Why I’m not afraid of AI.
As one of the creative professionals that generative AI seems to be attempting to replace, I’m not afraid of it.
Here’s why.
What the heck even is AI? I dare you to come up with a one-sentence description that makes sense and accurately describes what it does. It’s vague and ambiguous, and while being one of the most expensive technilogical gambles ever made.
In reality, there’s not much that’s intelligent about artificial intelligence. In my mind, the alternate term of Large Language Model—LLM—fits better. AI islittle more than an algorithm that attempts to predict the desired output of a certain input, based on a large set of real-world data it’s been fed and parsed.
Generative AI is largely this as well. I say “largely” because too often “AI” is used as a marketing gimmick to describe computational machine learning that has been around for years already. AI is often nothing brand new at all.
The first reason I’m not afraid of AI is that it seems that the ambiguous nature of what it is coupled with the astronomical costs of running it (rabbit hole here) is making a bubble ripe to pop any time now. Few people are asking for all the AI “features” we’re being gifted. It’s all currently (and horrendously) underpriced compared to the amount of money it’s burning. The butcher’s bill will have to be paid at some point. We live in a capitalist economy, and investors like to see their money not just returned to them, but multiplied. That’s not happening anytime soon for AI.
Second, LLMs are running out of real data to be trained on. AI hallucinates false information more often than politicians. This problem will only be exacerbated as AI models are trained on AI outputs that are inevitably being scraped from the open internet. What’s the next play when the AI’s training consumption appetite outpaces the amount of new, accurate data available?
Third, and it’s strange this isn’t talked about more, is the massive ethical implications behind every single LLM/AI on the field right now. AI companies lie through their teeth when they say models are only trained on data or content they have the rights to. I’ve seen for myself image generators adding garbled watermarks to pictures — you can’t tell me it’s not because they’ve scraped every single copyrighted, watermarked image on every single stock image marketplace, without any clearances or permissions.
Aside: as a creative myself, I don’t have a problem with my works being used to train an LLM, as long as I have given my permission. I’m strangely okay with Adobe’s Firefly generative AI — at least as far as the training data that has been pulled from Adobe Stock is concerned. We won’t mention Adobe’s concerning privacy policy updates that effectively gives them permission to train their AI models on any and all work being done inside any of their software. But anyway, at least with Adobe Stock (for now), there is a respect for the artist’s wishes to opt in or opt out of their work being used to train AI. Which is how it should be across the board.
Lastly, I’m not afraid of AI because it seems that people are waking up to the fact that it is so far from what it’s cracked up to be, that there may perhaps be a return to seeking information from the real world rather than whatever the internet says. Personally, I’ve found myself turning more to physical books again. I’m tired of searching for advice or information on something and being hit with search result pages full of SEO algorithm-feeding content slop, which is increasingly AI-generated. I mean, it’s inevitable that this is happening, right — anyone can now prompt-engineer a hundred pieces of content in a few minutes, and search engines are eating it up.
If anything, the AI/LLM era may bring the Dead Internet theory into reality.
I’m not afraid of AI, because I’m craving what’s real. AI’s prevalence, however long- or short-lived, is causing me to contemplate my relationship with reality, realness, and how I interact with it all in this digital age.
It’s also driving me to rekindle my love for making things. Only a person can make what that person dreams of. Only I can write the stories that have been living inside my head for decades. Sure, I could have a chatbot help me out and become a pseudo-editor for some generated output that will kinda be what I had in mind.
But there’s no fun in that. There’s no humanity in that. It robs me of the experience, of having to navigate the process and think for myself.
Maybe this means that someday those of us who choose the Path of Real will be looked down on by a society that has gone the way of the AI. That’s a risk I’m willing, and increasingly eager, to take.
That’s why I’m not afraid of AI.
