The subject is so hot that it burns – therefore we shall be moving away in a moment. But I’m going to risk” AI and its impact on our lives in the near future.

There is no medium in which the issue of AI wouldn’t be discussed. Are we boring people to death? No, because as the field of observation changes from one week to the next, so does the perspective from which you approach the question – which reflects the hitherto unknown dynamics of the phenomenon.

It used to be optimistic

At first, there was a sense of euphoria. AI shall allow us to save time and energy, eliminate tedious, uncreative, routine graft, and thus increase work efficiency… The list of AI benefits has been (and is) supplemented by such capabilities as more accurate medical diagnoses, more effective surgery on various parts of the body and in the longer term – the extension of human life by at least half a century. AI will also be a blessing to the judiciary – it will pronounce fairer sentences and won’t be subject to bribery.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE In the optimistic version people were reassured that Artificial Intelligence wouldn’t replace people who are creative, able to think critically, with a wide range of knowledge. Visual artists, writers, poets, composers and musicians were also to be safe.

But things have changed. Officially, the professions most at risk from AI are the creative ones and those that rely on content creation skills – expertise, quick association of facts and intuition. So far, AI hasn’t done well with the latter, but it’s only a matter of time. As we know, the GPT chatbot learns fast and corrects its own mistakes with no offence. One can discuss with it, point out mistakes or even mock it. It won’t go into a sulk or feel aggrieved. It will admit that it is still learning and that it is a “novice”.

Few people would react so submissively to accusation. But bots don’t know what a sense of wounded pride is. And that's a big plus for them.

Working women (and men)

Digital transformation is projected to take away (annihilate?) between 85 and 300 million jobs over the next five years. Of course, we are talking about highly developed countries. If you add high inflation and an economic slowdown to this international unemployment on an unprecedented scale, the future looks bleak for many – and for how many, it is difficult to estimate today.

It is known that due to savings, companies will replace employees with robots and AI systems. Others will have to improve their qualifications and learn how to cooperate with GPT. They will be rewarded for this in the form of greatly increased earnings. Those who can manage will move to the upper caste (class).

Those who fail to do so face declassification or unemployment. I’m writing about the consequences of this process below.

However, there are those who – somewhere until 2030 – can sleep peacefully. This year’s report “Brains instead of muscles: the future of work in Europe” leaves no doubt. Contrary to the title, those physically able-bodied who “are not afraid of any work” will survive. Domestic help, i.e. cleaners, construction and social care workers, salesmen and “middle office personnel” and office specialists” (although it is difficult to say who this description applies to), hairdressers, barbers, masseurs, waiters in exclusive restaurants, dressmakers from corrections, repair shoemakers. They will be overloaded with work – which I am already observing on a regular basis. Congratulations to plumbers, electricians, gardeners (including the gardener’s dog) and all kinds of “golden hands”, fans of DIY and hand-made devices that facilitate various works. They won’t be short of work. AI will not own them, because it would be unprofitable.

Human hands are much cheaper. And available everywhere. Everything depends on the initiative and flair of those self-made innovation geniuses.

During this year’s holidays on the Greek island of Kos, we observed the achievements of the local “heir” to Adam Słodowy. Vangelis (this is the name of our hero) assembled the equipment of his part of the beach from materials obtained exclusively from seaside and tourist recycling: a swing, tip box, portable bookcase, chest for toys, roof over sunbeds, shower and toilet cabins, a “run” for parrots and a device for crushing empty beverage cans. He didn’t sit still for a moment, he was constantly thinking about what else to do ... In addition, he did not spend a penny on these conveniences, except for the (small) cost of paint. What’s more, he showed a special ability to make contact with anyone who came into his visual field. He conversed amicably in English or German on any subject he chose, amusing himself more than amusing others.

This (and similar) type will outlive the AI competition. Will beat it with emotional intelligence.

HAL’s death

We used to laugh when we read about the Luddites – the destroyers of machines (mainly weaving machines) from the beginning of the industrial revolution, which took place primarily in England. There, leaders of the Luddite movement organized night raids on weaving mills, in which they destroyed looms, which caused significant losses (estimated at 1.5 million pounds at that time).

