Mulling over some of my ongoing conversations about AI and its place, and, more broadly, 'digital' and other technologies and their places, I think it boils down to a fairly simple thing: in general, these should be tools for helping people rather than replacing people. 1/2
What is sad about some - not all, by any means - of the current growing uses of 'AI' (I think of it as II (intelligence imitation) is the extent to which these are breaking the promise of technology: rather than removing the tasks that are grindingly damaging, freeing people to less constraining labour, to greater personal creativity and growth, one of the uses is to replace that creativity with something economically cheaper and artistically less human. 2/3
Which is not to say that none of the creative uses of AI are valid - I would argue, quite strongly, that there are highly creative users of digital and AI tools who are adapting them and doing truly fascinating things with them. The concern arises at imitative nonsense, pale shadows of deep artistry being peddled as an acceptable replacement. It reduces not only artistic integrity, but the quality of appreciation. 3/4]
It risks a downward cycle, a spiral into the quite literally average - into the statistical reduction of what we have already created into what we believe we want to see and hear because we have heard and or seen something like it before, and of course we have: it is the unfocussed average of something else. 4/4 (I think?)
@Zevon I think so, too. It is humanity by averages.
Yep.
Will eventually spiral down to becoming a utility rather than a product. Right now AI as currently practiced and sold is totally unsustainable. It's a bubble. It will burst. The real practical use of AI will become not more "intelligent" but more useful.
Much like the telephone switching network of the 20th century, it will disappear into the background.
@corlin yes. people forget we're already swamped in AI-algos and have been for many years. Generative AI is one drop in the much larger AI bucket.
@Zevon @corlin Absolutely this. I'm lucky to work with people who have been working on AI (both in a broad sense, and in the 'generative' sense we use it in a lot at the moment) for decades: they are as filled with realism about its capabilities as you would wish, and are mainly resistant to the 'cool-aid'.
@corlin I very much agree with this: its real place is as a tool, something in the box to help us approach our work. I suppose, and this is loose thinking, that there is an angle that might look like the hype around 'NFT art', and recognise that it may all dissipate very quickly; certainly, 'AI creations' will very quickly become obvious and unconvincing (up to a point). But how much mess will it make in the meantime.
@andrewcusworth "the unfocused average" is a good phrase for the end product experience