Why Am I Not Afraid of AI?

Tuesbetter Newsletter #113

Happy Thursday!

Here’s a video to brighten your day and give you helpful medical advice. (Chyna and I have been saying “I’m sowwy” to each other ad nauseam for weeks since I came across this.)

Also, I was interviewed by my friend Ron, mostly about my documentary. Here’s our lovely conversation.

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Why Am I Not Afraid of AI?

A rambly rant.

Look, I’m absolutely no expert about the goings on in the tech world. And I’m NO tech optimist. But I’m NO tech pessimist either.

I don’t know all that AI has to offer and all the damage it has already done. I’ve certainly seen articles about lots of people losing jobs because of AI. I’ve also seen articles about amazing medical advances because of AI.

And I feel largely insulated by the effects of AI because I’m lucky enough to have a job based largely on my personality, with which I can do pretty much whatever I want.

Still, I see lots of AI-generated content, which basically steals real content from real people. I see fake facsimiles of real people. I see amazing looking AI video. I’ve used AI for idea generation.

So, what am I saying? I guess, I think AI is an amazing technology that will be great, bad, and meh.

I don’t think it will be the end of the world!

And I don’t think it will ever replace art!

And I’m suspicious that it’s not going to improve all that much from what we have now. I’m usually suspicious of “the next great thing” in technology and I’m also suspicious of “the coming apocalypse” everyone loves to talk about.

Yes, there have been advances in the last year or so with what AI can accomplish visually and how it can understand your prompts. But it ain’t all that much better, imo.

I’m sick of tweets showing snippets of video, saying something like “it’s over!” What the hell does that mean? It is FAR from replacing a movie or show with actual human performance unless we all just want to watch slo-mo vista montages. Or the most generic writing possible.

And a large percentage of the “greatness” of any piece of art is the CONTEXT in which it was created. It’s never just judged solely on its physical merits in a vacuum.

I’m pretty sure AI could never write this post the way I’m writing it. I’m pretty sure you can tell this is coming straight from Craig brain.

But say it could. And I told you this was written by AI. It would change your entire perspective about it. And I assume it would go into the realm of “sucky” in your mind.

But say I didn’t tell you. Say AI was this good and was capable of allowing me to trick you. Well then that would mean ANYONE could trick ANYONE all the time. It would devoid all written things of value. Suddenly, there would be an incentive to prove that you didn’t use AI, and that would become more valuable. Or to write in a way that AI doesn’t (if that’d be possible).

I don’t know what that all means but I suspect a world like that would be very far off or will never come.

(Granted, people are using AI and tricking people all the time right now, but it’s likely their true voice isn’t coming through. And I don’t actually think it’s wrong to use AI for help as a writing tool. But if you’re doing something fact-based, be careful there, buddy.)

I mean, for a long time it hasn’t been hard to copy and share and fake good pieces of art. And yet, the great art still exists and we still value it. I don’t think that’s going away.

Wink (ding),
Craig