Musing against the machine
Cloudmaxxing, doodlemaxxing, brainmaxxing
Musing No.1
Lately I’ve been thinking about how we might begin to discern human thoughts vs. machine thoughts. I’ve been thinking about it romantically, rather than dismally or existentially. Of course I think about it in those ways as well, but for the purpose of this exercise, we’re lighting the tapered candles and throwing on our Eileen West.
How do you authenticate a thought? Not like a blue check mark, like a Santa Maria Novella package. Not like an orange check mark, like a Denominazione di Origine Controllata label.
You have to think of your mind as the House of Woodcock and AI like a fast fashion factory. You are a craftsman. You are an atelier. The dupes may get quite good. But in the end you answer to your precious self.
With all the time it’s purported to save us, we should, in theory, be free to sit and ponder in a garden in Tuscany. Handwriting our thoughts and theories, delivering them in envelopes sealed with our certificates of human experience.
Musing No. 2
In the age of the praise-singing, parroting bot, I cannot stress enough the importance of a partner, friend, or any honest human to tell you that you are wrong, your ideas are not good, to try again, or maybe give up altogether.
No one better to take on this job than a French person, ideally Parisian. You call the Human Critique Hotline, tell them your latest idea, ask them for advice, and get knocked down a few rungs. I predict this service is going to become absolument essentiel.
Musing No. 3
During the summer of 2010, I was unemployed and aimless, living in a small studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I told myself I was allowed to waste the entire day brooding as long as I kept my appointment with the sunset each night. I didn’t yet have an iPhone, and there was no Instagram (so this wasn’t just a #sunset). I brought a notebook and observed. Looked at the sky, listened to the voices passing by, wrote about it.
This is how we live again. This is what we’re for.
Sunset. June 7, 2010.
A man on drugs leans over the rail, sings at the sun: I’m loving angels instead.
A deep purple pigeon hops at my feet. I think of my trip to the grocery store, and of the large egg nestled within the produce aisle. It was a speckled green blue, and looked too pretty to crack. It was $49.99. I think of the nests in the gutters of my childhood home, and how fiercely the mothers watched over them. A universal plea: don’t you steal what I’ve created.
The sun goes down. Staten Island looks like Spain. The sky is Jack Rose, at 8:17pm.
Sunset. June 11, 2010.
On the walk to the water, I watch a boy scooter down the sidewalk in his pajamas, hear an owl mark the hour, start to feel safe, now that I’m outside.
It’s prom night on the pier, and the girls in front of me look like a solar system. Each dress is a different planet. Neptune looks the nicest.
The sky is a bowl in the back of a bakery, tonight. Swirls of blueberry and peach and cream and a constant stream of honey, dripping down, pouring into someone’s sunrise, in another part of this world.
The sun goes down. A girl takes a swig from her paper-bagged wine. A jet draws a long line of cocaine above Manhattan. It’s Friday, at 8:19pm.
- from the mixed-up mind of M.Chamberlain