I kind of feel bleh for talking about AI so much, but everyone in every nook and corner of my life, personal and professional, is talking about it, so it’s hard to avoid wanting to chime in.
When you’ve got multiple thumbs in varying (and very different) pies, you’re exposed to a diversity of opinions, and wow is it diverse. If you’re only mingling in liberal arts circles, then you’re not hearing, truly hearing, the discussions about AI happening in the scientific circles, and if you’re only mingling in scientific circles, then you’re not hearing, truly hearing, the discussions about AI happening in the liberal arts circles. And so it’s been interesting hopping from one camp over to the other and back to witness the contrast.
My Silicon Valley techie friends are enamored with AI. They see law departments as a barrier to their innovation. They poo-poo naysayers. If given unfettered free rein, they would have built Skynet already.
My art and design friends are armed to the teeth with pitchforks against AI and ready to cancel anyone who says anything positive about it. By the way, valid concerns. The flood of AI-generated books on the market that are not transparently disclosing AI use is very suss.
The deck creators hiding the fact they use AI is even more suss — if you think it’s okay to use AI, then own it. Shout it from the rooftops. Be proud you’re using AI. And if you would rather hide the fact you use AI, then ask yourself, what are you not proud of and why are you doing something you are not proud of?
There is a lot of egregious conduct surrounding AI development and uses that call for scrutiny and regulation. But let’s not dismiss the potential positives.
Generative AI is currently being developed to reduce carbon emissions, reduce waste, and also generate actionable solutions for biodiversity preservation.
It’s being used in the healthcare sector to improve population health, close socioeconomic-based gaps in care, and help to detect early signs of disease before human health professionals can.
In the realm of medical imaging, generative AI has already been a lifesaver.
Generative AI and deep learning is also being utilized in investment banking, like algorithmic trading, risk management, and portfolio optimization – maybe that’s not a plus; it’s helping the rich get richer.
Among attorney colleagues, you’ll find an assortment of opinions, from those adopting a more conservative approach, concerned about data privacy, consumer protection, and security, not to mention how are we going to iron out the IP wrinkles, to the more progressive embrace of AI as a tool that will revolutionize professional industries.
What motivated me to sit down and type this was something I started to intuit. This platform’s audience might not be positioned such as to have the insider information they would need to make more informed choices to preserve personal survival.
Initially I saw the advent of AI as having a democratizing effect. More lay people can now have greater access to specialized knowledge and information.
But then it struck me: What if the advent of generative AI will further divide the classes and widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots?
All this talk of how AI will level the playing fields, actualize equity, and promote equal opportunity. I mean, I hope so. But the more I learn, the more I question that. Because from my observations, already what it’s doing is widening gaps.
At present, those with exclusive access (read: privilege) are leveraging that access to AI applications to advance way ahead of those who lack access.
Every corporation with any amount of resource is treating AI tech development like an arms race. Meanwhile individual humans, especially those in the arts and humanities, are not taking any measures to claim their seat at the table. When that new world order is settled, who will find themselves marginalized and left behind?
Even in healthcare, where the rhetoric has been how AI will close care gaps to promote health equity and democratize care, all the lawsuits so far have been about how corporations are using AI to try and pay out less money or reject coverage of health care services. A certain AI program that was supposed to address racial disparities turned out to be, um, well… racist.
Automating so many digital functions online, where most people live nowadays, has meant quite a bit of (hopefully unintentional) censorship. There’s no human to read between the lines (of code…) to apply beyond-the-algorithm creative or critical thinking. And so in an attempt to skirt censorship, individuals now self-censor. There will be more homogeny of published thought. Not only do influencer faces on social media all look alike now, but soon the way we communicate and the way we think will get homogenized.
I was once told that my resume had gotten filtered out of the shortlist of candidates for a particular position I applied for, but fortunately there was a proactive manager who wanted to “think outside the box” and check the reject pile, happened to see mine, and hand-picked it out of the trash to call me in. I ended up getting the job offer because a human decided they wanted something out of the ordinary.
Right now most resumes are getting filtered through an AI bot with programmed keywords. There’s no “thinking outside the box” unless that company happens to have a proactive manager. This practice of relying on AI automated processes is going to mean perilous uniformity. It will disincentivize originality and creativity. You’ll no longer get wild cards on your team, because that’s not what the bot is looking for. How, exactly, is this going to be good for diversity?
Instead of saying that I am for or against AI, I would simply say that I have concerns.
