There was a short fantasy film some time ago on YouTube called Ahalya. I won't spoil it for you, but I am reminded of the feeling of being stuck inside my own body, unable to communicate that I am a human being.

I am writing this to you at 8:34 in the morning as certain worries tumble around in the back of my head and noise fills my soundscape and my body hungers for bread and butter. I am a human being expressing my humanity through the words that you are reading. I feel confident that when you read this, you will come to the conclusion that a human being like you has written what you are reading. At least, I used to.

Because text can now be machine-generated. It can be churned out in reasonably good quality and in large amounts. You can't know if I wrote what you are reading. I can no longer be confident that you will know that what you are reading was written by a human being like yourself -- that it was written by me.

Video can now be machine-generated. Realistic footage of me talking to a camera in my voice can now be generated with ease and speed. You can't know if it is a human being you are looking at on your screen. You can't be sure that it is I who is speaking to you about something that can happen to any human being.

Audio can now be machine-generated. Extended podcasts can now be made that sound exactly like me, fumbles and all, talking about matters I usually talk about or even things I never touch. You can no longer be sure if what you are listening to is the voice of a fellow human being saying what they feel and think. I can no longer expect you to know that it is I who is speaking to you in my podcasts and audio posts.

In a world where everything I used to do to let you know that I am human can now be AI-generated, how do I show you that I am a human being. How do I have my humanity acknowledged? How do I protect myself from being stolen? From being lost?

We already live in a world where people's humanity doesn't get acknowledged and where they are treated as if they are not human. Their suffering is made light of and their pain gets laughed at. Treating humans as if they are not human is not a problem AI created, but it's certainly going to make it worse.

Our tribal past is our tribal present. Once upon a time, the otherness of those outside our tribes was asserted using religious symbology. The others, we were told, are not humans like us. They are to be fought and killed. Our gods dictate that we do not kill, but it is okay to kill them because they are not like us. See how they look? See how they speak that strange language? See how they eat odd foods? Do not speak to them. Do not read what they have written. Do not eat with them or marry them. They are not people. They exist only so they may be enslaved, subjugated, and / or destroyed.

This is who we are. This is who we have always been. This is not new. This is as old as we are, as old as "civilisation" is. Dehumanisation is a game we have been playing since we could play any game at all.

The greatest hurdle in the way of people coming together is people not being able to hear each other. And in the age of generative AI, I fear a great pall of silence will fall over us all even as we complain loudly about the noise.

Like the gentleman from Ahalya, we are walking down a corridor, distracted by what AI looks like, unaware of what it is about to do to us.