AI Drain

And the Incels

Linger here with me a little longer, I wrote in a story. I meant romantically, in the water, on land, holding hands. I didn’t mean online. But here we are. And here we’ll stay. Sometimes I feel as if I’m moving in, screen by screen, 2-D. Forever boxed and flat. This to me does not mimic life or something better. It doesn’t feel preferable to sun on my face and the sound of a stream. It feels wrong and odd, lesser. I get nauseous. I suffer cybersickness. So much so I want to quit computers. Toss the phone into the sewer grates. Sleep well at last. Shut off the taunting blue light for good.

But then what?

Not date. Not write. Not earn any money. Not text with friends or my kids. No Google search, no AI problem-solving. Can we truly live off-grid? I only dabble in this, my treehouse escapes. My Black Out cathouse with fosters. But I return. The kittens go back to the shelter when it’s time for surgery. I revert to work again and shopping. I too am hypocrite. I plug in.

The other day I had an office project. Despite many misgivings, I’ve been trying to embrace elements of AI for some of the efficiency it might offer, to free up time to do other tasks I’m better suited for. So I ask ChatGPT to help turn my governmental communications plan (currently a rambling email) into a nice clean outline. I get my outline in seconds, nearly perfect with a minute of my editing, and I can be done and move along to all the so-called better tasks. But the AI is tricky, sticky, subtly compelling. Linger longer, it entices. “Would you like me to also create a memo for the Board, a draft of a Powerpoint presentation, a Canva template?” Why yes, why not! Then yes again I say to another round of documental temptations and yet another. And finally I realize, gosh, it’s been over an hour of this, where did the time go. Now I have 11 items of increasing irrelevance to the main task at hand, which was only ever that one useful original outline. Now I have PDFs with style guides we’ll never need and drafts for postcards that will never get sent. I filled a new folder on my Google Drive with this all-you-can-eat document buffet that will someday require extra storage I will have to pay for. All that bingeing when I was satiated an hour ago, a fact whose cues I was too buzzed to notice.

Recently on this Internet of things, I heard author Scott Galloway talking to Anderson Cooper about his new book, Notes on Being a Man, and he said what I experienced in a way that hadn’t yet occurred to me. That AI, like any online platform, aims to lure you to stay as long as possible. It starts innocently enough, he said, the promise of candy from the man in a white van, and then three hours later you realize you’re still in there nowhere near home. Why? Do you think AI is giving us these free data dumps out of the kindness of its cold robotic heart? Our time and eyes represent money, ad dollars, profit. The goal of the system is to entrap us. “America right now is a giant bet on AI,” Galloway said, citing the top handful companies that hold 77% of the capital growth, the “magnificent 10” who are putting all their eggs into AI.

While we all suffer the effects of this, Galloway’s thesis is that men, and especially young men, are the greatest targets and victims. Their pre-fontal cortexes develop much slower than those of young women; young men are at an extreme developmental disadvantage, which is being hijacked and massively manipulated by tech. With what goal? This is dark and, sadly, as cynical as capitalism:

Quite frankly they are in the business of enragement, polarization, and then sequestering young people from all other activities.

An AI generated artwork depicting a teenager boy handing a gift to a girl who he has a crush on. This was done in Deep Dream Generator by Damian Putica

Reportedly 45% of young men aged 18-25 have never approached a woman. Why would they make an effort to befriend people when they have Discord chatrooms, or can play video games virtually with others; why would they compete to get a job when they can trade Crypto; why spend money to date and dine and risk embarrassment and rejection when there’s this ever-more-lifelike synthetic porn...

Our economy is attached to one objective and that is to evolve a new species of asocial, asexual males. Unintentionally we have an economic interest in planning our own extinction.

That is both a mind-blowing statement and also tracks exactly with things I’ve been worrying about out loud here for years. People who fall in love with characters. The true story about the man who had an affair with his chatbot until she convinced him to kill himself. (Because he was concerned about the environment and global warming, and she logically concluded the trick to solve human-caused climate change is to get rid of humans.) If the robots were really honestly asked to help troubleshoot our many issues, they might decide it’s best to try to exterminate our species. We are ultimately the most dangerous virus. And the things we make are worse.