The promises for what AI can do are in line with the missions and values I care the most about. But will those promises be delivered?
We look to the Industrial Revolution for some historical data. Sure, it increased the middle class by creating new industries, new economic opportunities and increased entrepreneurship, which we are already seeing with the rise of the Digital Era.
But the Industrial Revolution also concentrated wealth among the tycoons and financiers. Labor conditions got really bad before it hit a tipping point and finally started to improve, thanks to labor unions. Stratified socioeconomic divisions and income inequality did result, which suggests that the same is going to happen when AI drives the next era of technological and economic change. I predict richer rich people and poorer poor people before the growing pains steady.
If one prefers to be on the richer rich side than the poorer poor side, then perhaps even if we don’t agree with AI use, and certainly there are ways to tacitly defy its influence and impact, realistically to ensure our own future, it wouldn’t hurt to arm ourselves with as much knowledge and skills as we can in a way that will put us on top when that wave finally crashes to shore. It’s been an arms race not for no reason.
And so this is me saying, sure, hold fast to your opinions, but don’t let stubbornness become self-sabotage. The canary in the coal mine has already dropped dead. What is your next move, player?
benebell wen 
my brother and many of his and my friends are artists, and I also work in the financial industry. There needs to be proper code of conduct or regulations around this. Though there are amazing opportunity with this technology …. There is always a negative possibility as well.
ai isn’t going away, But to turn a blind eye while those who are creatives are being stolen from- Is awful. There is something of the human element that truly makes things magical.
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I feel heartened that a lot of influential voices in the room *are* advocating on behalf of creatives and continue to work on stringent regulation around data collection and AI use in an effort to protect those creatives. The progress might be too slow, not enough and too late, and there are criticisms to be made, for sure.
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I honestly don’t see a lot of positives in this technology and I believe it will only make humanity more stupid. I remember my days in high school when I needed to draw all the graphs by hand for mathematics. Tedious, yes, but it helped me understand the concepts I was learning about and how they changed with variations in formulas. Fast forward a few years later and my sister has a scientific calculator. She’s very intelligent and yet she struggled with certain concepts in math. While tutoring her I realized it was because she didn’t gain the understanding I had from tediously drawing out numerous graphs. The scientific calculator made her life easier, but also made her more “stupid” by making it easier.
That being said I can’t deny that to survive in this time-pressed society with its mental framework, a tool like this comes in handy. I use it but with a healthy dose of skepticism. I always verify any answer and use my knowledge and experience to vet an answer. But what happens to the person who doesn’t have knowledge and experience that comes from pre-AI times? What happens to the person who blindly believes and is guided by its answers out of laziness or a lack of knowledge? How will this technology dictate their thinking? Because ultimately with this type of tool, the children we’ll be raising won’t be able to critically vet an answer because they most likely won’t learn the foundations behind an answer (like my sister above).
While the tool comes in handy for time’s sake, I am painfully aware that it robs me from the opportunity to hone my skills or refine my thinking. There’s such a satisfaction that comes from working hard to perfect your skills. Encountering obstacles and then thinking of creative ways to solve them. But perhaps I’m pessimistic. Perhaps there will be different obstacles to solve and skills to hone (like creating better prompts – how fun! Yay!)
I honestly don’t like the society we’re becoming or where the world is headed. I’m keeping up with it but reluctantly because I’m not ready to let go of the mental bubble we live in to live a simpler life and forgo some of the luxuries I crave (to have the luxuries, you need to participate in society and follow its rules). To thrive in this mental bubble you definitely need to know how to work with the technology to avoid the social divide you described above in your blog that most likely will come (given that it is a development mostly driven by greed). However, I don’t think it will increase our satisfaction in life.
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Totally agree. Making humanity stupider is even more concerning bc the kids can’t read now. I’m already assuming we’re doomed thanks to iPad kids, social media “Influencers” generation Alpha, etc., etc., etc.
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Yep. To all of the above.
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(To your post, that is. I haven’t read the comment section yet.)
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At my age (52), still a bit too far from comfortably retiring, I’m concerned. I have a job interview next week and suspect I was hand-picked as well like you, bc he said he called me immediately. I have seniority, despite that a colleague told me to go hard on the application keywords being reviewed by AI bots. I was also trying to see if I’d even get called at all. Whew.
I’ve already seen AI do jobs I had to train and pass tests for myself in my own Dept (government). It’s disheartening but what can you do? I’m hoping to be long out of this rat race before it takes my job entirely.
