Afraid of Artificial Intelligence? Take a Hike or watch a Movie?

Innovation evokes mistrust, fear and resistance. Even the invention of natural languages was controversial, why should the rise of artificial intelligence be any different? When the first cave dweller uttered "Hey, grandma teach me grammar", the silent majority shuddered "Language? This is the end of the world as we know it!"

Following the same pattern the first cave paintings led to the rise of iconoclasts: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any image!" - "Do not paint the devil on the wall!" “A painting of an armchair is a good-for-nothing. You can't even sit on it.”

It is therefore no surprise that writing was rejected by highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow defenders of oral communication. A mockingly raised eyebrow, an affectionate smile or a cynical grin, volume, intonation, timbre and so much more is lost, when we tie up face-to-face communication into the corset of writing. That's why some of us sprinkle emojis like parmesan over pasta in our text messages. Furthermore, writing enables the pretence of knowledge. Even fools can use other people's feathers to adorn themselves.

Literature is the paradise of liars. Million vacationers on beach lounges reading the same crime novel over and over again. Serial killers are especially popular. Ah, les belles lettres.

The opposition to theatre is as old as theatre itself. Actors are professional fakers who put themselves on display for the gawking audience. Theatre is a peep show, nothing but deception, lies and fraud. The plots of the ancient plays? Sex & Crime! Look at Oedipus (better: don’t look). His parents abandoned him as a baby in the wilderness to be eaten by wild animals. He survives, kills his father, sleeps with his mother, fathers four children with her, and then stabs out his own eyes. Any further questions?

The cinema? A dream factory. Thou shalt not make unto thee any images – especially not moving ones! - Television? The most dangerous drug in the house until the arrival of computers. Consequently the Internet is the worst plug-in-drug ever. The digital whole is more heinous and harmful than the sum of its parts. A dreamless dream, in the words of Adorno, a nightmare factory.

Now, after decades of foreplay, artificial intelligence has become the hottest fad and newest foe. As expected, the doomsday prophets are howling again. Cheap software beats the chess world champion, - fine with me. My psychiatrist is an emotionally intelligent app, - so be it; at least someone is listening to you. We have become remote-controlled consumer-zombies obediently dancing to the algo-rhythm of buy this, buy that, buy more - more - more. Just quit your prime membership.

Students use Chat GPT to write seminar papers, master's theses, and dissertations – STOP! This time I'm howling along with Kassandra! Chat GPT is more than a quantum leap in plagiarism, it is a tipping point. With the help of AI-chatbots everybody can convert the world's knowledge into seemingly “scholarly” or "scientific" texts. Millions will achieve ivy league academic degrees via AI-generated texts. What is to be done? Back to the future! We have to learn from the ancient beginnings of philosophy, science and education. There is only one tried, tested and proven way to determine what chatbot-chatterboxes actually have in their own heads: let's forget our smartphones and even smarter watches at home and take a long walk in the forest to talk in detail and mindfully with each other.

I fully realize that this is a very naive take on the challenges of AI. To get a glimpse of the dark side of the new power that will be with us , I watched Spielberg's movie Minority Report again. The film was released in 2002 and is based on a story by Philip K. Dick published in 1956. This led me to conclude that the drug-fuelled paranoia of the past may have become the digital reality of today.

P.S: This text was translated from German into English with the help of AI (machine translation) - so it is faaaaar from perfect.