So… What’s the Deal with Everyone Hating on AI?

 A look at artificial intelligence versus the human brain

Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like cheaters.

Technically, AI isn’t cheating. It’s a tool, like any other tool. But… is it really?

What’s the point of creative writing if you’re having a program do it for you? Granted, you might edit what the AI program produces for you. And, yes, you’ll input data about what you’d like to have come out at the other end. But are you really the “writer” if you’re having the bits and bytes do all the work for you? That feels an awful lot like people who plagiarize others’ work. The motivation behind it seems to be to gain accolades without effort. To get a free payday. But that leaves the ones who are actually doing the work out of the loop.

And that’s sort of what AI seems to be enabling — look at Hollywood’s current fight against AI. Their argument? In short, that it’s money over humanity. That studios are stealing their faces, their talent, making it digital, and creating electronic ghosts that the execs can use — and profit off of — forever. Meanwhile, the people who own those faces are out of work.

To me, creativity IS the point of creating. It’s why there are still old-school things like paint and paintbrushes even if we can do everything digitally these days. And digital art CAN be created beautifully — as long as you’re not having a computer program do everything for you. As long as you’re the brain behind the creation, not the tool behind the brain.

That’s not even mentioning what’s being lost in this whole process. There have been numerous conversations and studies about how peoples’ brains are literally CHANGING as we’ve gotten more reliant on technology that does the thinking for us. Our memories are going to hell because our cell phones and computers hold all the information for us.

We’re at a turning point right now. At this moment, AI can’t do it better than us, at least when it comes to creativity—for books, the writing is worse and it often reads as emotionless, stilted, and unnatural. As an editor, I’ve read AI-created works, and I’m honestly not impressed.

Add to the fact AI can’t do it WITHOUT a human spark — you’ve got to feed it human creativity so it can make something that even seems human. And if the input you give it is finite — if, eventually, AI is an echo chamber, creating only reflections of what humans once inputted to it — where will the innovation come from when there’s no more generative capability in people themselves?

So, I guess the question we have to ask ourselves now is… why the heck would we WANT to take away that essential spark that drives our creativity?
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The simple answer is: WE DON’T.

Photo by Andy Kelly on Unsplash