generative ai will give us anything we want. that’s a fucking terrible idea.

(Warning: spoilers for the show “Devs” ahead)

Following the viscerally public splash of his earlier film Ex Machina, Devs is a mini series by Alex Garland that questions of digital immortality, the price we pay for the machines we build, and if the forces behind progress keep us living in the past.

It went mostly unnoticed in the general public, but became one of my favorite shows of all time.

It follows software engineers at a big-tech company, Amaya. The boyfriend of the main character goes missing after being assigned to a highly prestigious and secretive project.

The CEO of Amaya drives a Subaru, lives in a small house in the Bay Area that screams “humble”, and he projects a deep sense of stoicism and distance.

It’s revealed he saw his beloved wife and daughter, Amaya die in front of their house in a brutal car crash.

As we progress through the show, the secret of what the project was that gets people killed is finally revealed. They’re building Deus, a quantum computer that can show us the past, and future of our timeline and others.

The CEO uses it to watch his daughter, alive in alternate timelines over and over again. At the end of the show, the main character and CEO die after fighting and falling accidentally to their deaths. But, their consciousnesses are uploaded to Deus, where they live in a digital simulation across different timelines.

Through the computer, they escape death and the permanence that comes with the passing of time. They will never die, and will never have to confront it.

On Twitter, I recently saw a demo video of an app on Apple Vision Pro that similarly scared me.

It was the ability to watch a 3D rendering of any memory you may have. More than rewatch, you could modify. Move the child one way, scale up or down, and watch what has already dissipated reanimate like reality.

Devs is a cautionary tale about what happens when unchecked human motives provide the impetus for technological progress, but blinds someone from actually growing. A hard, terrible look at the reality of what happens when our desires funnel into world changing products without truly questioning if our desires justify the cost of what they create.

I don’t think we really listened to it.

There’s been a large push to use technology in some form to eliminate or process grief, but a lot is yet unknown.

What does it mean for someone to die? Is a perfect simulation of a person enabled through spatial technology and generative AI a version of that human? Does enabling people to create these digitally immortal lives help them process or stunt their grief?

These are all questions we will have to face. Over and over, we hear about ways that people resurrect their dead. Recently, it’s been chatbots trained on messages with late spouses, and I’m assuming in the future we will see spatial and AI generated content combine to re-animate those we’ve lost.

As generative AI becomes better, and if Meta and Apple get their way with VR, it doesn’t become hard to imagine a future in which we never truly have to say goodbye.

There is a fear that keeps me up at night. That technology in its effort to enable anyone to do anything will make us lose touch with what the truth truly is, to the point that it doesn’t matter. Engagement and reach is our new truth.

We are facing a world in which anyone can turn anyone into anything, no matter the cost to themselves or society at large.

I saw an account on Twitter which is dedicated to using AI to turn women into “more attractive” versions of themselves, mostly by enhancing the asses and breasts of celebrities.

Our online world pushing people into the depths of consuming without question shows symptoms everywhere: Content farms increasingly push complete misinformation that people gobble up on TikTok, Meta is flooded with AI generated images of people and places that don’t exist, men are creating versions of real women with fake bodies, pedophiles have used generative AI models to create fake child sexual assault material, and students are using generative AI to write essays on things they cannot verify.

The current state of the tech industry has made it very clear that if there is a demand, it will be served.

Creating technology with a positive impact requires reflection on if that demand is actually going to be better for people, or if they will be hazed in a mirage that never pushes people out of their comfort zone. We are steadily removing that with generative AI.

You never have to grieve a person that doesn’t digitally die. You never have to get comfortable with the truth of women’s bodies if a tool can edit it to look however you like. You never have to face your social skills failing with women if you talk with a digital girlfriend.

You will be sold a vision of the future in which achieving happiness happens through generating content to anticipate and fulfill your demands, not questioning them yourself in an effort to more cohesively fit into our world.

You will not find happiness in being around people, engaging in self-reflection with the people who love you, caring about others, or being apart of a community. You will find it in chatbots who feign affection, AI versions of your favorite influencers, deepfake porn of your dream celebrity crushes that you always wanted to see naked, and AI voices reading you content that’s been sieved through layers of misinformation and lost context to maximize engagement.

You will be removed from annoying humans guiding the way, and you will be better off for it.

America’s recent echo chamber crisis that splintered into a chasm of political divide is a great harbinger of what’s to come. People do not strive to build a better world, people strive to be affirmed of what they think is the right way to build a better world. Partially why our online world is so insidious right now is because there is no universal wrong or right.

Anyone not liked by one area of the political spectrum can create a narrative accepted by the other that will grant them community and resources, without ever having to question their own actions.

SBF wrote in his “Oh Shit” plans that he could go on Fox News and claim to be canceled by the annoying libs. Elon Musk puts on a cowboy hat and cosplays as conservative sheriff rolling down to the Texas border while trying to grow an EV company that has been subsidized with tax credits from liberal politicians.

In a world where everyone gets their own realities accepted, there is no right or wrong. There is only what you’re willing to believe, and if it can be served to you. Algorithms know that, and they’re not going to give you things that push you to reflect. They give you things to agree with, feel extreme emotions about, and “content-ified” opinions to rip to shreds like a chew toy.

This chemical producing dopamine machine known as social media has been given something unprecedented: content doesn’t even have to be made by a human who cares about what they’re saying.

An AI model has no innate conception of misinformation, ethics or manipulation. It can be told to generate anything that its’ creator desires. If creator wants to make money profiting off of grieving people who aren’t ready to let go, incels who can’t confront their terrible personalities, and people who believe in fringe things, that content will be shipped out without a secondary eye.

You will never have to face discomfort, lack of skill, or the realities of the world. Because we can generate a new world that takes it all away.

In a world where anything can be edited to fit into your desires, why would you ever question them?