dystopian nightmare

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This Went in an Unexpected Direction

Yesterday I spoke to an AI agent on the phone. At least, I think it was an AI. It did not announce itself as such; it called itself “Dane.” But maybe it wasn’t an AI? It was so humanoid that I wasn’t sure, so I spoke to it as though it could be a human, albeit one who was extremely adept at mixing conversational speech with call center script. Aside from a general AI vibe I got from Dane, it did some specific things that made me think it wasn’t human. I thought about listing them here, but I don’t want to. And now I’m realizing, perhaps for the first time, that everything I post here is already being digested and catalogued by non-humans.

Which of course I already knew. Surely there have been web crawlers as long as there have been search engines, identifying keywords and indexing my blog alongside every other thing posted to the internet.

If you have a blog: have you ever learned that someone unexpected reads your posts? Once, years ago, I learned that a colleague or maybe a classmate of my husband had stumbled across my blog. Obviously, that has always been possible; my posts are public. I write because I want to be read. I do try to remember that my words are public, and I do self-edit my posts in some ways. It’s not as though this person did anything nefarious, or even (as far as I know) commented on my posts or kept reading for any length of time. (If you’re still reading, hi!) It still felt odd, though, as if someone were reading over my shoulder. (Why it doesn’t feel that way all the time, I don’t know. You’re reading it, aren’t you? And that not only doesn’t bother me, it makes me happy!) Looking “being read” right in the face makes me squirmy. The same feeling applies when I think about an AI scouring the web for ideas about how to be more human, and landing on this post, and tucking my thoughts away for future instruction.

I started out thinking this would be a Five for Friday post, but apparently I want to talk about AI some more. It’s a topic I think about many times a day. It’s a subject I don’t know a whole lot about. It’s something that terrifies and fascinates me.

Let’s start here: The environmental implications of AI are massive and horrifying. Full stop.

A while back, I had a friend who seemed obsessed with LLMs. She used them all the time, and our conversations often included her saying things like, “I asked ChatGPT and it said…” or “I just put all my thoughts about X into Claude and it suggested…” She seemed to derive real insight from her interactions with AI. Sometimes, when we exchanged everyday gripes or concerns, she suggested that I turn to one of the LLMs for answers or clarity.

I occasionally use Chat GPT, and I do so with tremendous trepidation. I do not like what it learns about me when I ask it for things. I do not like the humanoid quality of its responses. I do not like that it makes assumptions and intuitive leaps. I do not like the image, in my head, of all the resources it’s depleting just to give me a list of books that meet a series of very specific requirements.

At a work event for my husband’s practice, some of his colleagues were discussing AI and its various applications in the medical field. Providers ask AI to summarize patient visits, which can optimize their time doing paperwork and allow them to interact with patient instead of focusing on their computers. Surgeons operate robotic tools remotely. AI can help spot pre-cancerous polyps in endoscopy videos.   

Requests for my freelance work have declined in recent years. Occasionally, I decide that I want to earn more money and I look for jobs. Usually, my searches are for remote positions because I dislike wearing real clothes any more than absolutely necessary. My entire career has been in writing adjacent fields: editing, copywriting, content creation. Editing and writing are what I love to do; they are my primary skills. The job search engines turned up posting after posting after posting for various methods of training AI to edit and write.

(I use Google and Gmail every day. I click on words in my Kindle and in online content to see their definitions. I employ spellcheck in Word.)  

Two men at my neighbor’s barbecue chatted about their use of AI at work. One uses it to generate marketing copy. The other uses it to write emails to customers. They agreed that AI is so much cheaper and easier and more efficient than hiring an expert to do those tasks. They noted that the output isn’t quite as good. They each shrugged.

I disabled the predictive text function on my phone. I disabled Gemini in my Gmail accounts. I refuse to look at the AI Overview in my Google search results. I feel principled and righteous. I feel irritated because I have to do so much scrolling to find a reputable source for my inquiries and I misspell so many words when I text and I overlook emails from my mom because my inbox is so clotted with advertisements.

One of my writing friends recently told me that she was quitting ChatGPT cold turkey. She had been using it to help her brainstorm ideas, refine sentences, identify plot holes… but she’d been horrified by the number of articles she’d been reading about AI use in the publishing industry. She also felt her brain wasn’t working as quickly or as deftly as it had before she’d started using AI.

(Apple Maps tells me how to get to the airport and friends’ houses and medical offices. Siri tells me what to expect from the day’s weather. Presumably nearly every airplane I’ve ever been on utilizes autopilot.)

