A.I. times. Between impersonation and cohabitation

Despite the fact that I consider myself a fan of science fiction and seriously believe that it holds the keys to immunize us against the most undesirable projections of the future; and also despite the fact that, as Woody Allen said, inspired in turn by a phrase of Albert Einstein, "I care a lot about the future because it is the place where I intend to spend the rest of my life," I do not have a crystal ball to look into tomorrow and understand from this intricate present the impacts that Artificial Intelligence will have on the future: "I care a lot about the future because it is the place where I intend to spend the rest of my life", I do not have a crystal ball to peer into tomorrow and understand from this intricate present the impacts that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have on humanity, society, culture, trades, daily life, life, the universe and everything else (paraphrasing Douglas Adams).

There are two major scenarios in sight: they have arrived to change absolutely everything, or they will simply be one more resource that will eventually occupy its place among a wide range of other options.

When the Danes of the Dogme 95 movement burst in at the end of the 20th century with their manifesto closely linked to the re-foundation of cinema based on digital cinema, many apocalyptics jumped to decree "cinema is dead". And yes, it was certainly a shock for the industry and for art, it was no lie that many filmmakers chose to abandon celluloid to start making their audiovisual proposals in digital. It was cheaper, more agile, lighter, more adapted to the imminent lightness of the XXI century. But over the years, the cinema made with digital cameras -the same one that supposedly came with a knife between its teeth ready to annihilate the old cinema made on film- was sharing more and more spaces with the cinema filmed on celluloid, or with hybrid films that made use of various media and formats, and even with audiovisual works that were neither made with digital cameras nor filmed on celluloid.

For some reason we tend to think that the apocalypse will always be by direct cut, when it really happens in a long fade.

Every so often a new technology appears that threatens to displace everything, to phagocytize the previously existing: television would thus put an end to radio and movie theaters, while the arrival of the CD would imply the irremediable extinction of vinyl records, cassettes and any other analog support for music (then came compressed files and later streaming platforms, threatening the CD with obsolescence), just as the Internet, e-books and the Kindle would supposedly end up burying another of the most successful and long-lived technologies in history: the book.

Every technology, as we have learned over the course of history, comes along to solve a problem while at the same time creating new challenges and bringing with it its own collateral damage. Each technological advance appears with the intention of replacing or improving a previous one, but these premises are not always fulfilled; at least not in all cases, perhaps not even in the majority. Because often the present is so narrow that the new technology barely lasts a moment, it does not work as expected, it is not welcomed, or people soon get tired of it and discard it without giving it another chance.

Other times the hype is short-lived, we are so anxious to know what comes next that the furor of the present is fleeting; immediately that which came to change everything takes its place on the shelf of "things I dare not throw away for now because I don't know if I will use them later".

Truth be told, rather than annihilation or supplanting, what seems to happen, in a high percentage of cases, is cohabitation. The new technology is absorbed in such a way that it ends up coexisting and complementing those it was supposed to replace. It becomes one more tool, and depending on the uses, tastes, aptitudes and criteria of each person, it will be used to a greater or lesser extent.

David Bowie, in the early 90s, commented in an interview that the Internet had arrived to alter our lives in unimaginable ways. You could feel the fascination in his voice, and also the vertigo. He was not wrong, the Internet has been a real revolution, there are even people who seem to swear that the history of humanity began when smartphones were connected to social networks, because before that - apparently - what existed in this world was pure nothingness and emptiness (the same thing that the ancient Greeks called Chaos and invented that Uranus, crazy and ingenious as no one else, had decided one day to organize under his will and whim). And it is also true that some thinkers of posthumanism and transhumanism assert that AI, together with other factors that are beginning to play an increasingly preponderant role in this 21st century, will end up causing a radical change in the anthropocene (humanity understood as the main axis of change for the planet), an issue as significant as the one that separated homo erectus from homo sapiens. That is the size of the picture.

I have increasingly heard fellow writers assert with disappointment or resignation that our craft is losing (and will lose even more) all meaning. That with the rise of AI, who is going to want to read us. At some point "the machines" will do it as well as a human being, in a way indistinguishable from that of a flesh and blood author, and that it won't be long before their learning curve will lead them to produce an even superior work. Similar is the case of talented artists, cartoonists, illustrators, they share a concern that could be summarized in: nobody will pay for our work when now it is so cheap, fast and innovative to produce images with AI.

Yes, it is dizzying, we come from the night and we are going to the night; there is that possibility.

But there is the other possibility: all this novelty will come, it will have its moment, then it will decant, it may remain to cohabit or it may even be discarded in the end. We really don't know, and anyone who thinks they do is lying. The newcomer will probably be one more instrument, a tool that will be added to our arsenal that we will be able to use, just as synthesizers and computers can be for music. We are not going to break and burn cellos for that. I don't have a crystal ball, I insist, but something tells me that we will continue to make music (as well as whatever the muses inspire us); we will do it with the old, with the new, with what we don't yet know what can be done by engineering new hybrids with all of it. Yes, it may be a different creation than the one we had thought of, but we will continue to invent our music and, as modern Prometheans, when it is genuine it will continue to carry our spirit and our fire.

And if the end of the world surprises us, may it catch us inventing and dancing.

If you are interested in exploring these issues related to the creation of stories, creative strategies to conceptualize and develop stories, the relationship between words and images, as well as the dialogue between author and illustrator that combine talents to make a narrative and illustrated work, I invite you to take my course on "Creative Writing of Children's Books" that I teach in Domestika.

See you soon!