FULL CIRCLE 013: THE AI EDIT
The looming Big Beautiful Bill which finally passed over July 4th weekend like a storm cloud, will affect millions of households including ours (see my earlier post about the already impossible reality for elders on Medicaid and their loved ones.) I have lots to say about that, too much right now to put into words. Instead I’ve found myself thinking, and in long conversations with friends on our week of road tripping, about AI. Like this administration, the topic has suddenly become unavoidable.
This weekend, while rolling through Montauk in a friend’s car, I learned of the phenom called The Surf Lodge and have taken up gawking on my phone ever since. The Surf Lodge, as she pointed out, is the human manifestation of AI slop. Its social feed appears generated from the search phrase “white people Hamptons.” Call me old, but FOMO used to mean something. There is so much of so nothing there and yet: the line out the door to get in and the dejected walking down Montauk Highway - the pay off for their roundtrip on the Jitney an even bigger nothing. But these people are real! If you cut them, do their little hearts not bleed when they reach that bend in the road to gaze back upon the lucky few who got in taking selfies in their beachfront cabanas, all for the geo-tag?
These real humans, believing their affluence will protect them (it will not), are a prototype. They are the most vulnerable among us to be caught in the feedback loop of influence with an AI idyll. Their wants are different than mine, purely individualistic. Their vibe is “been to Italy once.” But their needs are the same. Escapism. They are just trying to bask in the Aperol-hued sunset, who can blame them?
Probably like you, my phone has been my biggest escape in this slog of a summer. In fact, I’m addicted. There’s very little else you can call it. I am absorbed, on a mad hunt for catharsis. I’ve even resorted to the search feature on Instagram to get more of what I crave.
Be it the Tiny Chef heartbreakingly losing his job “live” on the internet and ordering many tiny pizza’s to his bed which is a Le Creuset souffle dish, and then on his hero’s journey, picking himself back up again.
Go watch. He is perfect.
The bulk of what I watch is comedy, the cure for whatever ails ya. Lately it has been old videos of early aughts SNL sketches brought on from listening to Amy Poehler’s Good Hang pod during our many miles on the road without consistent air-conditioning. Or Jiminy Glick, always and forever.
But more frequently, my search has been videos of the Beyonce Cowboy Carter live show. I keep coming back for the frenzy of new outfit reveals, excellent dancing, the occasional stage malfunction, and the fan winks hinting that this next tour might be her last so come and get it boys. How she brought her daughters on stage this tour with her mom and sister regularly in the audience, all periodically bringing each other to tears at the magnitude of the moment is exactly what my little motherless daughter within is aching for. But also I’m aching for, quite literally, her spectacular vision of America (with its Problem.) Through her we may live our American lives brighter, freer, more Sasha Fiercer. I don’t know if Beyonce uses AI to bring her vision to life, but I will say at least it feels wholly and authentically human to me, if not the work of a great big talented team – as is the way with pop icons. When she leaves us, then what? Who will replace her? A pop star singing AI generated music and with an image curated by AI? Or has she already arrived (Sabrina Carpenter)? Somebody slap me, my cousin (slap) my husband (slap slap) my cousin and my husband.
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Welcome to the Beyhive
My dad Hilary who lives with us is still frozen in the amber of a time before smartphones, apparently not unlike Jack White. Hilary is uninfluenced by the algorithm, though his dementia creates a scrambled type of alogrithm all its own. We regularly have to explain to him what the internet is, yet still every time we cue up his show on streaming he asks “Oh, is it on?” Before going to bed recently, still processing something he had heard on the news, he recalled how he dealt with the McCarthy era. “You have to insulate yourself against fascism by spending time with good friends.”
The time spent with friends was restorative, it was wonderful, memories were made. But was it escape? Not exactly. We spent much of our two days in the Hamptons while staying (for free!) on the ocean sound, talking about the administration disappearing people from the streets. Or coming to the inevitable wordless pause in the conversation when we all contemplated what is next.
The same sunset on view from Surf Lodge
On the bank of the James River earlier that week while visiting more friends in Richmond, I heard us commiserating, sharing the ways in which we have attempted to free ourselves from our phones. Yet, before we go to bed, upon waking in the middle of the night, and first thing in the morning, eyes open, where are we looking? Is there an IRL equivalent to the instant gratification of our phone’s escapism? Maybe it is going in person to the Beyonce Carter show - I did and continue to wear my tour shirt in the daytime and to bed like an 8 year old girl.
It does not need to be said that the reason we are so overwhelmed by the AI-washing of the internet, is that we are constantly on it. We are all products of one influence or another, and what is bigger than the bright blue light bleeding into our dreams? We are what we dream. (Check out my friend’s cabaret show based on the work of Charlotte Beradt)
There is a connection I feel, however subtle, between AI’s proliferation and the troll of America trolling Americans on America’s birthday. It is too big, too smooth and involuted, its movements too directly on the nose of an endemic meanness that it is in some grotesque way a little bit sexy to its target audience – can you see it? The Big Beautiful Bill is AI, and I don’t just mean written lazily on Chat GPT but conceptually also. Just like companies can be people, bills (and people too) can be AI. In resistance, in this culture war, is the radical act to bring in more humanness, cloister ourselves in influences made only by us? Or yet more radical again, to get off our phone entirely? But that isn’t realistic really, is it? Perhaps our only relief is being face planted on the floor?
Two nights ago, phone free, my husband Jeffrey and I sat quietly under an umbrella in Riverside Park to watch the sun set over the Hudson. It was a slow down after a long day and a longer week of traveling. I ordered myself an Aperol Spritz. Afterall, I too have been to Italy once. Well actually, twice.
Yes, yes, It's ironic how the smartphone has made our culture dumber and AI will make our decline even faster. So hold fast to your friends and family. Untethered from your phone is the way to go!