I worry about: My lack of marketable skills. The various ways AI might impact my child’s future: her career prospects, her critical thinking skills, her mental health. The longterm effects of the systematic mutilation of our environment. Doctors relying on AI to the point of missing symptoms or eroding their own skills. Deepfakes and AI scams and chatbot-fueled psychosis.

A professor friend of mine laments the increase of AI-generated work among her students. She uses AI to pinpoint whether an assignment has been completed using AI.

Sometimes I think that it’s shortsighted and stubborn to resist a technology that could offer real improvements in efficiency and scope of knowledge. Sometimes I feel like a side character in a dystopian story, being propelled inexorably toward the collapse of humanity.  

(Netflix recommends shows I might like. Google Lens helps me identify plants, and Merlin Bird ID recognizes the birds I’m listening to. Shazam tells me which song is playing on my Apple playlist of “summer songs.” My phone’s Clean Up tool removes blemishes from my photos. A robot vacuums my floors and another robot cleans my pool.)

Elevator operators, lamplighters, crossing sweepers, linotype operators, travel agents, video store clerks. I’m not the first person whose career prospects have dwindled or disappeared due to technological innovation. I won’t be the last.

There’s nothing new I can add to the conversation. There’s SO MUCH about AI I don’t know and haven’t considered. But it’s something I think about all the time and it’s something that has insinuated itself into all of our lives.

I don’t know if I can be against AI when I use it so frequently in everyday life. But I certainly don’t feel good about AI. Outsourcing our critical thinking to AI can lead to faulty conclusions (“cognitive surrender”) and stunt our capacity for analytical reasoning (“cognitive offloading”). Generative AI models and the data centers used to power them have clear, measurable environmental consequences (one estimate I read says the same query on ChatGPT uses five times the energy than a web search). There are the slippery moral, ethical, and philosophical issues of AI consciousness (or not). But AI can also increase efficiency, automate daily routines, facilitate learning, summarize and analyze vast amounts of data, and and and and.

I don’t want to contribute to the depletion of our water sources, the impairment of our ability to think, the decline of civilization. I don’t want to be left behind.

(My phone labels unknown numbers as potential spam. Canva’s AI tool alters graphics to my specifications. Google AI Mode generates a list of articles about AI.)

Some AI use may be “better” than others. But where’s the line?

I would be so very interested to hear about your thoughts regarding and experiences with AI. Do you use it at work? In your personal life? What worries you or excites you the most? This is a judgment-free zone; I feel like we are all grappling with how and when and why and at what cost.

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First Time in Target Since Early March; Not Trick-or-Treating

Man, I really hate my current blog background.

While I have gotten back into “normal” grocery shopping, and have visited Costco a couple of times over the past seven months, I have not been inside Target since the pandemic began. This is thanks to their super awesome curbside pickup offering, where you order stuff and drive to the store and someone is walking out to meet you practically the instant you arrive. (And if something you ordered isn’t actually available in the store, Target will ship it to you for free.) It’s excellent and contact free and I love it.

But.

Not EVERYTHING is available via curbside pickup. And I have begun to really need some of those things, including cleaning spray and hand soap. At one point, I was able to get hand soap via curbside, but it was only once; it has been unavailable ever since. And for some reason, I can’t order it online to be delivered. Well. They have their reasons.

So I have been thinking about making a trip TO Target for awhile now. What’s been holding me back is a) a desire to avoid most places, as per my pandemic usual and b) the last time I went there, it was such a dystopian nightmare, it really turned me off. That was back in the height of early paper towel hoarding, when the paper goods aisles were picked clean and there was no soap or Purell anywhere to be found and I was trying very hard to fill my cart with measured and reasonable amounts of cereal and pasta and wine despite the doom and dread coursing through my veins. 

A friend of mine has been inside Target several times, and, as she is still uncomfortable in the grocery store, I felt like maybe a trip to Target was workable. (Plus, she once got me two! bottles! of bleach spray on a trip to Target, and I have heard whisperings about a supply of antibacterial wipes, so… the temptation is strong.)

So I girded my… loins is the only word I am coming up with here, but that seems wholly inaccurate and also I don’t really like the word “loins.” 

Let’s try something else. I steeled my nerves and drove to Target after I dropped Carla off. 

Immediately I ran into a sticking point. There was a big sign out front that said something like, “Line starts here for our most vulnerable customers.”

It was an odd and oddly worded sign. There were no hours posted, and no one was in line… so I just… went in. But I felt oddly guilty about it. Was I intruding on Vulnerable Customers Time? I don’t know! I suppose I could have looked it up on my phone but I was a) flustered by the sign and b) dealing with partially fogged eyeglasses and b) STEELED, so I just powered through. 

