It's tiring to be talking about ai all the time. My friend had enough hearing about it all the time. And if that's the case for you too, then please, let this text be the last time you hear about it. I hope I can at least bring some new perspective to you, and that you, at the very least, resonate with what I say.
It's tiring to be talking about ai all the time, but I belive it's a topic that'll continue to be relevant today and for probably the following years, if not decade. And I believe the reason why We talk about it so much today is because I feel like the people dealing with this did not do that beforehand, before it got to the public. On that statement I could definitely be wrong, like I wasn't there working on such project at OpenAI's headquarters. Though, I believe that it is incredibly important to talk and reflect deeply about a project like the Development of Generative AI, especially way before releasing it to the public, because without the right measures already prepared, things could get out of hand pretty quickly, and for this kind of technology it could go as far as affecting the way we percieve reality. I may seem a bit over the top but what i'm saying is the sooner we figure things out, the less uncontrollable it becomes.
The development of artificial intelligence has always been about being as realistic as possible, at least that's what I imagine the goal was, and being able to create recordings, texts and scenes that have never been said, written or played, while sparking the possibility that it could have been, in a different reality, thinking that what we're seeing is something hidden, like "uncovering" what Beethoven could've made if he didn't die so soon. It's honestly fascinating to see a machine replicate what a human can do, maybe because it brings some type of personification, something that we tend to do almost all the time with either animals by anthropomorphizing them, or with innanimate objects by putting googly eyes on them.
The problem that we face today is that we rushed with excitement towards the release of this technology, and the worst part is that we made it available to the public, for everyone to play with and quench their curiosity, which pushes further its development, brings more interest and as a result, gets better faster because there's a growing demand for it. Today, ai is "magical", in the sense that you are able to create media, at lightning speeds, and that is of a certain quality that's good enough to be consumed the same way we consume real media. It makes "real enough" media, faster than a journalist, an artist, a content-creator, so much so that their labor becomes automatically obsolete, if we look at this from an economic standpoint. It's more or less the dream : there's no need to pay anyone to design, report, write, voice or sing, the output is obviously of a computer's speed, of inhuman levels, and the quality is once again, good enough, to fulfil anyone's job.
Although ai is good at all that, it still needs someone to flip the switch, and write the prompt. AI is nothing more than an static machine without the human that commands it. From here, I'm personaly led to this quote : "A computer can never be held accountable", it cannot take responsibility for its actions because as a computer, it is its job to execute these commands that were given by the human, whatever the commands might be. From here, only the person that started and/or made the machine can be held accountable for all the damage that it caused.
The rest of the quote is "therefore a computer must never make a management decision.", a quote from an IBM slide deck from 1979, but I think we can use that first part to reflect more about the fact that technically we don't hate ai, but the people who handle and profit off of it. Sure, saying that you hate AI gets the point accross, and expresses how you feel in general about this whole situation, but slowly it makes the term "AI" more and more derogatory and detached from what it specifically refers to. It becomes more of a buzzword that gets thrown around to simply mean something that you don't like or don't belive and that you deliberately accuse of being fake. In other terms, ai bad, and let's also fearmonger about everything that we see. People know that it's supposed to look real but they don't really seem to have a sense of its evolution in time and how good it is in its current state, which makes it all the more confusing. Maybe what I'm reading is ai, what I've seen in the past hour is ai, everything is ai, whatever that means.
From my personal experience I've been doing pretty good so far at recognizing ai generated content, even when challenged to, whether that'd be text, images, videos or music, but what's the point in telling you this if I'm not even able to explain it to you how I did it and what to look for when trying to detect it. I can throw around as many adjectives as I want, "granularity", "warblyness", "mushy", and I can tell you that I've been interested in AI since 2020 and that i've been very close to this topic and so I may be ahead from everyone else and and have a more accute "sense", able to recognize artifacts, but none of that matters to you because that's probably not your situation, and I'm also bad at explaining things. I just haven't figured everything out, yet.
We see AI as a replacement of us. As much as factories replace human labour, AI does the same in more diverse situations. But are we misusing it ? What I mean is, are we giving it the wrong tasks? After all, didn't we build a society to make life easier in the future?... For the future even? We may all agree that chores are basically annoying to do, while being necessary for comfort. It write itself in the category of "work", because after all that hard and tiring labor, you just want to sit down. Take a nap, it's needed for the human! Yet, the dishes are still there. You wish you didn't have to do more "work", you expected you didn't have to do that. If we managed to project in so many movies and series the possibility that robots could do all that extra-work, why don't we have that now? Is it too soon? Why wasn't it the first thing that we made artificial intelligence to be?
