Elon Musk, the trillionaire owner of social media platform X, has mooted making an ‘AI Odyssey’. Van Badham writes that as AI regulation is debated, we should ‘take a wild, political stand for authentic preference over forced consumption’. Photograph: Anton Dos Ventos/Alamy View image in fullscreen Elon Musk, the trillionaire owner of social media platform X, has mooted making an ‘AI Odyssey’. Van Badham writes that as AI regulation is debated, we should ‘take a wild, political stand for authentic preference over forced consumption’. Photograph: Anton Dos Ventos/Alamy Opinion AI (artificial intelligence) As AI madness encroaches, we need human connection more than ever. But we’ll have to fight for it Van Badham We don’t want the isolating, automated outputs tech lords are selling us. We’re yearning for a shared frame of reference
I have a cherished memory of a family trip to the movies. In the Australian tradition, we bought choc-top ice-creams, chattered through pre-show trailers and a hush fell on the full house as the movie started.
It was Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey , on film, only a couple of weeks ago, months after its release.
In an AI-supercharged world of algorithmic recommendations and atomised cultural space, I’ve come to suspect The Odyssey’s ongoing popular appeal is no longer its Greeks with gifts, or superstar director.
It’s the increasingly rare opportunity to share even a single cultural reference with other people. Despite our human instinct for interaction, we live in a global moment where health authorities believe social isolation is an epidemic.
Yet in the same city of my fun night at the cinema, this week it was news that Australia’s Macquarie University has introduced an AI chatbot into the weekly teaching of two mandatory psychology subjects.
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As someone whose dainty, addled, depressive brain obliges tender care from trained professionals, Macquarie, please record this data in your feedback corpus: I cannot trust or validate the insight of a supposed expert whose contact with adult realities has been compromised by being taught by a machine.
If I want a chatbot to talk me out of a panic spiral, I’ll consult it within my already-paid-for subscription service when I’m freaking out at midnight like a normal person, thank you.
Far more positive social impacts can be measured from Australia’s academics’ union, this week taking strike action at the University of Sydney against the encroach of AI madness.
“We want enforceable protections against AI being used to cut jobs, intensify workloads, undermine academic and professional judgement, or replace work and human interaction that are fundamental to a university,” said the NTEU’s Vince Caughley. Solidarity, brother. My gratitude extends to Australia’s writers’ union, the AWG , as well as its entertainment and communications union , the US actors’ union and Writers Guild of America , Canada ’s performance union, Germany ’s service workers union and actors’ union, an alliance of Italy ’s dubbing unions and all industrial organisations striking AI-use agreements not merely to protect their members’ workplace rights, but to remain on the side of public opinion.
Because studies repeatedly suggest consumers don’t want the isolating, automated outputs being sold to them.
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