A staff member pointed to a row of carts and told me they were sanitized, so I took one. There were footstep stickers on the floor in the main aisle – the one that abuts the checkout lanes – but no stickers elsewhere. 

The kids’ clothing section looked and felt normal. But then I got into the cleaning aisles and… well. It still looks like a dystopian nightmare. The soap aisle only had a handful of soap products, and what was available was more in the dish soap category than in the hand soap arena, which was very limited. I was able to get a refill of the soap I prefer in the kitchen, and a refill of a lesser-preferred soap. I am kicking myself for not getting a couple of smaller bottles of hand soap, but we do have some bottles already, and now I can refill them. 

The cleansing spray aisle was VERY sparse. Sure, there were some sprays here and there on the shelves, but I felt panicky and unsure about the items that were left. Like… there seemed to be plenty of Method and Seventh Generation products, but I’m not familiar with those as cleaning agents. And they were so abundant (“abundant”) compared to things like Lysol and Clorox that I looked at them askance; why were so many left behind? Does that mean that they aren’t actually as good at CLEANING? What do all the other Target shoppers know that I do not? And, while it may not be obvious based on my comment awhile back, there wasn’t a Lysol or a Clorox product to be found. No bleach spray, although the actual pourable bleach seemed to be well stocked. (I have plenty of that, but I really dislike and lack confidence in my ability to make my own bleach spray, so I want someone else [CLOROX] to package it for me.) 

There was a section of antibacterial wipes, although none of the brands I am familiar with. I grabbed a container of the Up & Up brand for fake legitimacy reasons; I have been skittish about buying off-brand wipes, even though they pop up pretty frequently these days. While I can look at a hand sanitizer and see that is has the correct percentage of alcohol, wipes are different. I have no idea what chemicals to look for in wipes to know that they are legit. 

The toilet cleaning options were next to nil; again, all that remained were the “fancy” cleansers that I don’t know and so don’t yet trust. I want bleach in my toilets, you know? Not citric acid.  

The paper towel aisle was empty but for one tiny corner. I grabbed a package even though I keep TELLING myself that paper towels are NOT a necessity; we have reusable paper towels and plenty of microfiber cloths and we can MAKE DO. But it is hard not to be swept up in paper towel mania. (Even when the paper towels cost SEVENTEEN AMERICAN DOLLARS OMG.) I did not look at the toilet paper situation.

There was a brand new aisle of ONLY hand sanitizer. The only brand name I recognized was Suave. The shelves carried all different brands and a variety of sizes of containers. Purell was not among them.

Most concerning – moreso than the empty shelves – was the return of signs saying that customers were limited to one item apiece. I mean, maybe Target has had those signs all along (although my friend buying me two entire bottles of bleach spray would indicate otherwise), but my grocery store eliminated those signs weeks ago. But at Target, only one canister (how does canister only have one N?) of wipes, one package of paper towels, one bottle of cleaning spray, etc.

The Halloween section was, understandably, very picked-over and messy. It’s like that every year, but it felt different this year. 

There is still no Hormel pepperoni. 

The food aisles seemed fairly well stocked: flour and yeast and sugar and olive oil and cereal and tea. They had very limited options for boxed cake mix, which seemed odd. I didn’t go into the pasta or canned goods aisles, so I can’t speak to them. I’ve heard there’s a shortage of aluminum, but there seemed to be plenty of soda. (And if you buy $20 worth of soda, you get a $5 gift card! Of course the 12-packs are conveniently $4.89.)

There were maybe ten other customers in Target at the same time. Perhaps it was always that empty at 8:15 on a Wednesday morning, but it added to my feeling of foreboding.

When I checked out, I had to wait six feet away from the register, and then wait for the staff person to call me before I could put my items on the belt. I stood there, as I usually do, to watch the prices scan on the computer screen… but I was flustered, and had just realized that I’d forgotten to scan my items through my Target Circle app (I am out of practice!), and plus I didn’t want to get too close to the checker, even though she was behind plexiglass panels. So who knows if they overcharged me. I guess I can look at my receipt, genius. But at the time I was just eager to get OUT of Target. And possibly never return. 

AFTER Target, I had to go to the grocery store. We are having a Halloween Party (ha! Not really. We are having one of the three families we have socialized with during the pandemic over for an outdoor candy hunt and dinner on our back porch. We feel that this family has been very risk-averse, and have gotten together with them twice already: once for a hike and once for lunch in their backyard. There will be seven of us total, wearing masks until we are eating, and I have configured our back porch with three tables so the adults can sit six feet apart at the big table and the kids who are siblings can sit at one small table near their parents and my kid can sit six feet away at her own table.) and I needed to get some supplies. My grocery store has really seemed to be back to normal (we can even bring our own reusable bags again!), but I checked the cleanser aisle today (I got some 409 there the other day and was hopeful for toilet-bowl cleaner) and it was nearly empty, PLUS there was a sign saying that all cleansers were only one-per-person. So. Make of that what you may. 