Here, it takes the form of a chatbot, well, put it differently and you get a text-generator, an image-generator, a music-generator; It's Gen-AI, and for everyone to use! And I don't think you could release it like that without thinking "How could it ever go wrong?". You know that it will go wrong. People betray us; let the betrayer use that "make-a-wish" technology, and you've turned it into a danger, a weapon. Even worse, you cannot say that you didn't think about that possibility because Deepfakes are a thing, and a known thing. Consent doesn't exist in the world of AI. And naïvely, you trust everyone so easily with a button that launches a disease. And I know that not everyone is a "betrayer", but it doesn't change from the fact that there are some, and that's dangerous enough.
Now, aside from the fact it's a weapon, we also use it the way it's indended to be, to do "the chores". Which chores you may ask? Right, because we humans tend to be a little selective with the stuff that we choose to do and not do, some prefer to procrastinate over doing homework, and I am one to say that, I've had a hard time dealing with that, and it's still the case today. But the classes best's friend is ChatGPT. As a teacher, and be true to yourself please, do you really trust teenagers with using that sort of thing? Or did you simply give up? I understand the latter, everyone got ChatGPT in their pockets, and if some teachers gave up regulating phone uses in class by putting them on the desk, then you might as well authorize them using AI. But don't be naïve thinking that it helps them, because it offers more than just help, and students already fed up with the work given, AI is only going to be asked to do it instead, so that the others skip it, and move on quick.
That may be my main complain, people are naïve with AI. And I see that in the scope of music, because sure, the argument that it can create any sample, help with backing tracks, separate stems and other things like that are receivable arguments. But don't believe people will use it like that, when it can generate a whole track. Make the difference between a musician that knows better and the public. Because some random guy, who doesn't know shit about music, that decides to take a shortcut into having a "successful carreer", will do it with AI : generate the track, upload it through DistroKid, which makes the process of distributing to streaming services way easier for the public, and do that again and again, while looking at your bank account seeing the funny number going up. Automate the process! Now you don't have to do it a thousand times! Make multiple artist profiles, and do the same thing! Keep gaining money, wow, what an amazing investment that is! That's how we get Spotify, flooded up with a bunch of music from someone who is so seperated from the artistic process, that it makes him only view art as an investment and a product. As something purely functional, and nothing more. It's sad knowing that he never touched a guitar string, let alone a piano key. And if he ever did that before, if he ever played any instrument, now he looks like a plain poser. Talking about Spotify, it's not like this platform ever helped artists anyway. What I'm talking about, is happening. And it's making artists even more in danger, because yes, it's over the top, but AI is replacing humans. And we let that happen knowingly.
Now you may not care about artists' lives, but you may care about the environmental cause! But even there, it's bad. Yet, you could definitely host some genai inside of your computer and train it there, with whatever data you wish to train it on. But people don't really care about maintaining a product. It's a centralized technology, held by the big companies that are able to control the dataset more easily and tweak the AI in case it does something really really bad. Though you even got to trust the company, and you know how that usualy goes. But I've heard, as many others, that it takes an INSANELY huge amount of water to keep the servers cool enough to properly function. I've also heard that since they're using a closed system, it reuses the same water so it's actually not that bad. That kind of aspect is unfortunately blurry to me, because now I'm doubtful, and it depends on which datacenter you're retrieving the information from, what stuff you're including in your numbers, but the fact that there may be a problem tied to the environment is already a huge red flag, so that's another aspect to take in account. Another reason why you shouldn't be using AI. Every bad things piles up and accumulates, and leaves me wondering, is my homework, DND campaign, advertising, and any of my personal desires more important than human obsolecence and the world dying?
As consumers, we feel like we aren't supposed to be entitled as an actor of such impact, we're only consumers! Why would me, a citizen, be partaking in such injustice? Genocide, child slavery, global warming, even war, all of that because me? I may not wish to consider myself a direct actor of this, but I reconize that I may be a consumer that enables the prolongation of all that. I did consume Apple's products, but I did also hear about what's happening in Congo. Because I bought their product, I may make slavery continue there... But I've got morals! I hate slavery, I hate genocide, I don't want to be a part of this! And even if I have an impact on that, it's not me who made the decision for that to happen, it's the higher-ups! Does it make my case a little better? While I do understand what's happening there, I also still want to live comfortably... All of these products that I'm using make me live, should I sacrifice my comfort over the life of these poor people?" Why yes, you should, it seems pretty reasonable. Ever hear about boycotting? Seems to work against Starbucks and McDonalds. And also, why put it as "sacrificing your comfort"? There are products out there, that you've never heard of, that are as good, if not better, than what you're already using, minus all the negative impact in the world. But also, I did leave Spotify for a reason, but I admit it would be a bullet through my foot as a musician who wants to live off of their art, if I went all independant and cut myself from every streaming services that are at least simply known by the grand public, because I wouldn't get any visibility if I did that. But I agree, I got morals. And I want my life to go in the same direction as these morals, and I wish you do too, and act with that. It'd make you feel a bit better about all that!
Note : If you managed to read all the way this text, first things first, I'm proud of you, and also I haven't finished.
Want to tell me what you think about? It's right here.