Here’s my theory on artificial intelligence: it’s the ultimate revenge of the science nerds. That’s why it is being used, first, to destroy the arts.
At school in the 1980s, when our tech overlords were growing up, there were essentially two tribes: the arty kids, who were lazy, funny, stylish and performatively rebellious; and the science kids, whose massive brains had no cultural value at all.
Correction: being clever in a maths-y way had a negative value, placing the unhappy swot for ever on the wrong side of the coolness divide.
The science kids huddled together for safety, playing D&D, growing hideous mullets as if to signal that they were excusing themselves entirely from the popularity game, and learning how to code on their newfangled personal computers.
The arty kids scoffed even harder: what kind of loser would dream of becoming a computer programmer, when you could be a novelist, an artist, an actor or a pop star? A vector for human expression, touched by the divine.
My God we were smug, those of us who could paint a pretty picture or construct a tidy sentence. Who could blame the science kids for wanting rid of us?
Yesterday, my husband (a science kid) came up with a beautifully-designed logo for a new business venture, and wrote the first page of a thrilling non-fiction book proposal. It took him fewer than 20 minutes: he just logged into Chat-GPT and gave his instructions.
