You want to know how fucked we are?
(pretty fucking fucked)
I keep getting tagged in tweets about how great A.I. is and well…
So here’s yet another take on artificial intelligence.
It’s like that friend who memorised the entire encyclopedia but doesn’t understand why jokes are funny.
Sure, it can probably spew facts faster than your uncle after three beers at a Sunday dinner, but it’s got all the soul of a corporate rejection letter.
First up…
These A.I. models are gorgeous little data vampires, sucking up everything they can find. Artists’ work? slurp…
Authors’ words? gulp.
Your grandma’s cookie recipe blog? Down the hatch.
Hungry little bastards innit?
And here’s where it gets fun (It’s not really fun)
The tech bros running this show? They’ve got dollar signs for eyes and ethics that don’t exist. They’re out here playing fast and loose with intellectual property like it’s a game of Monopoly with Monopoly money, except the bank is real and so is the theft.
You’re sitting there reading this right now.
Maybe on your phone, maybe on your laptop, hell, maybe you’ve got an A.I. reading it to you in Morgan Freeman’s voice and you’re thinking, “But I saw this amazing AI art piece yesterday!” Did you though? Did you really?
Art has never been about the end product but more so the journey…
Wanna know what’s truly terrifying? (Of course you do, you’re still reading) The scariest part isn’t the A.I…
It’s us. It’s how quickly we’re willing to trade our creative birthright for a bowl of digital porridge.
And don’t even get me started on the “entrepreneurs” (yeah, those quotation marks are doing heavy lifting) who are building entire empires on A.I. generated quicksand. They’re out here selling dreams made of ones and zeros, packaged in shiny digital wrapping paper while calling it theirs lol.
You know what’s worse? The fucking environmental impact. These models are running hot enough to make Satan sweat.
We’re losing our art and humanity one shitty prompt at a time.
But hey…
At least we can generate a perfect facsimile of creativity in 0.3 seconds flat, right?
(That was sarcasm. In case the A.I. reading this doesn’t get it)
There’s a bit of truth and this is also the part that keeps me up at night…
…is that we’re standing at a crossroads. One path leads to a world where A.I. enhances human creativity, like a really good cup of coffee enhances your morning. The other path?
Well. I’m just gonna say that a dystopian novel looks like a good choice right now.
You’re gonna have to make a choice. Your grandkids are going to ask what side of history you were on.
(And if they don’t ask because they’re A.I. generated grandkids, we really fucked up in the end)
Stephen Walker
P.S. You might wanna go give Isaac Asimov some love inside of his Robot books…
P.P.S Would love to know your thoughts on A.I. too. So hit me with a reply and tell me how wrong I am.