There are some things in this world that bring out the best in us. It seems like there are even more things that bring out our worst. These trait-amplifiers don’t as much show us what we are capable of as they do who we really are.
As much as I am ready for a world where AI cures cancer and issues in a labor-light utopia of abundance, there is one thing that nags at me as I read the headlines and see AI’s early applications. This one thing doesn’t fill me with hope; it fills me with disdain and a notable amount of fear. It is a trait-amplifier that we saw, identified, and quickly dismissed as over-dramatic.
For me, this trait reared its amplified head in 1996. That was a big year for tech. In a recent interview, Cathie Wood talks about how this AI bubble feels like 1996 with the dot-com explosion. Investors were rushing towards the technology of the future and placing big bets that would eventually result in that bubble bursting. I am not talking about the dot-com bubble, though. While there are similarities and concerns linked to this being an expedited cycle, I think that is inevitable and predictable. We know it’s a bubble, we are just trying to beat it.
No, this trait originated in an event that no one took too seriously: video games.
That’s right. Kids’ video games, because in 1996, the target audience for video games was still children. In 1996, the N64 came out with a bang and dropped the flagship game, Mario 64. This was not the first, but perhaps the most popular open-world game to date, meaning you could go anywhere and do anything. It made popular the concept of non-linear gameplay, meaning there was no set progression to the game. You could skip levels, replay them, go off mission, or choose not to go on any missions at all. This is nothing special today, but then, it was revolutionary, and in 3D! The camera functionality was the real star of the show, but less cool to talk about.
What I noticed was that this changed how people played the game fundamentally. It removed all the pressure of trying to clear the level and shifted it to just goofing off. You would run around, make your character do ridiculous things, all with no negative ramifications. It didn’t cost you a life, jeopardize your score, or cause you to run out of time. It was video game anarchy on a new level.
This freedom seemed to naturally devolve into senseless, destructive behavior. Now, you could take that baby penguin, huck it off the mountain, and just restart the level. More time was spent finding bugs and hacks than completing missions. The storyline lost its allure when compared to experiencing unintended reactions to gameplay. Pair this with the early internet connectivity, where people could now post their findings online, walk people through the process, share the benefits, and praise those who managed to find them in the first place. I know it sounds puritan, but even then, it felt like a complete degradation of the gaming experience.
Mario 64 was relatively harmless, and no one really noticed or cared. When things really started to be called into question was when Grand Theft Auto came out just a year later. That took away the cute characters from Mario’s world and inserted all that mentality into a real-world depiction… and added cocaine and hookers. Teenagers did exactly what you would expect, pushed the crazy to the limit. The game is about committing crimes to begin with. The leap from car theft to outright terrorism was really a small step. I, for one, can’t recall many people completing the storyline. They just wanted the chaos.
That is what I see in AI today, except it isn’t targeted at kids and sequestered to a console game. I see a lot of people going off mission, not for learning or improvement, but for the senseless chaos and debauchery. I see people testing limits and using AI for all the things they likely wouldn’t do in real life. A large percentage of users are harnessing, arguably, the most powerful technology in human history to do nothing but see how much they can get away with and how far they can push it, creating as much chaos as possible without ramifications.
Whether it is using AI to crank out massive amounts of slop that doesn’t actually help anyone, deep fakes, AI girlfriends and therapists, AI undressing, porn, or social media bots, it is all aimed at some level of destruction or just wasting time. Then we brand it as productivity by selling and buying the stuff. Like many bad things, adding funding doesn’t make it more viable; it makes it more exploitative.
Just like the video games, we ignore the people who say this is problematic, the parents, teachers, and community members who actually care. We call them alarmists and fund science to drive narratives for and against it until we ultimately land on, “sure it’s a problem, but not a big enough one to fix.” This is primarily because everyone has a good reason to disagree. While I don’t believe violent video games cause people to be violent, normalizing that behavior in an alternate reality doesn’t deter it.
We have built an alternate reality. A place without rules that is governed by dopamine and guised as absolute freedom. This alternate reality lets everyone experience their deepest desires for depravity. We all have those desires; some are just more extreme than others. Some are more harmful than others.
We have also made it possible to exist primarily in that world. It is extremely easy for someone to spend twelve hours a day in the digital landscape, to escape to their curated TV feed, ordering food and groceries in, and making love to their AI partner. They never need to leave the 4 walls of an apartment or basement to make this life a reality. That is new, and its impact is not taken seriously. Even if you don’t live that life, knowing that you easily could is, in itself, dangerous.
For the same reason you would throw the baby penguin off the mountain or kill the hooker in GTA, this alternate reality is dangerous. It isn’t real, so no one can get hurt, right? It’s just fun. No one takes these things seriously. Well, AI is constantly taking in information and mapping it against every other task and purpose it is given. If you believe in the power of AI and its foggy sense of existence and autonomy, why on earth would you want to feed trivialities, violence, and escapism straight into the critical growth stage? If you do believe in AI’s ability to one day be sentient and powerful, then it is like feeding the child prince of the world nothing but candy and porn as soon as it learns to talk.
These kinds of inputs not only slow down the development of good AI, but it increases the argument to remove humans, or at least the general public, from the equation. If these are the proclivities of the general population, what argument do they possibly have to advocate for being allowed to use it? Do we really need data centers and cities’ worth of power to enable this behavior? Maybe, because the level of irresponsibility doesn’t just signal the lack of care and self-control, it signals an ease of entry for external control.
What feels good is easy to throttle. What can be turned up, down, or off can be used as leverage. This type of absolute dependence for low-level pleasure is the weapon that will be used against the average person. This lack of accountability for behavior is what continues to hurt our societies. Ultimately, this is how whatever system you are fighting against wins.
This isn’t 1996. The threat isn’t kids playing too many games and developing bad habits and behaviors. What scares me about AI today is that most people approach it with the same mindset as a teenager locked in their room, controllers glued to their hands. We are not taking AI seriously, and most aren’t using it for serious things. We trust it because it simply does things we can’t. As we lose control of the technology we use every day, it becomes closer to magic. Humans are fascinated by magic, the unexplained, and flashy tricks. I once thought we were smart enough to at least know it was smoke and mirrors, but we stopped caring. We believe life is just a simulation, or at least it can be.
So it isn’t the technology that scares me. It isn’t its power, or the prevalence; it is the people. Isn’t that always the case, though?
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