Authenticity or AIthenticity? Can We Have Both?
Or does Artificial Intelligence lead to artificial authenticity?
Friends, it’s been colder than a polar bear’s paw pads here. For days now. Days and days and days, and more days top of those. Nonetheless, I find myself feeling spicy as habanero hellfire. In fact, even on the coldest of these days, I think I’ve been sweating a little bit on the inside of my brain. So many things to feel spicy about — too many, truly. More than can possibly be covered in one fell swoop, no matter how scathing a spicy a swoop it may be. So I’ll just pick one.
Heck. I guess I’ll just start at the beginning of the alphabet. That leads me straight to AI, which, as it happens, ranks right up towards the top of my personal Scoville scale. But before I launch into what sounds like a reasonable rant within the cloistered walls of my cranium, I disclaim the following:
I have nothing even remotely resembling expertise as pertains to the subject of AI.
I’m no logician, either. In fact, I claim little to no expertise about much of anything.
I’m mostly a snapper up of unconsidered trifles and holder of considerable opinions, nearly all of which have been forged in the furnace of my own lived experience.
I’m always willing to agree to disagree, so long as we both say what we mean, mean what we say, and don’t say it mean.
Oh. And one more thing, lest you pre-judge me a luddite, a curmudgeon, or a curmudgeonly luddite. I have truly made a good faith (albeit modest) effort to open my mind about AI. I’ve read and listened to no small amount of passionate appeals on its behalf. I’ve watched others use it. I’ve even given it a couple of test-spins myself.
Can I really blame my body for wet-blanketing all over this thing? This thing that we’ve come to refer to benignly as “AI” so as to sidestep the fact that we’re increasingly turning our will and our lives over to the care of ARTIFICIAL intelligence? No, friends. No, I cannot. More importantly, my body has proven time and again to be a much more reliable truth-teller than my mind. And its opinion is nearly always backed by what I sense as the guaranty of my soul’s full faith and credit.
But then again, it may well just be that I have a bigger beef with artifice at large. Because come to think of it, never have I ever been a fan of anything that began with the word artificial. Not artificial flavors, sweeteners, scents, coloring, or lighting. Not artificial flowers or Christmas trees. Not even the most aesthetically miraculous of mannequins, which just make me plain nervous. Yeah. There definitely seems to be something creepy (and, all too often, carcinogenic) about the way in which we humans manufacture synthetic things, then try to pass them off as better than the real deal.
Yet AI seems to be in a league of its own among things artificial. I don’t know of any other form of artifice that’s been so persistently and progressively thrust in our faces. Not a one that’s so thoroughly and insidiously permeated nearly every nook and cranny of life as we know it. Take artificial sweeteners, for example. I’ve never felt pressured to the point of near-coercion into jumping aboard that bandwagon, lest I be left behind in the dustbin of progress.
But nowadays it truly seems we can no longer write an email, or do a little search engine research, or even choose a playlist without AI jumping in front of us to exclaim that it knows better than we do what we need or want to say, learn, or listen to.
At the very least/best, that strikes me as rude, friends. But at the very most/worst, it might well be triggering. Yes, triggering. Because for those of us whose identity or value has been repeatedly and frequently invalidated — maybe even to the point of erasure — it can be triggering to be told we don’t know what we want, need or feel. Or to have it be implied that our voice is either too much or not enough.
But regardless of whether or not you relate to the “death by a thousand cuts” experience of invalidation trauma, I pose to you the following question. In good faith. Genuinely.
Is AI quietly killing our authenticity?
I know. I can hear some of you, loud and clear, right through the ether. Oh, Keith. Dear, dear, nervous Keith. AI is simply a tool, you silly little man (I’m pretty sure AI itself has said this, actually).
Listen, friends. I don’t disagree. It is a tool. A tool designed to ensure we hit all the high notes of consumer capitalism: efficiency, productivity, precision and profitability. I even agree that if AI truly is merely a harmless tool, then my question is indeed ridiculous. I might as well be asking what can openers have done to our sense of authenticity. Or cans themselves.
But hold on. Let’s look at what authenticity actually means. To me, it means that we’re aligned with deepest sense of ourselves. And that our external expression of our internal world is consistently congruent. So if we’re asking an artificial, external, entity to think, speak and choose for us, what happens to that alignment? What happens to congruence?
Let’s go back to invalidation trauma for a moment (I promise we shan’t stay there long). It’s been my observation those of us who’ve experienced systemic gaslighting, had our voices shut down, or have been otherwise repeatedly invalidated tend to to struggle with impostor phenomenon. I witness this frequently in the coaching container (I witness it frequently in myself, too). And something tells me that by relying on artificial intelligence as a substitute for our own innate intelligence, we might unwittingly deepen this sense of doubt about our own capabilities, cranking up the impostor within.
Or maybe I’m way off (cue my very own internalized impostor). Maybe AI really is the magic bullet that will, at long last and once and for all, annihilate the impetuous impostor who’s been living rent-free in our psychic basement all these years.
But even if it is, what happens if something — say a failure of the power grid or digital communication because of authoritarian arse-holery — takes out AI? Will we remember who we actually are? Will we remember how to align with ourselves?
Oh, and belonging. Don’t even get me started on belonging, friends. What might reliance on AI be doing to our sense of belonging? We’re all under tremendous pressure to get on board with AI in order to fit in with the systems we live within. But belonging is an inside job. Let’s review a key difference between the two:
True belonging hinges on self-acceptance. Fitting in hinges on self-abandonment.
[While we’re on the subject of belonging, I highly recommend checking out this recent post by Nyle Biondi, which is full of food for thought about so many important things, including the difference between belonging and fitting.]
I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed that I tend to feel a little duped when I think I’m having a good old-fashioned human conversation then come to discover that my conversation partner, while human, is actually just regurgitating what they’ve been fed by AI.
Let me be my own devil’s advocate one more time though. Maybe it could be possible to use AI in a way that preserves both our authenticity and belonging if we were vigilant in perpetually feeding it information about our core values. I’m not convinced. Since we’re not machines ourselves, but dynamic organisms with competing demands, that could get to be a real chore. And a time-suck, no less…which seems at cross-purposes with AI’s goal to speed us up.
Golly, friends. I’m not quite sure how to wrap up this burrito. I know many of us here might be AI frequent flyers, and far be it from me to tell you not to board the plane. But before you do: Are you sure? Are you sure you want to step inside a pressurized hunk of metal hurtling high above the ground at breakneck speeds and simultanously contribute to the massive carbon footprint expediting Earth’s demise?
I’m joking (or am I?). But really, friends. I guess what’ I’m about here today is inviting you to keep an eye on your authenticity. In fact, I’m urging you to keep your whole body on it, just in case. Just in case AI slowly, without our realizing it, begins to mean Artificial I/self/me.
i so appreciate the way you parse these things out, keith.
i'd not heard of the term 'invalidation trauma' before reading it here, though i did talk about it in my most recent therapy sesh. and had not put that together, i'd not even considered before EXACTLY why it is getting spell / grammar corrected is so infuriating to me. among the many questions that should be thoughtfully considered around this that aren't.
Thanks for your thoughts, Keith. As always, great to read and ponder.
I was delighted to be informed that I could type in a search engine bar and finish with " -AI", to get no AI-generated "summary" at the top of results. Whilst the it can be useful, you really don't know what slop the AI read to come up with its summary, as it tends not to ditinguish between gold-standard research and blogged opinions. This little type (and you need a space, then no spaces) really does help my overwhelmed brain.