How can you oppose progress? – we thought. After all, it is to the benefit of the working class that some of their routine and boring work is taken over by machines. Thanks to this, the workers will be able to toil and get dirty less, and they will have a better life in general. It is puzzling that in the face of the wave of Luddism, the British Parliament passed the Frame-Breaking Act in 1812, according to which the destruction of machines was considered a capital offence.

Effect? In 1812, 17 men were executed for favouring the movement, and dozens of its supporters were deported to Australia.

In the 20th century, trade unions were the guardians of workers’ interests. They opposed innovations that might displace man by machines. Not for long – technological innovation could not be stopped. Nor that the desire for profit generated amoral, anti-humanistic behaviour.

What is particularly perverse, actions to the detriment of some, and the gain of others, take place under the slogans of democracy – that supposedly in this system everyone has the same chances.

In a way, AI and its apologists give the lie to this narrative. They put it bluntly: there will be no mercy. The redundant must go because they cost too much. Where the man is overtaken by the machine, we say “thank you” to ladies and gentlemen. Their time is over. The only way to survive is to prove that you are better than the robot.

I can still remember this scene from the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey” (directed by Stanley Kubrick, world premiere 1968, Polish premiere 1990). A computer on board a spaceship tries to destroy the human crew of it. One brave pilot decides on a daring feat: he turns off the electronic brain called HAL 9000. And then the Artificial Intelligence (or rather its prototype) behaves like a living organism – it fights for survival. At the end, losing power and strength, in a desperate reflex of instinctive self-preservation, HAL sings a song about a daisy ... Its reactions resemble the behaviour of innocent victims of all unjust judgments – from rebellion, using rational arguments, to idiocy. HAL loses consciousness. The man saves life.

Something from outer space, something from reason

More than 40 years ago (in 1982 to be precise) John Carpenter’s film “The Thing” was released. “The Thing” is about the manipulation of aliens who impersonate earthlings while annihilating them. A horror movie, which has not lost its boldness, although probably for many it is old hat. (And “the thing” for fans of film music: the soundtrack of the film was composed by Ennio Morricone. Another outstanding achievement of his). Just two years after “The Thing”, James Cameron intensified the gear of robots in “The Terminator” (1984). Again, a vision of the future in which the world is ruled by robots and where people have descended into the underground.

In those old movies (many others could be enumerated), human intellect and human righteousness, the desire to do good, prevailed over emotionless (as long as they were not threatened themselves) robots.

While films – including popular comic books about post-human visions – are served in a Neverland sauce, books by serious intellectuals are set more in our realities – albeit in an imagined future.

The most depressing and convincing version of Doris Lessing in “Briefing for a Descent into Hell” (1971), when the main character returns/have visions of return? to prehistory, the times of pre-human “civilization”. Modernity doesn’t guarantee spiritual development, rather the opposite - it contributes to the renaissance of wildness, cruelty and departure from all “cultural” achievements of humanity. br>
Amazingly, similar voices of warning were sent more than 30 years later by Cormac McCarthy in the post-apocalyptic novel “The Road” (2006), in which humanity returns to the primal, atavistic reflexes of survival at any cost, even at the cost of cannibalism. What caused this moral regression? Some kind of cataclysm has happened – maybe a war, maybe the occurrence of previously unknown factors triggering primal instincts.

Michel Houellebecq perceives the fall of humanism in a similar way in “The Possibility of an Island” (2005), a novel dealing with (among other things) an eternally prolonged existence (by means of cloning), a group of chosen ones who live in isolated solitary places with no chance for any “real” emotions – while feral hordes of degraded, culturally deprived humanity fight for existence like animals.

I am listing only a few masterpieces that are a kind of – fantastic and visionary – warning against something that will be brought by technological progress devoid of ethical framework. And that’s what it looks like.

Happiness that becomes unhappiness

Let us rejoice! – AI will allow us to retire at a very young age. Not to work – that’s the dream of many. In addition: to get money for survival, maybe modest, but safe. Enough for the rent, the lowest quality food and buying things for ticks which will never be paid back.

What to fill such vegetation with? Well, television programs, also of the lowest quality. With time – and actually it is happening now – illiteracy will return, the ability to solve the simplest arithmetic problems will disappear, the desire for independent thinking, evaluating and associating will disappear. At the same time, there will be indifference to everything that does not directly concern the individual.

These human pawns will be easy to manage, especially with deepfakes at your disposal. Everything will be on the side of technological and logical “winners” – after all, “the winner takes it all”.

