One of the most common complaints about Star Trek I saw growing up was “why don’t they use the holodeck more? If you were living in that time period and you could just make anything you wanted anytime you wanted and live out fantasies forever, why aren’t more people addicted to the holodeck?”
And then generative ai was created.
And now I get it. I get why nobody on Star Trek spends all their free time in the holodeck. I get why all the crew are putting on stage plays, and holding music recitals, and building models, and playing poker. I get why everyone was so skeptical and mean to the Doctor on Voyager. I get why the ONE TIME we see someone obsessed with the holodeck it infringes on people’s likeness rights and permissions.
Because fundamentally at the end of the day we are human beings and we ENJOY working with our hands and making REAL human connections. A person who learns to play an instrument is always going to be viewed as an artist over someone who asks the computer to generate music for them.
Even as recent as Lower Decks they were making fun of the fact that the crew were putting on amateurish plays and holding music recitals. But after living with Ai for so long and seeing how detrimental it’s been to the world… I’d much rather watch my friends put on a stage play than “participate” in a holodeck movie.
What’s most amazing about this is that it was completely unintentional. I do not for one second think that the writers of the time in the 90’s were really thinking about the larger issues that generative ai and chatGTP would cause. How could they? Text to speech back then was still robotic as heck. More likely they wrote that stuff in because it was cheaper to film on sets the owned than try to build, film, or rent out different locations each week.
That’s the down to earth logistical real reason Data is reciting poems about his cat or Riker is in a play put on in ten forward. It’s just cheaper to do that than to build a whole new set or move production to a new location.
Yet at the end of the day, I think that unintentionally speaks to a very human need that ai is making more and more prevalent to us day in and day out.
And that’s the fact nobody wants to deal with generative SLOP.
This made me think of something—if Data makes art, does that technically make it ai-generated art?
Actually… yes! And it’s one of the better character arcs that is explored throughout the series!
Data is always trying to mimic humanity and learn, but often he’s hampered by his programming. People fall asleep at his poem recital, don’t enjoy his music or paintings, and even playing Sherlock became boring… all because he kept defaulting to an algorithmic perfection. Both his poems and much were technically flawless, but they had no soul. His paintings could only imitate other artists styles. And because he memorized all the Sherlock novels he was able to instantly solve the mystery before it even began.
It wasn’t until Data gained the ability to dream did his art and creativity start to become his own thing.
Also, AI is only as good as the people who teach it, and Data shows that well. His teaching from first Soong and then Starfleet Academy let him get by, but it was when Picard and Geordi, along with the others, particularly started teaching him about stuff (art, consent, boundaries, etc) that he really started to become more. They took the time to teach him compassion and what it means to be human, and, I think most importantly, gave him perspective to know that while he may have superior abilities, he is not superior to *any other being*.
And that, I think, is the most significant.
And I also think that’s why Starfleet folks are realistic about the holo deck, too. It’s there to govern experiences during long deep space exploration so that you can get a hit of not being confined to a ship, but it can’t replace real life. They are taught boundaries and limitations of everything.
(which a lot of folks aren’t really taught in our time)
If there’s any clearer example of how bad generator ai is (even in the Star Trek universe) it would be in the TNG episode “Schisms.”
Because in that episode Worf asks the computer to generate a table with one side lower than the other.
And it goes from looking like this:
To looking like THIS:
I’m sorry… but in what conceivable world would asking to make the table with one side higher than the other produce THAT enormous monstrosity??? Only generative ai could come up with that!
