Technology Keeps Inventing Things Nobody Wants

Right now the trendy thing is for authors to put out statements that they will never use AI to assist them in their writing in any way. I kind of feel such statements are worth about as much as the carbon copy AI-generated websites that now pollute just about every internet search, but all the same, consider this my statement that I will never use artificial intelligence to write or assist me in writing in any way.

So, this got me thinking about what I would use artificial intelligence for, and the answer is boring chores that I don’t really relish doing. If AI wants to wash, fold and put away my laundry, have at it. The problem is, AI can do none of these things. From what I’ve seen of AI, it can’t do anything very well, and everything it can do there are already countless humans out there who actually want to do this work, and can do it way, way better. Forward progress, be damned.

I remember several years ago seeing a headline that said something like after hundreds of years, toilet technology was finally getting an upgrade. So, silly me I imagined something like a toilet that never clogged or perhaps a toilet that cleaned itself. Imagine my disappointment, when I clicked through to read the story and learned that the big improvement was that now you could get a toilet whose seat lit up in different colors and played music. Really. I’m not making this up.

I think about that musical toilet a lot, because lately it seems that a lot of the advances in technology I see are the equivalent of that singing toilet. Nobody I know wants smart appliances, and in fact, is willing to pay extra for things like an oven that can’t communicate with their phone, but “smart” appliances like AI features is something that corporations are really trying to force down the throats of uninterested consumers.

Look smart phones are pretty amazing, I’ll give you that. They’re handy little gadgets. But also, from what I can tell the technology peaked a few years ago. Unfortunately, these companies have come to rely on their customers regularly buying new devices. So, they need to keep releasing “new and improved” phones to keep the cash flowing to them. If that doesn’t work they need to keep pushing so-called updates to our existing phones, until our phones are too out-of-date to run the latest software and we are forced to buy a new phone. Last week at the library I overheard a woman complaining about how she had recently installed an update on her phone, and now she couldn’t figure out how to use it anymore. She’s not alone. Enough with the updates, enough with the technological improvements that are actually a step backwards.

A few years ago I wasn’t receiving twenty emails a day from “individuals” with names like Readone Harbeey (no, for real that was the sender name on an email I received recently) pitching me some magical book promotion opportunity. I guess, at least those absurd names are better than the ones that purport to be from actual literary agents, which almost look okay, except why is the email so vague and then also why is this top notch literary agent using a convoluted Gmail address to send cold call emails? My inbox was really a much less annoying place before the advent of AI. Lots of places on the internet were much less annoying before AI.

The other day I was scrolling through Pinterest and saw what looked like a cute dress pattern. Before I saved it to my “Stuff to Make” board, which I should probably rename as Stuff I Will Probably Never Actually Get Around to Making, I noticed a couple of people had commented that the pattern was AI generated and not to waste my time. So, thank you helpful humans for saving me from the garbage pattern, but also I fear soon the AI-ification of the internet may chase me off it.

Photo of a partly painted pen and ink illustration of a funky Christmas tree beside watercolor paints and palette.

I’m going to walk away from the screen for a little while and read a library book that is literally falling apart at the seems and also has such a pleasant heft to it—ebooks could never. I’m going to go paint something with actual paint on actual paper that sprung forth from my own imagination with no fake intelligence whispering sweet nothings in my ear. I suggest you to take a break from technology now and then too, and enjoy some good, old fashioned analog diversions.

—Alissa