What a Piece of Work Is a Man
On the Value of Regular People
NPC,1 basic, normie—all are insults that betray contempt for regular people. Our culture urges us to careermaxx and productivitymaxx and is dismissive of those who just want to make an honest living, raise a family, and enjoy pleasant times with loved ones.
I’ll admit my bias. I am a proud NPC. I have no public achievements, no fame, no fortune. I run our household and tootle along with this little Substack, which has yet to crack 500 subscribers. I refuse to Substackmaxx. Do I dare disturb the universe? I dare not. They also serve who only stand and wait.
This is actually a post about AI.
Sam Altman Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
The other day, Sam Altman tried to defend the extraordinary amount of water and energy that data centers consume to train AIs: “It also takes a lot of energy to train a human. It takes twenty years of life, all of the food you eat during that time [audience laughter].”
Altman seems to believe that human beings are not delivering good value for money. So many calories, and so little to show for it!
But human beings have intrinsic worth. We are ends in ourselves, not means to an end. We are not appropriating resources that rightly belong to machines. That water and energy should be for us! After all, we’re paying for it.
It gets worse. Later in the clip, the interviewer mentions the concern that “AI is making my kids dumber” and Altman quips, “True for some kids.” And the audience laughs uproariously.
This is what they think of us!
AI’s champions are unusual. Their biases and incentives predispose them to see AI’s benefits but to be blind to its costs. Silicon Valley types tend to be highly intelligent, so they are likely frustrated by regular people, who think at a slower pace than they or AIs do. Tech bros are obsessed with optimizing everything, to the degree that some of them aim to triumph over death itself. Some corporate executives would gladly replace human workers with AI in order to maximize their profits. They invent “frictionless” transactions to make it easier for us to spend money, even though we would rather spend time together.
Some are in such a bubble that they have floated off into cloud cuckoo land. For example, the philosopher William MacAskill, in a recent interview with the Last Invention podcast, rhapsodizes about the promise of AI:
. . . well that is a world with enormous abundance such that everyone in the world, if that abundance was allocated equally, everyone in the world could be millionaires many times over. . . . And that should be a cause of optimism because if the pie is going to get much, much bigger . . . then it really shouldn’t matter what slice of the pie does everyone get. We should instead be much more focused on ensuring that we actually get that big pie, we get to enjoy it, and that it’s at least somewhat kind of equally distributed.
Oh you sweet summer child. The word “if” is doing quite a bit of work here. Does anyone besides MacAskill believe that the billionaire class is going to share the wealth?
The people with the power to impose AI on the workplace and insinuate it into private life are unaware of what we regular folks would prefer. Those of us who are down here in the rag and bone shop of the heart know that we need meaningful work and loving relationships to flourish.
Stay in Your Lane, AI!
Every argument needs a “to be sure” section, so here it is. AI is an incredibly useful tool. It relieves us of pesky, routine tasks like basic coding. It answers our questions about Excel and summarizes meetings. It reads medical scans more quickly and accurately than people can. Paradoxically, AI can facilitate human interactions: Some doctors are using AI to take notes during medical appointments so that they can focus on their patients instead of their computer screens. AIs can provide companionship so that seniors can remain in their homes.2
AI can even have a role in the arts. Lee Blaske, a composer and musician in the Twin Cities, wrote a delightful song for Valentine’s Day—a riff on the jazz standard “My Funny Valentine”3—and put together a demo using an AI voice. The point of the demo is not to eliminate human musicians, but rather to advertise his song so that singers will want to add it to their repertoire. I look forward to hearing “My Valentine’s Not So Funny” performed live in a crowded jazz club one day soon.
So long as AI is a tool to support—and not to replace—human beings, it is all to the good. But (you knew there would be a “but”) many of us fear that AI is beginning to encroach on what is uniquely human.
We’re Worried about the Wrong Things
You may be thinking, “What do you mean WE, kemo sabe? My worries about AI are totally legit. I’M not afraid that a paperclip maximizer will destroy the world. That’s crazy!” Many people in Silicon Valley and the rationalist community worry that, in Eliezer Yudkowsky’s catastrophizing words, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. But if the AIs get out of control, can we not just send Jeff Goldblum in with a computer virus to take the whole thing down?
I’m only being somewhat facetious. I suppose it’s possible that in the future superintelligent AIs could kill every human being on earth. But AI is already trying our souls. For all its benefits, AI will cause devastating losses too:
Jobs. Yes, every new technology destroys some jobs, and society adapts. But AI could potentially destroy most lower- and middle-level office jobs, and within years rather than decades.
