is why my current WIP centers on the concerns we have about AI, though it will not only serve as a dire warning for our potential demise but hopefully offer a potential blueprint for where we can and might want to go next with AI, as the presence of AI in our world is certainly not going anywhere anytime soon whether we like it or not.
Overall, the questions that drive and shape my writing nowadays, especially my WIP, are questions that don’t have concrete answers yet and likely never will or won’t in my lifetime anyway.
When should we start or stop treating AI as primarily a human-made tool?
When will we demand that AI become a public utility so that it can’t only be used by the wealthy elite to subjugate or control us?
What does AI get wrong, and are these errors only a reflection of where humans err, as humans did create it?
Does the alignment problem reflect our own flaws?
Is AI innately dangerous, or is it only dangerous when we tell ourselves, and it, that it is? Or is it only as dangerous as those who create, oversee, and wield it?
When and how can humans actually control or reprogram AI?
Will AI ever be considered as a person, legally or socially speaking?
And the most important question of them all: How will AI change our relationship with truth and storytelling?
We’ve already seen so many instances where AI has made us question what’s real or mostly real or entirely fabricated, and how this has influenced the stories we tell and believe. But at the same time, humans are biologically and socially hardwired for storytelling in ways that their machines and AI tools never will be… which might also mean that humans will likely also be the only true and ultimate archivists of ‘truth’ that exist (for better and worse), despite what the temporary language formulas driven by machines and AI-driven mimicry and mockery would have many of them react to right now. Because, as only humans can attest, the ‘truth’ of a story is typically a lot messier and harder to pin down than what a machine can currently regurgitate to us, let alone one we created ourselves.
Bottom line, the unanswered questions that drive my writing, that keep me up at night even, are those centered around what humans will do about AI now that it exists in the real world. Some nights I believe they’ll do marvelous things that will benefit humanity with AI. And other nights… Well, I believe that if we’re the only species on the planet willing to wipe ourselves out due to our own weaknesses and ignorance, then maybe we deserve what we get.
Yet, inevitably, when I wake up in the morning to write, I find myself continually answering these questions regarding everything we don’t yet know about AI by striking a balance of those two extreme beliefs that come to me in the middle of the night. Because ultimately, I don’t believe we’re all as magnanimous or as deplorable as that, and that our real story, our ‘truth’, will lie somewhere in between those two extremes… and the stories only humans can tell.
Share Your Writing and Join the Conversation
What’s your response to the question I answered in today’s post, or any of the other reflective journaling prompts in this week’s Writing Prompts That Stir Up Mysteries post?
Leave a comment or join the chat, where we’ll be discussing Mystery for the rest of the week.
Whether you leave a comment or join one of the chats to share your responses, ask questions, or connect with other writers and support their work, I can’t wait to see what you contribute!
Please don’t forget to like and share this post with your network so others can see it too. Thanks in advance. I hope to see you in the comments or chat threads soon!
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