Nevertheless, it becomes impossible for me to ignore the stark differences in current life, opposed to life growing up. A lot of this thought revolves around the rapid expansion of generative AI, and its increasing use in all areas of life.
I find myself utilizing its near-instant access to information; its rapid ability to iterate on ideas, resulting in ever-shortening development cycles. It has a incredible ability to produce work-product at an exponential rate. One thing I do not ever touch it for, though, is creativity. AI is being used to write novels, stories, plays, music, create digital artwork. Its being used, to remove the burden of what makes us human: our desire to create.
I fear this deeply.
I suppose, in a way, our desire to create is the exact predilection which spurred the development of AI. We continuously strive for more, and AI seems to be a natural consequence of continuing development in technology (and other areas of science.)
The difference between historical development time-scales and now, is that we are moving faster than we have ever. "Yeah, well, we're always moving faster than we were", is a classic rebuttal to that (I can hear Djent in my head). Historically, however, we had limits to the rate which tempered the risk of development. These limit's don't exist in the same way they once did, and the consequence is ignorance. Ignorance to how this may fail.
Looping back to creativity: Is the thing, caused by our creativity, our desire to build and better (and boast) what might destroy what was its origin?
The best part of being creative -- actually building something -- is the act of doing it. What you produce is not nearly as important as 1) the act of producing it, and 2) why you produced it. My disdain for the role of AI in this is not to blame a strong tool, but to indicate a common direction: humanity continues to endeavor to relieve themselves of the hardest parts of life. I don't mean this in the sense of developing technologies to reduce hard labour, or improve living conditions (this isn't an "I walked 40 million kilometers to school everyday" situation). I mean the parts of humanity which necessarily make us human. Thought.