AI A Treatise

 

     

There’s a lot to think about here… It’s going to happen with or without my opinion, and ya’ know, everybody has a belly button…. I’m not really going to answer any specific questions here but just share my thoughts.  AI was generated by humans to a fault. So it will stand to reason that there will be many faults that will be generated by AI.  It’s the proverbial two sides of the coin. We are in a AI bubble fabricated by tech companies to boost their bottom line. There’s a whole lot of hype around it and only the early adopters will get rich trying to sell their perception of a product that will solve some problem, either fabricated or real.  (Think EFTs, Bitcoin).  Just like anything new… regulators in this country are really slow to enact protections, so we’ll just have to wait for the horror stories to play out until there’s some last straw situation to control it. AI has some really hopeful possibilities that could benefit humanity. Medical diagnosis, mechanical diagnosis, computer code creation, data collection and analysis, engineering, weather predictions… the list goes on. The only problem here is there will be a high cost of entry, and the rich people will be the ones to benefit initially. ‘merica. Who knows how long it will take to make these benefits ubiquitous to society. The other problem is the strain on resources and environment to create these AI farms. Building a nuclear reactor to power these data centers carries a whole lot of cringe worthy repercussions. You thought EFTs and Bitcoin was bad for sucking energy, here we go… turn the burners to 10.  As far as art is concerned.  It will not be good for creators that value authenticity. Or patrons for that matter. Making AI generated art is not the same as making a painting, or composing an original piece of music. I think Picasso’s axiom is quite an oxymoron now. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” AI allows the creator to steal, and does not an artist make. It will make original solid state art more valuable to those patrons that have enough conscience to care. We have already had computer generated movies and images for quite some time, so it will just be easier to get garbage out from the garbage put into it. Some will suffer, some will profit. And the lines of reality will be blurred to those too ignorant to know the difference. Time will march on.  Photography is right in the thick of it.  True artists never did believe photography was art. It was just a way of being able to reproduce reality.  This philosophy is a rabbit hole, and has been argued for over a century now, so I won’t get into it. But for me the experience of making a photography in nature is so far removed from AI that I can’t even comment on whether it’s an apple or orange. It’s the experience that matters. Being rich in experience is better than rich in my pocket. Thanks for making me think. 

By the way, the image above is not AI.  It's a composite that was taken with my real camera.