Lived Experiences

So much excitement surrounds artificial intelligence (AI) right now. Understandably, of course, people want to know, what can this do for me? AI will change all of our lives by making content more quickly and more available to users. It will replace functional and creative positions over time and will disrupt the workforce and industries in ways we can't fully understand or predict.

However...

While I won't use the word, never, I will say that artificial intelligence cannot relate the rich details of a lived experience.

An AI bot can tell you what the beach feels like. The text could include many multi-sensory adjectives about the feel of the sand between the toes and the sharpness of the wind across the face, but there is no replacement for the experience. There is no substitute for the depth of the lived experience when a person stands on the shore gazing at the expansive ocean with the sun peeking over the horizon to begin a new day.

While the lived beach experience is not at all similar to the lived experience of rheumatoid arthritis, at least mine isn't, the truth is the same: AI cannot supplant the lived experience any more than an AI bot could write MY memoir. The experiences are uniquely mine as I have lived them--the good, the bad, the ugly, the difficult, the painful, the beautiful, the solitary and the connected...they're mine.