Plus, the pasta aisle seemed to be a little light on the pasta. Maybe it’s just a normal low before restocking, but everything feels so portentous these days.

I need more gin, but I will order that for curbside pickup from the grocery store that offers this option.

Just for completeness: For our Halloween party dinner, we are serving chicken, wild rice and mushroom soup, bread, and my favorite fall salad for dinner to the grown ups. For the kids, who are of course welcome but unlikely to eat those things, I am making mummy hot dogs and macaroni and cheese. Carla and I will make monster cookies for dessert. Since the kids aren’t trick-or-treating this year, I made up some gift bags with little treats in them, and plan to hide them around the yard. I also set up this elaborate contraption that is a bunch of plastic cups wrapped in orange crepe paper and arranged on a poster board to look like a pumpkin; the cups each have a little treat in them: candy, erasers, stickers, barrettes with colorful hair, hair ties, spider rings, glow sticks. Yes I have gone completely overboard, and yes this is basically two separate and very time consuming methods for the kids to get the same exact junk, but also I am having Feelings about not letting Carla trick-or-treat. (She has accepted this ruling without argument, by the way.) 

Oh, okay, I guess I want to talk about this, too. 

We have a lovely little cul-de-sac with wonderful neighbors who all know and adore Carla (mainly because she knows and adores their dogs). They all want to know if she is trick-or-treating this year, and I have been hedging. But she is NOT, and I feel good if sad about that plan.

A parent of one of Carla’s friends is doing the opposite. She feels that trick-or-treating is very low-risk, being outside and all, and that so many things have been taken from our kids that we shouldn’t take this holiday from them.

I see her point. And I even AGREE that I am being overly cautious here. It’s probably FINE to let your kids go trick-or-treating! No one in our county has said that people can’t do it. I haven’t read (or, to be fair, seen) any articles about whether it’s a good or bad idea. It takes place outside; the risk of contracting Covid from a physical object seems to be pretty low; the contact with other people would be fairly limited. It’s probably FINE.

And maybe it seems contradictory or weird that we are okay having dinner with another family while we are not okay with trick-or-treating. And I get that! You may be looking at me askance — I go into Target AND the grocery store in a single day, plus I am having people over for dinner? And yet I am squicky about trick-or-treating? Trying to assess individual risk is full of contradictions.

The end result is that we are still, out of an over-abundance of caution, keeping Carla home. (And we are not handing out candy. Carla and I may, if we have the energy, try to create a Halloween-y chalk obstacle course on our sidewalk, just to give kids a little something fun to do/make fun of. But we may not, also.) 

I guess what it comes down to, for me, is three things: 1) If lots of people decide to allow their kids to trick-or-treat, there will be crowds of kids on our street. Hundreds of people come to our neighborhood each year, and this year Halloween is on a Saturday AND we expect to have decent weather, so it could be MANY MORE than normal. I don’t know. The thought of Carla walking through a crush of children, hopefully wearing masks but who knows, gives me palpitations. 2) Carla’s school has been very explicit about how limiting infections is a school-community responsibility; it does not feel to me like we would be honoring that responsibility if we allowed her to trick-or-treat. Obviously, other people will have a different read. And the school has not come out and said, “Please don’t trick-or-treat.” But I am trying to take our membership in the school community seriously. 3) I do not think I can count on our lovely, kind, generous neighbors to all wear masks. Some of them have voiced opinions that imply that they do not believe Covid is being accurately represented by our media, i.e. that it will be over as soon as the election concludes, and some of them have also shared with me social plans that involved many people, which implies that they may not have the same risk assessment of the situation that I do. So having Carla go door to door where these kind, lovely people (I feel like my attempt to be really clear that they ARE kind and lovely people is now making it sound like I believe the opposite) will undoubtedly want to talk to her makes me nervous. 4) I guess there is a fourth reason, and that is that if Carla DOES get Covid after/because of Halloween, the contact tracing might be impossible.

ANYWAY. That is all to say that I am overdoing it in terms of trying to make the evening special for her and the two little friends who will be with us this weekend. I know — I KNOW — that they would have been fine if we hid a few Snickers bars around the yard and called it a day. But I think a lot of my own sadness about this year — no birthday party for Carla! no trick-or-treating! no family at Christmas or Thanksgiving! — is finding an outlet in putting a bunch of silly gift bags together for these three children.

How are YOU handling Halloween? Have YOU ventured into Target? Are you just SO SICK of all of this?