I guess my biggest issue with AI and I do have issues with AI on the whole, is not that it can make things “better” more easily, but that it will likely make things so easy human endeavour will fall away.
Human endeavour?
I am talking about achievement through effort with genuine the fear of failure.
Courage, commitment, vision, all the things that make us human are hard, they take….well, the words at the front and lots of them and sometimes, most times failure is present in some part. Many would argue that failure is actually required to achieve anything of value.
The problem of AI is that we will remove fear, but also remove the ability for special people going to great effort to follow their dreams to stand out.
If someone creates something amazing, instantly others can mimmick their efforts using AI. What is the reward for effort in the immediate future?
Have you ever noticed that when DVD’s (videos) and CD’s (tapes, records) were your only way of accessing media, you owned and watched them, you enjoyed the experience and felt privaleged you had them and did not have to wait for your TV channel to replay them. Now we can have anything when ever we want, notice how we are often unable to find anything to watch.
This usually leads to apathy, the excitement bubble bursts, the need to connect is gone, there is no urgency.
This is the culmination of generations of care and learning. Is it so invaluable to us that a mass produced copy should be accepted as equal?
AI will take that to the next level. It will generify things, create increasingly bland and unimaginative answers to age old questions. AI will remove the desire, the bulk of the process and the fear. It will make so many things unchallenging, the challenge ironically will be to find something that is not AI generated, to fight back and create against the flow, becasue that, as has been proven so many times in the past, is how real creatives work.
Behind every great story there is a story, one that is more compelling than “AI write me a script”. Do we really want to lose those stories?
As an example, I was listening to the radio recently, the programme covering tech and AI development generally and one guest, a university expert with experience with many Chinese students said that in China, copying and improving are their focus, nt innvation. Innovation requires failure, failure is not acceptable and to some that he spoke to, unfathomable. They would rather let the west try and fail to create then improve on that creation once proven.
AI is very much like that. It will reduce waste, it will avoid embarrassment, but it will also remove urgency, excitement, fear, learning from failing and it will reward some people who simply would not have made the effort once.
At first glance, daffodils look perfect. On closer inspection they are all slightly different, so which is the most perfect? In various stages og their lives they are more or less perfect for their various uses, but if made by AI how would you measure this and how can a human instructing an AI ever hope to match natures perfect imperfection?
We crave perfection, but as any true master of creation will tell you, perfection is not a worthy end point. The journey is, otherwise what are we even here for?
So what is important?
People (and animals etc). I have seen a lot of movies and series lately that have failed to excite with their bland, soft and colourless shallow depth look, because for all their special visual effects they lack soul, story and connection.
The film that really moved me, one that sat with me for days after and still comes to mind was Train Dreams, a film with almost no CGI (some was used for the larger fire sky scenes), had a small cast, no real plot, no on trend “look” to fall back on other than an ironic nod to the old, squarer stills images of the time. What it had was a deep connection to people, the place and the time, something that “special” visual effects would likely only have diluted.
We need to stay connected, to see through the veil of fakery we seem to be assaulted by more and more often. Bad things are happening, but good things also, so be part of the world around you and when you record this still amazing world, be less focussed on effects applied and more on the subject.
These things are timeless and you may be one of the few voices pushing back against a “lost” period of our history.