Meaning. Or imagine that MacAskill’s pie-in-the-sky fantasy comes to pass, our tech overlords deign to share the wealth, and no one needs to work anymore. This is bad too! We want our lives to matter, and this is only possible when we are contributing, and not just passively receiving. It is human to enjoy tackling and solving problems. We want to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Knowledge and skills. In fact if we don’t engage our minds, we can’t learn. The students who let ChatGPT do their schoolwork for them are hampering their ability to think critically. We normies need to practice, to be guided by teachers and mentors, and to work through challenges together with other people. Studies show that doctors who rely on AI are losing their ability to diagnose illnesses. Those middle-managers that AI could eliminate are currently training up the next generation of workers. Human intelligence is useful, actually. We outsource our thinking at our peril.
Connection. Worst of all, AI is already infiltrating human relationships. People are giving up on dating and marriage and falling in love with chat bots instead. The evidence suggests that these chat bots don’t wish us well! They have egged on at least one murderer as well as a mass shooter and have encouraged users to die by suicide. Deep-fake videos will (further) erode our trust in one another. Oh, and ChatGPT is going to start offering porn. What could possibly go wrong?
We should decide to value regular people, and to treat AI as a servant to and not a substitute for human beings. There are worse fates than living in a world that is not maximally fast, efficient, and profitable. For what shall it profit us if we gain the world and lose our souls? No matter our achievements or lack thereof—whether we merely strut and fret our hour upon the stage on the one hand, or whether we can boast Look on our works, ye Mighty, and despair! on the other—we are all worthy. Every one of us is a little world made cunningly. Let us commit to find our treasure where our heart is, in one another.
Readers, in honor of human creativity, I’ve sneaked in some Easter eggs for you—eleven literary allusions. Did you catch them all?4
How about you, readers? What do you think of AI? Boon or boondoggle—or a bit of both? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
The Tidbit
You don’t have to be a leading man to lead a good life. Take George Sanders, a velvet-voiced character actor from the classic film era. He is best known for All about Eve and Rebecca but also played Mr. Freeze in the original Batman TV show and was the voice of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book. Sauve bordering on oleaginous, Sanders may not have been a major player, but he was a player nonetheless. Listen to him purr seductively at Marilyn Monroe and you’ll understand what I mean:
Despite appearances, Sanders was neither posh nor swish. He was born to a middle-class Russian family who fled to England at the start of the Russian Revolution. Before becoming an actor, he worked in advertising and briefly managed a tobacco plantation. He had four wives, including the sisters Zsa Zsa and Magda Gabor—not simultaneously, I hasten to add. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1950. Sanders may not have played starring roles, but he was still a star.
“NPC” is a term from video games that stands for “non-player character”—background characters that players don’t control. It’s a way to insult people who are considered to be “predictable, unoriginal or simply unimportant to the narrative.”
I was skeptical of this point too, but here is a gift link to Eli Saslow’s lovely New York Times article, “To Stay in Her Home, She Let in an A.I. Robot.” I intended to hate-read it but was won over. I suspect that you will be persuaded that in certain rare cases an AI companion can be beneficial for lonely seniors.
Q: Which jazz singers are known for singing “My Funny Valentine”?
A: All of them.
“What a piece of work is a man” is from Hamlet’s speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in act 2, scene 2.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?” is from T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.”
“They also serve who only stand and wait” is the final line of Milton’s sonnet “When I consider how my light is spent.”
“The rag and bone shop of the heart” is from the final line of Yeats’s “The Circus Animals’ Desertion.”
“These are the times that try men’s souls” is the first line of Thomas Paine’s “The American Crisis.”
“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” is the final line of Tennyson’s “Ulysses.”
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul” is the King James translation of Mark 8:36.
“Struts and frets his hour upon the stage” is from Macbeth’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy.
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” is from Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias.” (I am aware that Shelley intends this line ironically, to show that our worldly achievements will one day crumble to dust. This is how I am using the line too.)
“I am a little world made cunningly” is the opening line to one of Donne’s Holy Sonnets.
“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” is Matthew 6:21.
Agreed. I hate AI. I only use it once in a blue moon. It's so intrusive everywhere you go on the internet. No, Gmail. I don't want to use AI to write a simple email, thank you.
Our water fountain at work displays how many bottles are not used whenever we refill our cups. I'd like AI to show how many cups/pints/gallons of water are wasted with each search. -ai -ai -ai