Will things ever get better?

Nothing has broken my heart like GenAI.

I write hopeful stories. I think this is because I am not a hopeful person. I sometimes mull over the fact that I have not felt a shred of hope for the future since I was fifteen. Deep down, I just don’t see how things can ever get better. And can you blame me for feeling this way?

If you grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, all you heard about was: the earth is dying, and we can still save it. Every year that warning grew louder. Every year, it somehow went ignored. And now, it feels like a fact so accepted that nobody even does anything about it. Yeah, the earth’s dying. Whatever.

We are in a downturn in history. Nations are cannibalising their democracies as the world lurches towards authoritarianism. There is a genocide in Gaza. War in Ukraine.

A long time ago, I was talking with a friend about how terrible the world seemed to be, and she said something that soothed me: “at least there’ll be art.” No matter what happens, the human spirit will keep on creating. Where there is art, there is life, and where there is life, there is hope.

I clung to that. But the raft is sinking. How did we let Generative AI take over like this?

You see, it’s one thing if it was enforced. One thing if the water was just poisoned. If we were forced to use it. But we took to MidJourney and ChatGPT for the hell of it. For memes. For a trend. The recent trend of Studio Ghibli AI art has me feeling so sick and despondent I’ve been on the verge of tears for days. I blocked someone without warning or second thought just for participating in it. I deleted Instagram three times in twenty-four hours. I feel utterly hopeless.

All I’ve wanted to do with my life is create. Write great stories. Teach myself to draw. What’s the point if the value of human art is so low that people feed it to a machine for cheap AI generated crap? How will things ever get better?

There are copyright issues related to AI. I dream that the global courts will regulate it swiftly and seriously, kneecapping GenAI where it stands. But I don’t believe that courts work fast enough to do that. By the time anyone wakes up and realises this is a problem, it’ll be too late. Entire careers will have been wiped out (potentially mine, too). Whole generations will have lost the ability to think critically and create for themselves. Why are we giving away our humanity? For what?

I write hopeful stories because I desperately need to give myself that. Because I am so emaciated of hope that I sometimes feel like I’m dying of starvation. But I’m so miserable these days, I can’t even bring myself to write.

I don’t know where I’m even going with this. I wish I had the wisdom to create happiness. My eyes are blurry now, though, and I don’t know what else to say.