I get some of the surface level reasons, and those annoy me too. Cramming AI into everything is dumb and unnecessary.
However, I do feel that at a deeper level, it has a lot of useful applications that will absolutely change society and improve the efficiency and skills of those who use it. For example, if someone wants to learn to code, they could take a few different paths. There are the traditional paths, just read or go to school and learn to code that way. Or you could pay for a bootcamp or an online coding education platform. Or, you could just tell an AI chatbot you want to learn to code, and have them become your teacher, and correct any errors you make in real time. Another application is in generating ideas or quick mock ups. Say I’m playing a game of d&d with friends. I need a character avatar so I just provide a description to the AI and it makes it up quick. It might take a few prompts, but it usually does a pretty good job. Or if I have a scenario I need to make a few enemies for, I could just provide the description of those enemies and have a quick stat block made up for them.
I realize that there are underlying issues with regard to training the AI on others work, but as someone who is a musician myself, and a supporter of open source as often as possible, I feel that it’s a bit hypocritical for people to get upset about AI “stealing” work with regard to code or other stuff that people willingly put out there for free for others to consume. Any artist or coder could “steal” the work of others for inspiration for their work, the same as an AI does, an AI is just much more efficient about it. I do think that most of the corporations that are pushing some new AI feature or promising the world or end of the labor force is full of shit, and that we are definitely in some sort of an AI bubble, but the technology itself is definitely useful in a lot of ways, and if it can be developed on a more localized and decentralized scale (community owned AI hubs anyone?), it could actually be a really powerful and beneficial technology for organizations and individuals looking to do more with less.
Right. That’s my entire point though. There are some positives, and some negatives. The dialogue I have seen around AI has basically boiled down to “AI is killing the planet and making us dumber”, when the reality is actually a lot more nuanced.
The key issue here is how it’s being used and regulation. Ai has caused a lot of harm bc it is unregulated. Like, people have committed suicide or killed others bc of conversations with chatbots. And yes, in many of these cases there are pre-existing mental health concerns, but it’s still causing someone who is unhealthy but non violent to become violent. That’s really bad.
Currently, ai not being used in positive ways, when we’re looking at the broader use of ai. Sure, some people or small organizations may use ai for specific uses which it’s good for, but that’s not how it is for most ai use. A lot of ai is taking people’s jobs/promising employers that they will be able to fire half their workforce. Even in the positive example you gave of getting a character portrait, sure you could use an ai, but there are a lot of artists that are losing commissions because it’s cheaper for people to just use ai. So the artists aren’t technically losing their job; their work is just being devalued, which is very unfortunate bc—as people have said—ai generated images don’t have intention and care put into it. Ai literally can’t do that. True art, no matter the skill level it’s made at, is made to evoke emotions, to communicate something to the viewer/reader/audience. Ai can’t create true art bc it cannot think or feel; it cannot be deliberate
I hate ai bc currently ai is a horrible thing bc of how it’s being used the majority of the time. I think after all the ai hype has died down and companies look at how these ai tools can actually be used effectively then it will be more tolerable. But right now it’s just an investment bubble and an unregulated technology that has caused severe harm
Thanks for the response, I appreciate your perspective. Definitely a reasonable take overall. I very much agree on the regulation side. It is pretty mental how unregulated it has been, especially with some of the projections about the impact that their purveyors claim it will have on society.