I am no Luddite. I treasure my laptop and the internet. Without it, the amount of research I do and the number of articles I send out every week would be impossible. My MacBook Air means so much to me that I’ve named it Ruth, after that Old Testament figure who declared to her mother-in-law: “Whither thou goest I will go.” To put it in bumper sticker terms, “You can have my laptop when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
Moreover, I use Otter.ai when conducting interviews. This model of artificial intelligence makes an audio recording of the interview while at the same time transcribing it. It’s an invaluable tool for obtaining accurate quotes.
Finally, from the little I understand about artificial intelligence, it is and will be of enormous service to humanity in fields like medicine, science, engineering and mathematics. Developers and users promise amazing advances in the near future.
And then there are the dangers.
Recently, I heard a radio talk show host recount the story of a professor whose student cheated by turning in an essay written by AI. After giving her a failing grade, the student wrote an apology, asking what she might do to up her grade. The kicker? AI also wrote the apology.
Cheating on essays and exams was already a perennial problem in high schools and colleges, so in a sense, AI has only offered another venue for deceit. More and more professors are responding by conducting in-class, handwritten examinations, without phones or computers available to students. One amusing problem with this approach is that today many students are unable to write cursive – Common Core standards dropped that subject from the classroom.
In his excellent article, “From Crib Sheets to AI Cheats, Everybody’s Doing It,” Daniel Buck explores this world of academic deception, including examples dating back to 14th-century Chinese government exams and later to the Jesuits of the late 17th century. Buck also notes that cheating in American schools reached epidemic proportions before the appearance of AI.
This raises troublesome questions: Did the attorney representing you in court cheat his way into and through law school? Did your doctor use crib sheets or AI to successfully complete medical school? How many members of Congress cheated their way through college?
That’s one piece of the bad news; now for something ugly and just as dire.
Those who keep up with such issues know that fewer young people are dating these days, that marriage rates have declined, and that fewer women are having babies. To replace a population requires 2.1 births per female; the current birth rate in the United States is around 1.6 births. Meanwhile, America is suffering an epidemic of loneliness, especially among young people.
Recent AI developments guarantee that these trends will worsen in the near future.
In two timely articles, which you can find here and here, Brandon Morse takes us into the world of AI and pornography. Electronically created sex partners already exist, but Google’s Veo3 programming now adds images “looking at you, speaking to you, and saying your name with a voice that both looks and sounds indistinguishable from real life.” One of these advanced programs, CandyAI, is already making “$25 million a month with 16 million visits in that time frame, and growing.”
The good news, as Morse points out, is that pornography with real human beings, including sites like OnlyFans, probably won’t survive this technology. Live pornography can’t compete with cheaper, more intimate, and easily available AI porn.
The bad news is that “we’re looking at an AI-assisted collapse of human intimacy, and it’s already begun.” Looking ahead to when his son becomes an adult, Morse writes:
Men will be the hardest affected. You're going to see a large segment of the male population effectively withdraw, preferring to feed into their addictive relationships with these companion AI. Isolation will become a massive issue as these men learn social interactivity from a being that is constantly affirming, never saying no, and always giving control to the user.
What follows is more porn addiction, more isolation, fewer births, and less humanity. Exactly what we have today, only more so.
While I dislike columnists who present some problem or another, but then offer no solution except “something must be done,” I understand why Morse writes near the end of his second piece: “How do we stop it? That’s the scary part. I don’t know.”
Neither do I, Mr. Morse. Nor does anyone else.
At least Morse advocates having a conversation, asking questions about how we can protect our children and how we can make sure young minds – I would include old ones as well – don’t follow this suicidal path.
Few among our politicians or tech entrepreneurs seem interested in such talk. But the rest of us need to be shaken awake and have light thrown on the dark path we’re already traveling.
Jeff Minick is a father of four and grandfather to many. A former history, literature, and Latin teacher, Jeff now writes prolifically for The Epoch Times, American Essence Magazine, and several other publications.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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