I was not eavesdropping, but in a small cafe on a quiet night it is difficult to drown out the sounds of other conversations happening around me.  A few tables away a man about my age was hosting a video meeting with a local diaspora group and discussing, coincidentally, the role of AI in helping new immigrants bridge the transition of coming to a new country like Canada.

Translation of language, validation of forms, explanation of processes, and interconnecting their small community—here I was sitting with my keyboard open pondering the complexities of this technology and he was joyously celebrating it as if it was a gift that should be understood and embraced.

That’s the real complexity right there. 

Every experience with any technology is different. It’s easy to raise an angry fist because the spectre of vanishing jobs or evaporating rights or amplified surveillance—and none of those are invalid concerns, all of them are real and possible and should be better understood—but experience is an individual thing, and while automation for some may seem like a lost opportunity, for others—students, small businesses, movements, or communities—it lowers costs and increases access.

I have written much of this collection of words from the perspective—mine—of an artist struggling to reconcile the loss of the humanity of creativity and more as the algorithms seem to once again trounce through a domain I felt personally part of. 

This is not a universal feeling, I know that, and yet sometimes it’s good to get a small reminder.