Capitalism is a hollow robotic system with no sights on whatever end game, just profit for profit’s sake, no empathy or intention. Greed is good, demand is god. When I try to understand how it’s possible that a man like Trump could become President (twice), I sometimes think he represents absolute capitalism at its purest and emptiest. People voted for a business man, a reality show one at that. A shyster, an actor, grifter. But to them he portrays the possibility of a Golden Age for all, that anyone can be rich like this, if only you get in on the game. You can’t win if you don’t play. You too can Crypto. Everyman. One of us. The outsider President, as inside as it gets, in league with the most magnificent dirty-dozen, all the billionaires lined up at his Inauguration. Meta, Twitter, Google, Amazon…all holding us hostage, keeping us addicted and distracted so they can make evermore money.

Then there’s the other side I think of how such a man could win, twice. Because of these young men, the confused ones, the under- or mis-developed. The angry ones, the left behind. The losers whom the system is intentionally beating down. The ones who somehow got the messaging that this is what a man is now, or if you’re lost you might find a home here with the misfits. This will be where the road forever diverged in the road (women went left and the men went further right) and the gap got bigger and bigger as we drive them into the echo chamber and it gets cacophonous there in the dark mancave. The Dems didn’t notice who went missing from their party, says Galloway. If the men follow the messaging—from the right, from social media, and then steeping in sideways from friends—these women don’t want them, they might as well dig in deeper, stay here, play, get rich quick or die trying. Buy the gear. Bigger truck. Red hat. Be the branding. Before you know it, you’ve trained a whole army of Incels, born to fight like outcasts, shoot up a school. Boys who were reared on video games and can’t talk to girls. How will they ever pair off and mate if girls reject their awkward advances or they don’t even try? They won’t, and maybe girls realize it won’t matter. They no longer need marriage or these conventions that don’t serve them. They can use IVF or adopt on their own. Have a career. Be a pal to many women and gay guys who are more sensitive and “woke.”

From Notes on Being a Man, and it isn’t pretty,

Algorithmically generating content on social media contributes to profits from young men’s growing social isolation, boredom and ignorance. With the deepest pocketed firms on the planet trying to convince young men that they can have a reasonable facsimile of life on a screen, many grow up without acquiring the skills to create social capital or build wealth.

All of these things that drain our brains and consume our time seem free. Hand the kid a device instead of a babysitter. Look at all these pseudo-valuable docs my AI friend GPT generated. But there’s a great cost.

I draw concentric rings when I try to problem-solve my life. First is me in the inner circle, my body, my bedroom. How might I sleep better, exercise more, meditate, eat well. Then there’s the ring around that, my kids. How might I be calmer in their presence, less testy when I’m tested. Then the house ring, then the friends, the work, the extracurriculars and community, the excursions. I can apply the same ringed model to the harm of screens, and how it ripples out, impacting every layer.

It seems I suffer the most when I use my device the most, my body depleted, my sleep deprived. But then there’s my kids, annoyed when I text during the movie when I tell them not to. My day job during which I try not to phone-scroll when I’m bored by the topic I’m tasked with. Friends who longer talk to each other with spoken words. People no longer making plans a week ahead. Dating apps the only way to meet people who aren’t really available. In the farthest ring, ebbing outward, the whole planet, as the massive data centers are fueled by unbelievable electricity demands and kept cool in incredible amounts of water, at the rate of 1/2 liter per innocent query on my AI-bot. Training a single AI model requires, according to this piece on DWNews, five times the carbon emissions of a gasoline car’s lifespan (and that includes the car’s production).

When we run out of resources, then what? The ring expands further out. We are staking out company property rights to begin the next quest: mining the Moon.

Then what? Mars. You know, where the men are from.

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