Sometimes, I confess, I hope for a massive Solar X-Flare or Coronal Mass Ejection, or a near repeat of the enormous solar storm known as The Carrington Event of 1859 (or the lesser-known but ten times stronger Miyake Event of around 993 A.D.), which could send the entire satellite network plunging to earth, to burn up on re-entry. The Internet Age would come to an abrupt halt. Cell phones would fry. GPS would fail, making eccentric map-collectors suddenly popular. The entire digital financial world could collapse, causing an instant loss of the trillions of dollars which only exist as zeroes and ones on banking computers. Cars from the 70s with no computer parts would be the only operable vehicles on the planet. Those quaint folk who still cling to land-line phones would suddenly be the only link to the rest of the world (though even land-lines may be damaged). And according to space weather experts, it’s not a question of if, but when such an event will recur.
And, oh yes, Artificial Intelligence would suddenly cease to exist, meaning high school and college students the world over would suddenly have to learn to express themselves in correct and creative language. Actual writers would suddenly be in demand again…assuming there are any of us left. And libaries and used book stores would suddenly be priceless troves of human knowledge and creativity.
This is a Luddite fantasy, of course, an unrealistic yearning for a return to simpler times. If authentic human creativity is to survive the current onslaught of AI-produced imitation, it will have to find avenues of expression which elude the capacity of the soulless wonders which are taking over our world.
I vote for witnessing and sharing reality in real time.
By which I mean reality as in on-the-ground, in-the-moment reporting of life as it happens, accompanied (of course) by live video so as to provide at least some proof that the whole thing is not a CGI deep fake. Now that we no longer know what to believe (and in consequence believe almost nothing), we may discover that there is in fact no replacement for the reportorial presence of a live, thinking, breathing, articulate human being sharing observations and emotional reality in “real time.”
(Remember when we didn’t need to qualify Time as “real?” When time was time and that was that?).
Happily, my focus on Sacred Activism allows me to share exactly this kind of writing: political commentary based on the events of the moment; on-site reporting of protests, spiritual gatherings, or essays written from the road in which I share the unique experience of one precious, fleeting time and place which the human mind and heart alone can capture as it happens, where there is no way to pass it off to a heartless machine for regurgitation.
There will always be room for fierce originality to win the day. My immersion in recent years in the peerless novels of Patrick O’Brian has greatly increased my appreciation of an imitable (and often eccentric) perspective and a deep grounding in history and classical literature as the best and perhaps only way to create writing which no machine could duplicate.
And Substack pages such as this one may soon be one of the few places where genuine, AI-free writers can reach their audience and support themselves by sharing authentic human creativity.
Being a “classically-trained” actor and all that, I’ve decided to take it a step further. Phony AI voice-overs cannot duplicate the subtlety of an authentic vocal artist sharing the audio version of a freshly minted essay. In addition to voicing my own work, I will be creating and sharing voice versions of the world’s great spiritual literature, including Shakespeare’s Sonnets, The Bhagavad Gita, The King James Version of the Bible, The Upanishads, and other public domain treasures.
I will gratefully share all this with those good Paid Subscriber folks who decide to donate $8 per moon cycle to keep the genuine article flowing, as my real human brain cells, fueled by strong black coffee, guide my pen, my voice, and my story as only a flawed, fallible and unpredictable human mind can.
Long live the authentic journalist, activist, and in-the-moment poet! While we use AI for those mundane tasks which free us to be truly human.
blessings,
Michael