I am taking a few weeks away from work (for medical reasons) to focus on myself and my recovery. It is a strange concept, really, to step away from work and just focus on myself. I wasn’t raised like that. My mom worked all the way until she had Chester and decided to stay home to take care of the two of us (which is a 1.5 full-time job, really). My dad took on extra work to support 2 sons studying overseas. In our culture and our life, work is “ethics”, work is a part of our identity, and work is how a capitalistic society views and evaluates us. So, to not work to take care of yourself is not only inherently selfish but a strange and unacceptable practice.
So, what am I doing during this break? I’ve been gardening. I’ve been painting. I’ve been calling people and talking to them. I even dared plan for the summer.
There has been a lot of talk and anxiety about AI lately. I couldn’t help but wonder, when (not if, when) AI can replace us for our work, what, then, will be our worth? What, then, will make us human?
As I was painting, I could feel the strokes of the brush against the canvas. I could see all the imperfections. I could step back, think, admire, frown, and make corrections, and make it worse. When I garden, I would feel the breeze. I could learn the angle of sunshine vs the time of day vs the duration of sunlight vs the soil ratio, etc. Sure a machine can do all that. Sure a machine can do all that better. With advancement in robotics and AI, a machine can paint perfection, can garden mass quantity crops.
Can a machine have the self-awareness of its own brokenness? Can machine learning teach machines to be inspired to learn, and not optimize based on a pre-determined goal?
It’s sad and comforting, really, to realize what made me human, specifically in my case, is my acute awareness of my own brokenness. What made me human, is my ability to see my flaws and my reckless desire to be better, all the time.
And so, I guess, to be able to step away from work, to ignore the work ethics and the identity of a salaried man, after all, is a rebellion act of being fucking human.
Pace Fine Arts 