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Why AI is THE Cardinal Sin of Technology
Dermugettum
We've seen this debate before: in books, movies, and reality. So I'm going to get real deep with what I have to add.
I like modern technology, and at this point, who doesn't? It's easy to overlook the light to heavy downsides they bring. Digital banking for one, is more convenient than going to a real bank to make a transaction and handle your account. However, all that electronic information leaves you more vulnerable to theft than ever. Crooks therefore don't have to go to a building to steal something. They can just hijack anyone's account with enough hacking experience. Social media is a great way to meet new faces and to stay in touch with your friends and family, but it also inflicts serious emotional stress and depression on the addicted user. Cars are the optimal way of travel, but at such high speeds they can kill with just the wrong steering or timing.
How does AI fit into all of this? Some say and even want to believe that AI will someday turn into power-hungry killing machines like the Terminator, Ultron, or the robots in the Matrix. However, the signs of AI's dark side are more subtle than this. Clearly the goal programmers have for this technology is pure automation with no human effort required. Simply put, AI is being made so we can be lazier. Binge watching tv shows or playing video games is one form laziness we invented, but AI is far worse than that. Granted, it's still reasonable to automate some tasks, like assembling products in factories, pulling financial data and business info into spreadsheets, and just about anything that could be considered mundane human suffering.
So why do we have AI generated art? What started out as a simple experiment blew up into an Internet sensation, because people are apparently too lazy to make art manually anymore. Anyone can put more passion, detail, and care into a painting than an algorithm-based machine ever could, yet here we are. Some might argue that AI art is meant to be an "idea generator" for struggling artists, but does that mean they have to give up on using the idea generators inside their heads? Probably the reason why someone can't brainstorm a project is because they're not outside touching grass, getting inspiration by living life, but slaving away at their computers trying to get the technology to make them inspired or motivated (and we should all know how "easy" it is to make inspiration happen).
There's also the common rumor or joke that producers are using AI to write plots for their movies. Given how godawful and soulless most movies are now, this shouldn't be a surprise. We don't have sufficient proof of course, but it'll just be a matter of time before AI-created movies are a norm. Just look at how much they waste animators and SFX artists in their studios. The new standard of having photorealistic CGI in characters and backgrounds has got to be hard on aspiring new artists who want to join some group like Disney. Instead of drawing the satisfying art they'd expect, they get the chore of animating every freaking hair, leaf or water droplet just to make the animation more "realistic". If AI becomes more standardized, these same people will have to give up all of their free thinking and creativity to make a robot do something far less impressive than they could've ever done. Audiences will also have to throw away their imagination to even tolerate these works of media, as these don't respect the viewer's ability to think for themselves in order to be entertained.
AI isn't just replacing difficult manual labor. It's replacing human action as a whole, the artistic kind included. If writing a story, creating a painting, or producing a movie are considered so hard that AI ought to do it instead, then AI is pretty much allowed to take away everything we do. All of this might seem like a stretch, but knowing how dependent we became on the World Wide Web (Internet), this technology could change everything with exponential risks. It's pretty much the Pandora's box of the century thus far.
I like modern technology, and at this point, who doesn't? It's easy to overlook the light to heavy downsides they bring. Digital banking for one, is more convenient than going to a real bank to make a transaction and handle your account. However, all that electronic information leaves you more vulnerable to theft than ever. Crooks therefore don't have to go to a building to steal something. They can just hijack anyone's account with enough hacking experience. Social media is a great way to meet new faces and to stay in touch with your friends and family, but it also inflicts serious emotional stress and depression on the addicted user. Cars are the optimal way of travel, but at such high speeds they can kill with just the wrong steering or timing.
How does AI fit into all of this? Some say and even want to believe that AI will someday turn into power-hungry killing machines like the Terminator, Ultron, or the robots in the Matrix. However, the signs of AI's dark side are more subtle than this. Clearly the goal programmers have for this technology is pure automation with no human effort required. Simply put, AI is being made so we can be lazier. Binge watching tv shows or playing video games is one form laziness we invented, but AI is far worse than that. Granted, it's still reasonable to automate some tasks, like assembling products in factories, pulling financial data and business info into spreadsheets, and just about anything that could be considered mundane human suffering.
So why do we have AI generated art? What started out as a simple experiment blew up into an Internet sensation, because people are apparently too lazy to make art manually anymore. Anyone can put more passion, detail, and care into a painting than an algorithm-based machine ever could, yet here we are. Some might argue that AI art is meant to be an "idea generator" for struggling artists, but does that mean they have to give up on using the idea generators inside their heads? Probably the reason why someone can't brainstorm a project is because they're not outside touching grass, getting inspiration by living life, but slaving away at their computers trying to get the technology to make them inspired or motivated (and we should all know how "easy" it is to make inspiration happen).
There's also the common rumor or joke that producers are using AI to write plots for their movies. Given how godawful and soulless most movies are now, this shouldn't be a surprise. We don't have sufficient proof of course, but it'll just be a matter of time before AI-created movies are a norm. Just look at how much they waste animators and SFX artists in their studios. The new standard of having photorealistic CGI in characters and backgrounds has got to be hard on aspiring new artists who want to join some group like Disney. Instead of drawing the satisfying art they'd expect, they get the chore of animating every freaking hair, leaf or water droplet just to make the animation more "realistic". If AI becomes more standardized, these same people will have to give up all of their free thinking and creativity to make a robot do something far less impressive than they could've ever done. Audiences will also have to throw away their imagination to even tolerate these works of media, as these don't respect the viewer's ability to think for themselves in order to be entertained.
AI isn't just replacing difficult manual labor. It's replacing human action as a whole, the artistic kind included. If writing a story, creating a painting, or producing a movie are considered so hard that AI ought to do it instead, then AI is pretty much allowed to take away everything we do. All of this might seem like a stretch, but knowing how dependent we became on the World Wide Web (Internet), this technology could change everything with exponential risks. It's pretty much the Pandora's box of the century thus far.
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Preach, my man, preach!
chatbots are fine, but AI "art" is horrible
Dude, absolutely agree.
