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What Can ChatGPT and Other AIs Teach Us About Trauma?
There’s an advantage to seeing our world through a different kind of mind
As something of a wannabe Luddite, I’ve spent the past several months ignoring the existence of ChatGPT. I’m not particularly worried about the rise of AI, I’m just not particularly interested in it either. To me, the most important technologies are the ones that help us to restore land, heal culture and process trauma. These are technologies that have existed for thousands of years, whose theoretical bases have remained more or less consistent. Implementing these technologies has less to do with innovation and more to do with integration and empathy.
As cool as it is that I can get a machine to near-instantaneously spit out 32 bars of cringeworthy rhymes about the Paris Commune (They seized the city, they seized the power/ For the first time, it was the people’s hour/ Communards, they took control/ Of the city, of their fate, of their soul), I just don’t think ChatGPT is that relevant to addressing the root causes of our compound social and ecological crises.
Or… I didn’t, until now. The more I play around with this weird little interface, the more intrigued I become by what it might offer us. It thinks, but it thinks differently than we do, and that fact alone could end up…
