AI is a 21st century 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'

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My favorite horror movie is the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," closely followed by the 1978 remake with Donald Sutherland.

The reason I still sleep with the lights on after watching them is the idea that we can live among facsimiles of reality, when it's all fabrication. Inauthenticity isn't necessarily bad.

In fact, it's how we mate, campaign for votes, and become social media influencers. There is nothing more anathema to intimate relationships these days than having your original lips.

But now that artificial intelligence has entered the chat, I'm worried. It's not just the sense that I'm being fooled. It's the dangers that exist in allowing this Trojan horse of illusion into our daily lives.

The fear comes from making it increasingly difficult to identify the truth. As a former teacher, the understanding that we will never again be able to completely trust the work product of ambitious high school seniors is chilling.

When I used to grade papers, I prided myself on knowing when one of my little charges had done a cut and paste job.

Now, I'm not sure I'd be able to discern the real from the Memorex, and if you don't get that reference you're too young to be up this late reading.

I know that there have always been cheating scandals, and I myself sneaked a few peeks at Cliff Notes in my halcyon academic days, but this is a whole new level of dissimulation.

But that”s not the only concern I have with AI. The other day, I asked Chat GPT to write something in my own style about the pope, and the result was so similar to words I'd actually put to paper in the past that I reflexively deleted it.

Chilling. Here was a technology that had made me irrelevant.

There are some progressives who might love that, particularly after I read what Chat GPT had to say about me when I asked it for a description of "Christine Flowers, columnist."

But I come from that last generation of people who put physical words to physical paper, and who actually had to work to erase her mistakes.

Now, we don't even need to press the back key on the word processor. We can eliminate the mistakes before they even occur, by simply giving the job over to our friend the chatbot.

It reminds me in a sinister way of the new genetic technologies that allow parents to design children without illness, without brown eyes, without receding chins and unathletic builds.

And don't get me started on the pathetic people who have AI boyfriends and girlfriends, which are nothing more than the virtual equivalent of blow up dolls.

A lot of folks would say that I protest too much, and that I'm ignoring the great benefits of the new technologies.

That's a fair point. But I seriously think that we are going to lose much more by giving ourselves over to this alien sort of technology than we will ever gain.

The other day, I asked Meta, another form of artificial intelligence, to give me some versions of myself.

I uploaded a photo, and watched as the program spat out a hundred versions of Christine, in different outfits, against different backgrounds, with different levels of wrinkles and gray hair.

In some I looked like Gidget, in others like my mother, in one like my grandmother. I was thinner than I now am, and in some cases taller.

I actually liked my doppelgangers, including the ones that really did make me look like Sarah Palin.

The one with the third arm was a little weird, but whatever.

But then I noticed the eyes. In almost all of them, the pupils were either too big, or the whites had disappeared.

And the expression was, and I can't think of another word to describe it, anesthetized.

The fake me was a prettier physical version, but rather empty looking.

And that's what scared me so much about "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

The appearance of reality was merely the shadow of what we are when our distinct characters and personalities are gone.

And I don't know about you, but give me a flawed, mistake-prone, wrinkled, but human, being over an idealized avatar anyday.

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Christine M. Flowers is a lawyer and columnist.