As a copywriter, I have had such a beautiful experience of using AI to brainstorm and learn.

I used ChatGPT to optimize my content for search and sometimes to create a skeleton for social media campaigns. If you are in a creative block, you could get a kickstart with AI.

I have seen AI prompt my emails and lead me to say appropriate words to the recipient when I wasn’t too sure what to say.

As a researcher, I have used AI to improve my knowledge of data analytics, tableau, religion, and other complex research questions. I recently learned more about net-zero buildings and improving climate finance for housing in Africa. Google’s Bard AI gave me even more invaluable insights regarding steps to building a valuable advocacy for housing and climate finance. If I were to be writing a comparison between ChatGPT and Bard, I would say each of them could potentially make you smarter and improve your learning. This is because they are designed to explain and narrate information built on a database that your brain might not be able to tap into as they do.

With Machine Learning, AI tools will become increasingly adept at predicting what should be said about a topic and there are a lot of benefits to this. When you combine this power with the accessibility of mobile apps, you are talking about endless possibilities.

However, I have also hit a bit of a snag while using these apps. Without even debating the ethical issues for academics and researchers, the factual unreliability of ChatGPT, and many other explicit reasons for caution, we might need to consider the human intelligence at risk.

While writing a piece of content for a client, I find myself wondering what would AI have said. This thought quickly develops into me wondering if it even matters that I write my own ideas first before generating new ones with AI. What if I just let AI do the work and then I edit it to sound like mine?

While this sounds like a beautiful proposition, I have a huge debate going on in my head. Is the client paying for me to improve on AI? Or have they trusted me all these years because of the authenticity with which I write?

What about the many approaches that I could have taken to each sentence or phrase. While AI is almost certain to tackle each task in a particular manner based on the code and data it has, humans are unpredictable. As a writer, creating stories and content for businesses has always been an unpredictable journey for me. It could be after a fine breakfast and mind blowing orgasm, that a fresh idea comes to my writing. It could be the cool breeze of the day and how sated and content I am with life that inspires my thoughts. It could be my discontent and anger that leads how I tell a story. Each piece has its own unique signature and adds to the beauty and diversity of life.

In many ways, originality stems from my interaction and connection to the world around me. Infusing these emotions and personality into my work, makes it organic and heartfelt. It’s in those moments when I am able to put myself in the shoes of the customers, who are real people with real experiences, that my words find colour and vibrance. Now that I am going to let AI lead, what happens to all that spontaneity and empathy?

Another major question that has been bugging me is the issue of convergence. Gradually, AI becomes fully assistive and might even become capable of saying what you think you want to say. Because it sounds neat and nifty, you have no objections. Ten years down the line, you are basically communicating with your world as AI. Your friends and family are interacting with AI’s responses to their feelings and emotions. Where do you draw the line? How would you be able to tell the difference between what you are thinking and what AI has simply prompted you to think?

When the AI in my emails suggests to me that I should say things, I wonder if accepting the prompting doesn’t take away something of who I am. The errors and inconsistency of speech, the struggle to articulate, the need to be heard and understood, the desire to express feelings of love, empathy, compassion and anger. These are all stripped away and replaced with a bland meal of artificially created carbohydrates and plastic proteins. It tastes real and perfect but I am gradually becoming something else. It feels like my intelligence is being babysat by a robot that doesn’t know when to stop and give someone a hug.

What if we all start to have the same thoughts and approaches to problems. We all aren’t often so dissimilar. Already, we get tied into stereotypes and biases that make us act based on social conditioning. It can be disappointing when you see a person playing to the dictates of predictable stereotypes and societal expectations. You want to just shake them and ask that they wake up to be original. AI is at the risk of introducing even more predictability and sameness to how humans behave and think. By relying on Artificial intelligence to learn from our input, we all contribute to this big brain that then goes on to help us predict responses and thoughts. Because of how accurate it’s going to sound at some point, everyone might just be plugged into the same singular way of thinking which is a major marker of the Singularity. Whether the Singularity would lead to a world where everyone is happy, agreeable, contented, and equal or it will become a world where humans go extinct, no one knows.

However, l must point out at this point that when I started out this essay, I wasn’t thinking about the singularity. But as I continued to weave my thoughts around the issues I have seen with AI, I came to a conclusion that pointed at this concept. I asked Bard AI to explain the singularity and it fits perfectly with the disaster I have spent this essay trying to articulate. If AI is going to be the end of human connections and originality, it might also be the end of the human race and intelligence.