By Kate Stapleton
Artificial Intelligence? I’ll let the yellow rabbits be the judge of that…
Anyone of a certain age will recall the “dotcom” bubble bursting not long after the advent of the internet – drastically inflated company valuations with no tangible assets or creditor security to back them up, merely the hype of a new technology and dizzying dreams of riches and success for anyone with a computer and a bit of knowledge.
Sound familiar?
In 2026, AI has snuck into our lives despite the objections of some and notes of caution from ethicists across the globe. I for one have been outspoken about the proliferation of homogenous posts on platforms like LinkedIn, whether for reasons of speed, efficiency or lack of creativity, and the telltale long dash symbol denotes yet another flannelette ChatGPT creation. As a writer, I refuse to let ChatGPT do the heavy lifting for me, producing my own authentic work, and artists and photographers everywhere will be grieving the soulless images flooding social media and the wider internet. However the rest of society is less concerned, and in the case of Elon Musk and Grok, are actively encouraging the use of AI for, well, everything, no matter how dark the consciences behind the prompts. Those of us in the “reluctant user” camp may be relieved to know that authenticity will make a comeback, and those who outright oppose AI will be leaping for joy to know that scientists have proven mathematically that AI, when trained on AI (read – the ever increasing data online), will turn to absolute mush in a relatively short space of time.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
Shumailov et al (2024) – in the journal “Nature” – detailed an experiment which showed that in just nine generations of AI-trained AI, hallucinations increased to a degree where the original prompt subject matter vanished completely and the LLM concerned produced reams of @@@ symbols and talk of coloured rabbits. Now I am not a mathematician, or a tech expert, yet even I can see the gradual erosion of human input a mile off. For tech giants such as OpenAI, this will present a challenge to be overcome, yet even they are powerless to prevent their upgrades absorbing more and more artificial data as the boundaries become very blurred indeed. Website construction? Use ChatGPT for the copy. Want to write a book and self publish in a hurry? Use ChatGPT to write it for you. More and more information is produced by AI, diluting and eventually obscuring our nuances of language and emotion, originality and – let’s face it – doing the donkey work because it is convenient and quick.
Back to Basics
Now just for a moment, pause and reflect on what society will look like without AI, and potentially without the internet, as we cannot now trust what we read and see to be real, meaning that the “Information Super-Highway” will be forever log jammed with garbage. Does the thought of going back to square one fill you with dread or delight? If you are young enough to have never known a time pre-internet, this might be a terrifying concept. Something that we now take for granted and treat as a form of data god may ultimately simply filter itself out – Professor Brian Cox talks of civilisation filters, where we get too clever for our own good and write up our own destruction, and this may be the case with data civilisations as well. Regardless of questions of ethics, we need to consider whether we have forgotten how to think for ourselves, objectively and critically, and what our own personal output would look like without AI polishing and refining it.
Perfect Imperfection
I am not necessarily predicting a dystopian future where we return to papyrus and quill pens. The case I am stating is that we have the knowledge of what over-reliance on AI and technology could ultimately lead to, and we have the ability to individually embrace our own messy, imperfect and glorious human creativity. None of our loved ones would cite perfection as the prerequisite for their feelings towards us, so let’s stop trying to chase the impossible and shatter the illusions we spent time carefully crafting – return to your own authentic voice rather than that of ChatGPT, I promise it will be worth it!
Contact Kate on info@katestapleton.co