I don’t like it, bottom line. Don’t even get me going on creativity and art.
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That was an interesting read. I can always count on you for a balanced perspective Benebell.
In this era of ‘pick a side’ politics, and algorithms pushing outrage. It’s becoming rarer to see people expressing nuanced opinions.
I’ve been reading about AI here and there. Unfortunately, the more I hear about Silicon Valley the more I wonder if they’re, perhaps, a bit misguided.
Thank you!
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pretty sure things will become more complex . But human realities won’t change
Haves and have nots
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What would be good is of AI could demonstrate what an appallingly bad idea free market economics has been. Theres hope yet!
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Humans have yet to come up with a perfect economic system. It seems like the trend has been to cycle from system to system.
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Yepp, I do agree with you. I like to experiment with AI and I do see that it can have great advantages. However, I share your concerns about filtering algorithms and applications where it widens the gap between people (whether that be socioeconomic or in opinions).
And I hate it, when it is used to ostensibly beeing helpful, but actually holding people at bay. Ever had a conversation with a chat-bot that is supposed to answer faq, but your request does not fit in? Oh dear, that sucks…
btw, how can you actually be that sure, that they didn’t secretly invent Skynet alread? lol
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This might be a blog post in answer (applause) to a blog post, for those interested:
I am an artist, and I am married to an AI researcher, both sides of the coin …
…(said AI researcher is a phd on language — software language — and thus on neural networks)…he works on the absolute cutting edge of AI leading a team working on developing projects. He leads a world-prominent research effort with many life-saving and economy-boosting results (foreign and with domestic ramifications).
So I have a wide perspective of this issue, Benebell you have framed the issue well. What has been spoken above is truth.
As an artist, anytime a painting is posted somewhere without the artist credit, I am the one who goes to hunt down who is the artist and then post back “this is the artist, please if you are going to post a photo of artist work, only do so if you have found the artist and can at least credit their work. Do not steal artist work and just post it for your social media gain and ignore the artist, please.”…
I wonder how many who are not artists and upset by AI in fact do steal artists work nonetheless. I have even had to educate a social justice warrior friend why it is wrong for her to post artist content without stating the artist name.
Stealing artist work is indeed happening by AI. That needs addressing. It will need to be addressed by the courts. Our courts (US) are imperfect obviously. We can hope for fair outcome eventually. But we all know this physical world is not fair; justice happens cosmically outside this time in the end.
And AI is indeed racist. It is racist because it was made by content that is racist, and racism content is like the nanoparticles of plastic in the very air we breathe: it is everywhere and impossible to fully irradiate, and therefore impossible to leave out of the AI training. All we can do is keep retraining AI on better and better and better content — HUMAN generated pure-at-heart content. (This comment is from a white woman).
But AI is already saving hundreds of thousands of lives!
People really have no idea how cutting edge the research is getting.
Positives:
Africa now has a leading voice on the world stage now for application of AI. AI Research offices in Africa staffed by Africans with a direct voice to the heads of world research, this has been established for two years now.
Africa now has image monitoring that REPLACES EXPENSIVE ultrasound machines — Africa had prior but a handful of ultrasound machines! Most pregnancies for example did NOT have the benefit of ultrasound. Why? Because the machines are far too expensive for most medical clinics in Africa, where many people live on $500 to $5000 US per year, and thus medical clinics are equally financially constrained. But with AI and inexpensive imaging, the blend allows a result that is the same level of output.
Africa has 3000 languages (!!!), virtually NONE (just a handful!!!). available in translation apps. AI research just released 30 new African languages and has the goal of translating every African language to any language in the world.
Language translation in general: AI is making the nuance of translation much more accurate, much more native sounding in the translation, capturing idiom better and subtlety of meaning much better, and it will continue to improve.
Locust forecasting, had never been done, is being advanced.
Flood forecasting: something that has been near IMPOSSIBLE until now, being researched with promise
Weather forecasting: We in the West have NO IDEA how many people in this world have lived WITHOUT WEATHER FORECASTING. This is changing!! Africa again as example had virtually no weather forecasting! India, much the same. Yes they recorded weather in most regions, but not all microclimates. Yes there are written analog records. But forecasting is vital: knowing when to plant seed when you spend your annual spare cash savings all on that seed only to see it washed away by a flood a week later is devastating, life threatening, this is vital AI need.