No, the development of technology cannot be stopped ... It is not worth fighting it, because it is a lost game – like of those 19th-century machine destroyers. However, I cannot agree with the reassuring forecasts of AI enthusiasts. Because when millions of people lose their jobs, only a small percentage of them will be able to adapt to the new requirements. The rest will be the eternal beneficiaries of state social programmes that provide permanent unemployment benefits.

Great – but as it has been known for a long time, lack of work degenerates. Human life loses its meaning, flavour and meaning. So what if, according to medical predictions, we are to live longer and healthier lives?

Firstly, life-prolonging methods will be expensive – like anything that is above the norm and requires expensive treatment. Secondly, spending life aimlessly, with no reason to acquire new skills only leads to the atrophy of interests and eternal anhedonia. Thirdly, the lack of life purpose and meaning is a slippery slope to ... an accelerated end.

It has been known for a long time that the loss of a job becomes a cause of depression for many and, consequently, suicidal actions. There is a silence about these prospects...

Art won’t deceive you?

This slogan was coined and visually framed many years ago (specifically, in 2006) by Paweł Jarodzki, a late artist from Wrocław. He used a template that at the time seemed like a brutal-cheesy duplication method, something that belonged more to low, popular culture than to the world of high, sophisticated culture. Of course, the work had a multi-dimensional, multi-context message, but this is not the place to discuss it now.

The point is that now art can cheats and it willingly does – with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

It imitates – as in the movie “The Thing” extraterrestrial beings imitated living organisms. At first glance, indistinguishable. However, something is missing. What is that?

I shall start with the physical side, i.e. with matter. Every outstanding work of art is as much an evocation of human genius as it is an invocation of the spirit of becoming, of creating a new being from nothingness. I know, it’s very pompous – but there’s a reason why masterpieces, even after centuries, evoke a shiver of emotion when we come into direct contact with them.

The AI can come up with something when given a command, but it will either spit out the composition in the form of a printout (it can even be three-dimensional), or it will only show a virtual picture on the computer screen.

Meanwhile, the work consists of ... its composition. You can see the time of creation, you can see the movements of the brush, the movements of the painter’s hands, the course of their thoughts. Each work has its own smell, its texture. Each of them contains a story – the artist’s personal story – and reflects the History, the one of a particular period.

I’m thinking to myself: would Artificial Intelligence be able to create, by itself, rock painting from the Palaeolithic era? Giotto’s frescoes? “Laocoön” by El Greco? Vermeer’s “Milkmaid”? Rembrandt’s self-portraits? After all, these works were not created only from intellectual calculations – they contained emotions and life experience. You wouldn’t be able to program them by giving the GPT chatbot commands like “an old man with a turban, ugly complexion and chubby nose” or “a young fat woman with a plain and thoughtless face, pouring milk from a jug into a bowl”. And how to convey the mastery of matter?

The ability to change paint into something that is impossible to describe – because up close you can see something else, from a distance – you perceive millions of other meanings.

When I think about past eras, images and sounds immediately come to mind. It seems that art marked time. What does your imagination suggest to you when someone mentions the term “Renaissance” I bet there is an immediately association: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael. And the baroque? I immediately hear the music of Lully, Charpentier, Corelli, Vivaldi... or I recall the dramas of Molière, or I see Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Velázquez...

There is no history without art belonging to a given period – because we are used to defining, categorizing and defining them with art.

Gentlemen of the exact sciences carelessly say – oh, never mind the art, our genius though Lady Artificial will also do it and no one will even recognise it – they do not understand at all that they are giving up the whole of culture. AI will not create an era, it will not create a style that is the spirit of the times. It needs human guidance. Yes, AI will compose a piece à la Mozart. But it will not invent Mozart as such; will not enter into his modes of (superhuman) compositional genius.

One can endlessly list what’s impossible for AI. But it mainly refers to the sphere of art. What’s amusing, it is precisely the artists who are the first to be first pushed out from competition by our beauty the Artificial.

Actually – I don’t think so.

But besides, just in case, you people learn to operate a drill, saw, shears and plumb line. The latter – in order to keep upright during the clash with the Artificial Lady Intelligence. She has no spine, she is pliable. Maybe there is a chance in it?

– Monika Małkowska
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists