The rise of AI has been creeping along in the background for some time now and there is no doubt that it is only getting better.
It’s gone from something that was mocked for inaccuracy, hallucination and uncanny images or video to being capable of producing fairly high-level results with alarming consistency. And, as with anything that is “new” and “exciting”, it has been shoe-horned into almost every part of the digital world, whether it suits it or not.
Many people love it – many use it daily. Speak to it, ask it for advice, get it to generate funny images or come up with quirky songs or videos.
And almost as many people hate it with the red-hot fury of a thousand burning suns.
The reasons for people to dislike it or hate it are fairly obvious. They feel that there is something soulless about a machine that is used to create things that used to be considered “art”. They are adamant that anything generated this way is “AI Slop” and that they’d never use it.
It’s doing people out of jobs – and that part is certainly true. Much in the same way the invention of the calculator or the computer took away the jobs of multiple people, any advance in technology will leave behind it a blood-stained path of burgeoning careers. After all, why would a company pay five writers or artists or programmers when they can leverage AI to generate the majority of the output and maybe employ one person to check and tweak it?
The answer is that they wouldn’t, they won’t and they already aren’t.
The disdain for AI is now coming tinged with a little bit of fear as the rubber meets the road and people are seeing their careers being sideswiped in real time.
Companies aren’t bothering to pay for stock images anymore when they can use AI to whip up something that is serviceable in seconds at a fraction of the cost.
Graphic Designers, Artists, Writers, Musicians… they are all feeling the real impact as the value of their work is actively reduced and their industry is being undercut by a machine.
One of the most succinct descriptions of the main issue that some people have with AI was something I read online.
As with almost anything I’ve ever said that was either profound, succinct or smart, I committed it to memory and will replicate it here poorly, in order to hoover up the residual plaudits, scavenged from a superior mind.
“I wanted AI to do my washing and my cleaning so that I could concentrate on my Art and Music. Not to create Art and Music so that I can spend more time doing the housework.”
It might be glib, it might be overly simplified, but it captures the sentiment perfectly. People expect the latest technology to make their lives easier and it usually does.
But some never seemed to see this coming.
I have seen – in real time – corners of the internet moving from laughing at the videos and images AI could produce and gradually, almost fearfully, beginning to mock it as “soulless slop”.
Gone are the days of generated images with too many or too little fingers. With unfathomably long limbs or “uncanny valley” looks on their face.
Plenty of what it can produce is high-quality and would pass as human – at least for the purposes it is used for.
I have seen firsthand people praising an image only to find out it was made by AI and doing a complete change of direction, pointing out all the “flaws”.
So, what does the future look like as AI continues to improve and becomes even more common in our day to day lives?
I think the outlook for some specific industries is fairly bleak. At least in the form they exist now.
Absolutely, AI will never photograph a perfect landscape for you. It will never painstakingly hand-paint a mural to your exact requirements. It will not be able to write you a song that is loaded with human emotion.
But it is already at the stage where it can simulate a lot of these things – at least the ones that don’t need a human to physically interact with anything – to a close enough degree that it will be close enough for more than 90% of the population.
Yes, it requires enormous computing power and the argument will always be made about cost and environmental impact, but the pendulum of public opinion is never the zealots on either end of the spectrum.
There are the vocal minority at either end that will ask AI about every single thought that crosses their mind while listening to artificially generated music and watching a video created by their own perfect prompt without a second thought.
And there are some that will never touch AI out of some form of principal, regardless of how much it is pushed.
Both are fair and both are valid. The reality is that it is not going anywhere.
And, as ever, I will tuck my own opinion quietly in at the end of a long, rambling spiel – confident that hardly anyone will bother reading far enough down to even reach it.
Firstly, I believe that the feats that AI can accomplish now are truly impressive and the rate at which it has improved is incredible to see. That anyone who claims otherwise is either kidding themselves or has not seen what the most recent versions can do.
Secondly, I know it is going nowhere. I have seen people leveraging AI all day, every day. Not specifically for creative outlets sometimes. Just as a sounding board. A therapist. A machine in your pocket that can give you advice or knock you up a song at the click of a button.
It’s only going to get further ingrained in our lives and you’d have more luck stopping the Niagara Falls with a kitchen chair than you would stopping the march of AI.
Thirdly, it has certainly decimated entirely industries already and it will continue to do so.
Some of the creative fields are going to be nuked by this – and whether we like it or not, that is the way it’s going to be. Many programmers laugh at the idea that AI is taking all the coding jobs, since they are experienced enough to realise that what it outputs is passable for the average person but would never stand up to professional standards.
But that is exactly the problem. “Good enough” is now good enough. Especially for corporations. The bottom line is money and no corporation worth its salt is ever going to cut into their bottom line when there is the chance to save a bit of cash, regardless of the human cost.
And finally, there will probably be some who think that I am not directly opposed to AI just because it hasn’t affected me personally yet. But this isn’t true.
The need and the demand for human-produced writing has completely fallen off a cliff as more and more people and companies see the opportunity to cut their costs and leverage AI instead.
But the difference is that I don’t blame them. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like AI isn’t a powerful tool that has the capacity to reduce costs for people. To save time. To increase output.
I’m also not going to pretend liked there is some moral failing in anyone that chooses to go this route.
Admittedly, this is an opinion that we are able to hold only because writing is still just a hobby for us.
It’s something that is done for some perverse sense of satisfaction or because it is something that is – at least sometimes – enjoyable as a pastime.
There is no doubt that my opinions would be different if this was what I did to put food on the table and provide for my family.
But, as it stands, if the landscape keeps changing and the realms of art, writing, music and photography all begin to lean more towards soulless machines, it is not something that would surprise me. Far less annoy me.
It is impossible to stand in the way of progress, even if you personally feel that it isn’t progress at all.
My only bugbear is with people who are in these industries – self-proclaimed creatives – who make all the complaints that I have briefly covered before, but still utilize AI themselves.
If you dislike it, if it threatens your livelihood, if you worry that it will take away something fundamental from society – then the least you could do is not use it to make your own life easier.
Use it or don’t, the choice is yours.
But, it is safe to say that in one form or another, AI is here to stay. And it’s only going to spread further.
