Real
On horse and human in the age of AI
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I lean towards her, this being who is mine, although I am as much hers as she mine, held now within an implicit ‘til death do us part. Her ears focus on me, heavy white fur protecting her pinnae from chill morning air. Her eyes look out from a surround of black, as if heavy kohl lines her lids. Her eyes are the color of 65% dark chocolate, with a mysterious horizontal rectangle floating in the center, in which I see my pale face reflected.
A dance of white lashes sweeps down as she blinks. My eyelids close and open slowly with hers. We are held in a moment: standing in a ragged pasture under a sky whose arms stretch wide in what feels like joy. A trio of red-tailed hawks shrill and I am abruptly aware of the weight of my tongue in my mouth; the water pooled around the frenulum. In these particularities, I am as present and alive as I am capable of being.
This week I became a certified human creator. For a person who has made her living as a writer for 20-plus years, I am bemused to suddenly find myself in a world where making a statement to claim my humanity and creativity is…you know. A thing.
I have on many occasions been called a Luddite. I have a native distaste for technology-for-technology’s sake. I prefer slow to fast. I mostly write in longhand, using one of my seven fountain pens, filling up a truly ridiculous number of Moleskine journals. As far as I’m concerned, ol’ Ned Ludd, if he really existed, had a great deal to offer in his objection to the dehumanizing aspects of the new technology found in mechanized weaving.
However (and this is a big however) I very much appreciate the nearly-instantaneous availability of information via the internet. With a brief query and the click of a mouse I have at my fingertips the most extensive data repository in history. My curiosities are boundless, and the ability to learn about anything at all is addictive.
For instance: Pinnae are the largely cartilaginous projecting portions of the external ear. In horses (and some older human males) thick fur covers and protects them from insects and the elements.
Long ago, as a beginning freelance writer, I was forced to concede the truly terrible fact that once my writing went into the internet it ceased to be mine. My work has been stolen, used again and again, bounced from website to website, and I have received not one dime from any of the bounces. The people who ripped off my stories and did not credit or pay me usually replied with some form of “So sue me,” when I contacted them and objected to their lazy scooping-up of material I had crafted.
Maddening.
I have a writer friend who is part of a startup called the Human Intelligence ™ Project. This company wants to “protect, preserve and proclaim the value, meaning, and precedence of genuine human art.” When Ned contacted me and asked if I wanted to register and become legally licensed as a genuine human creator, I confess I was initially amused. I mean, really—did I need to PROVE I was a bona fide human person who writes for a living? Seriously?
Again, I am slow and perhaps slow to notice infringements and boundary creep. I ignore the so-called artificial intelligence suggestions that bloat my searches, as I’ve noticed those results are often wrong or the least-common-denominator kind of answers to any query. I prefer to dig and think and chose my sources. I also do not typically attend to what I view as unstable and untrustworthy in terms of technology. Backup cameras on my truck? Yes, please. Bitcoin? No, thank you.
But enough is enough. I spend time, thought, and, yes, creativity on my writing and for these posts. I do not want you to pay for them—they are my gift to you. But they are not my gift to machine learning and generative AI. I prefer to keep my gifts between people, not faceless, formless forms of questionable intelligence. Substack: you may not allow Google and ChatGPT to learn from my writing—unless you plan on paying me for the use of that content. (And shame on you for making me dig to find a way to toggle that switch off in my privacy settings.)
So, I have joined the movement to protect my work and say, “I am a living, breathing being who wrote this essay.” I hope if you are a writer and are reading this, you will also choose to become a certified human creator. Perhaps if enough of us take this stance, we will, as they say at the Human Intelligence Project: Elevate human creativity in the age of AI.
What has any of this got to do with love and horses?
It has to do with presence and life. It is so easy to fail to register we are living spiritual beings inhabiting a truly remarkable planet-home. It is too easy to forget how blessed we are to be alive. For me, horses are the great and ancient guardians of a very simple wisdom. They are life-grazers.
Out in the ragged pasture with the horse who now blesses my every day, concerns about my creativity and humanity and all that flail and ridiculousness fade. I stand with her and she is fully present in the way of all horses.
The mare, who is gray but one day will be white when she is older, drops her beautiful head towards mine. Her black nostrils widen as she inhales. She breathes in my particularities of scent. There is a pause and then she sighs and I close my eyes and inhale her particularities in return.
She is real. We are real together.
To read the Human Creator manifesto and become a certified Human Creator, please check out https://humancreator.org/stand/
That said, if you like the writing and want to support horses, you might want to join our Prodigious Pledger Herd. Every dollar you pledge today will go to support an organization that supports horses. We will choose the organization in November and donate our hard-earned dollars in December of each year. You can check out my Substack About page for more information.
I love to hear from you, so feel free to give me a shout by clicking the “Message Katrina” button. It might take some time, but I promise I will respond.
TO THE HORSE!
This was very enjoyable and I loved listening to your voice!!
Great commentary and insight on an increasingly complex subject.