There aren’t a lot of things that will get this girl out of the house and on the road after 6 o’clock in the evening—this is not a new feature that I’ve acquired with the passing of time, but something well and truly built-in since my youth. However, last night I ventured to the Arboretum in Charing Cross from the village where I live, hopping a train to Marylebone and winding my way south on foot through what has become for me the familiar territory of central London, to be part of the live audience in a conversation between Elizabeth Oldfield—host of The Sacred podcast—and tech blogger Jamie Bartlett, whose new book How to Talk to AI: (and How Not To) has just come out.
I won’t attempt a summary of the discussion, but there are some particular things that remain with me this morning which I wanted to record.
One is that I feel a lingering ache to hear more from and to connect more leisurely with the others attendant in the room, and to understand their situations and concerns. Societally our permission to converse openly and deeply with one another on various topics of great consequence, to question with sober curiosity the wisdom of what has been thrust upon us by “the proverbial powers”, has been acutely curtailed in recent years. Jamie pointed out the increasing creep of anger observable over the past decade or so, entangled with the rise of social media, and this has served as well in undermining fruitful, democratic debate, the space to speak out constructively, which is a thing tantamount to the freedom to think and to exercise conscience. It was good to hear the voices of others in that room last night, and to notice in myself how good it indeed felt, in fact. I need to be with people, to recognise my own being in them, to enjoy communion.
Another is the nature of the audience questions that I remember, 3 of which stood out.
A woman in her mid-20s talked about her Nigerian history, and how her mother had not been ‘educated’ per se, but possessed such knowledge of her local agriculture, of the soil and how to grow food. She was clearly aggrieved by the idea that her own very young children would be more or less cut off from this kind of knowing—the kind of knowing that A.I. cannot begin to touch. Jamie echoed this kind of loss in a way by confessing his own sadness of having seen the East End of London, where he grew up, fade during his adult life, the loss of the local fixtures that framed and gave richness to his young life and which were no longer there to be gifted to his own children, or indeed to offer hospitality to the outsider; in this, he recognised the failure of a generation, and the denigration of something that for him has a sense of sacredness and transcendence.
Wendell Berry, who died on August 31st, had much to say and to demonstrate with the life he lived on this subject. The particular, the local, our sympathies and affections, have always been the underpinning of our ability to love well and to care for what is entrusted to us. A.I., life online, seems to me to be at heart—the heart it doesn’t have—to be the enemy of these things.
A painter spoke of his medium and of its counterpoint to A.I. Like him, I had to agree that regardless of the so called “creative” potential or output of an A.I. system, it has nothing in common with the actual human practice of art making, and interests me not at all.
Another artist, a dancer, offered the final thoughts for the evening, mentioning process vs. output, how the former was absolutely essential to his art form. Again, any practicing artist will concur; friction, frustration and even suffering are partners in process.
I would say too that process is profoundly connected to making memory, memories being formative for meaning in our lives. This is true when we read and work things through in our heads rather than, as Elizabeth drew out, reaching dangerously for the mythical genie represented in A.I., but exponentially so when our bodies are involved. Incarnation, embodiment—we trade these in at our great peril.
My gratitude to Elizabeth Oldfield for her masterful hosting of this gathering, her prodding and compassionate questions for Jamie which drew him out personally on some wonderful levels, and which set such a tone of warmth and delight.
