The A.I. Revolution
Artificial Intelligence is making waves these days. The concept has been around for ages. Hollywood has already given us multiple visions (e.g., Terminator and the Matrix) of the human race being decimated by AI. As impressive as our current AI capabilities and their growth have been, we still seem to be pretty far from the AI apocalypse. That doesn’t mean it can’t cause problems. Just ask all the teachers that now have to deal with students trying to pass off AI generated essays as their own work.
With the advent of any new technology comes an adjustment phase where we as a society have to figure out how to use the new technology in an effective and responsible way. The problem is that, with some technologies, not everyone will agree on what constitutes a responsible use. I’m sympathetic to some of the complaints. At one point human artists were the only option for the artistically inept people like myself to turn our ideas into images. Now there are a thousand different image generators that can spit something out in a fraction of the time it would take an artist to produce a similar work. AI is going to put all the human artists out of work right? I’m not convinced. I like AI art, but the generators can’t give you truly novel works of art. No matter how good you are at prompting, it’s still impossible to get exactly what you want, at least not without spending money on credits. At the end of the day, it’s a tool. It won’t eliminate creative people, but it may change the way those people create.
I assume everyone reading this blog has seen my website. Very close to 100% of the imagery used for the site is AI generated, so maybe I’m a little biased. If I had the resources and time, I would have loved to hire a real artist to create all the pictures. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have. Using those AI tools to try and bring my ideas to life has been one of the most enjoyable parts of this whole process.
There are some wrinkles to work out with AI and how it’s used, but it’s not the end of the world. That said, I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle. The revolution is officially here. At this point, people can get on the train or get run over by it. I know which option I chose. For now, I’m enjoying the ride.
