A friend of mine has been diagnosed with breast cancer. They are about to start treatment. I want their treatment to be successful and for the negative consequences to be minimised. That’s natural. This is where I want AI to be the difference that makes the difference. This is where I want the technology to be used most effectively. If AI is truly a revolutionary tool then I want it to help people to live where they might have died, to improve the outcomes for those dealing with the many ways that we as humans can die, or lose faculties. I myself have a long term condition that is treated regularly and that with current technology cannot be reversed. I’ll settle for regular treatment to minimise further issues. I’d welcome an improvement or a full reversal, but I can live with the condition.

It’s great that I can get AI to help me with my productivity, to organise my day, to write those posts, suggest ideas, help me be accountable, find those routes to walk or cycle, and so on. I really want it to solve issues with the pollution of our waterways, to deal with the effects of the environmental changes that we’re facing, to improve the quality of our food so that we can benefit from our food rather than it being yet another contributory factor in negative health conditions. I want it to be able to help people with their mental health issues and with their self-esteem rather than creating AI slop and misinformation that we’re presented with.

I want AI to reward creativity not endanger or replace it. I want tools that help and support rather than replace. I want to be able to write and have tools that genuinely support rather than replace text, or strip it of its uniqueness. In writing there is a flatness that can happen when AI is allowed to write.

I know it’s not AI. AI is created by us, written by humans, but it seems that it’s already a black box to us – we don’t know why it necessarily generates the responses that it does.

I don’t know how I’m going to use AI myself outside of curiosity. I don’t have such a busy day when I’m not working that I need it to organise my time. I don’t need it to write for me. I’ll set down my thoughts and endure the comments that come with that. I don’t change my text to improve readability, to make it easier for you to find me, or any of the many tools that I could use to make this blog more visible. A very few people have found it. I don’t know what they make of it, and I’m not writing it for that purpose. This isn’t a business. It’s for me. It’s going to be messy, because I’m messy. I’m human.

I don’t want resources poured into developing AI into finding a better way to kill people; I want it to be developed to save people, to improve lives and at this moment the life of a special friend.