More positives:
Farmer needs, routing around weather obstacles, bettering education access, better imaging for water sources, medical advancement of things like stem cell therapy, cancer research, global warming research, solutions research, physics research, knowing how to steer meteors away from earth research, genetics research, money translation across borders with greater ease, moving money with greater ease electronically, saving near-extinct animals research, save the bees (and thus FOOD!) research, modeling of university research at scales unfathomable, there are So. Many. Results…. of AI, people who have not researched it cannot comprehend what is happening, understandably. Thus open minds are needed, a positive outlook is needed to influence better results that help more people. I can barely comprehend it and I have a built-in AI professor teacher in my family. (He literally used to be a professor.)
No AI is not sentient. No it is not close to being sentient. No it cannot pass a Turing test in long form. No it cannot smell and access memory and sense at a distance and communicate through mindstream. No it cannot do a true tarot card reading.
We are as Benebell has said at a new revolution, beyond the revolution of the printing press (how many scribes lost their jobs? How many spoke of the evils of mechanical printing), ….
…. beyond the revolution of the automobile: how may carriage makers and horse keepers and feed makers and feed brokers and horse vets and stable builders and horseshoe makers and saddle makers and horse trainers and horse brokers and horse breakers and post-hitch installers and horse groomers and on and on.. lost their jobs during that revolution? In 20 YEARS TIME the horse industry was decimated.
How many abacus makers lost their jobs when calculators were made?
(I am 61, I used both in school, I did not learn less math for using calculators but I did learn manual before allowed the calculator.)
We CANNOT learn everything AI is learning and showing us as result. But it will be accessible for us to find the answers. We cannot comprehend the enormity of information already available to us — Not as human we cannot, only as infinite spirit-mind can we truly comprehend what is happening here.
But is is the new incoming tidal wave. And if we do not ride it we will drown or be left destitute in its wake. We can resist, or we can ride the coming wave.
I often think what is happening in the spirit realm that equals this incoming tidal wave? As above, so below. Can we even begin to ponder that incomprehensible part of what is truly reality?
Thanks for reading, I hope it allows closed minds to begin to question. Blessings to all, on both sides of this story.
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This was a great commentary and reflection on the subject! Thank you!
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Wow tthank you so much. I would never have been able to give this many examples and state it all so well. But I agree! These are such exciting times!
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I use AI for tarot readings and also to generate reading prompts. So far I like it, even if I was against it at first… it brings new insights to my readings, help me reflect. http://www.tarotjournal.com is what I use
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Hey Bell – Mel here. Such an interesting topic. I’m not an AI hater, and know it has some really good applications though I haven’t been too impressed by purely AI generated art as it can be really “uncanny valley”. But what irks me is the major corporations just forcing people to agree to have their artwork used in this way. I just read the following in an art newsletter I get:
“If you have an account with Meta (either an Instagram or Facebook account), chances are you know about the new rules which have just been introduced. From the 26th June 2024, Meta is now able to access information you have posted on these platforms (not including private messages) to train its AI bots. They will be going back as far as 2007 to scrape this information, including photos and videos. IE YOUR ORIGINAL ARTWORK.
And if you’re in a country without a data protection agreement (like Australia or the US), AND you’re an artist, this is pretty concerning news regarding your privacy and copyright rights.”
Now, I do not have a Meta account, but other people might post my cards and art there, and I’m happy if they do share it with attribution. But does this mean even though *I* haven’t agreed to Meta’s boilerplate that my art is now theirs to use for whatever? It is off putting.
I also recently learned that Adobe, makers of Photoshop, just pushed out an update that not only forced people to agree that their art could be used to train an AI, but if you did not agree, not only could you no longer access the product – but you could not even delete their product!
Now, I don’t use Adobe or Photoshop, I use freeware products like GIMP to format stuff. But lets say I send my card files or book files to a printer, who may or may not load them into an Adobe product to do whatever they do to the files. Because *they* agreed to Adobe’s heavy handed terms, now *my* stuff becomes Adobes?
AI doesn’t bother me, it is the huge mega corporations who constantly just tell us “we recently changed our terms” here ya go like it or lump it, you have to agree.
And don’t get me started on trying to get help from a company and having to go through the hell that is a chat bot!
That’s my rant for the day. 🙂
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I can’t speak for what Meta or other similar tech companies are doing with respect to forcing end users to agree to what’s being alleged as carte blanche use of individual users’ IP or even personal data. It’s heartening to hear that they engage a cross-disciplinary team of civil rights experts and other SMEs to audit their AI use, though for sure let’s see if the actions align with their words.
All of these software and tech companies changing their terms to allow for blanket use of data is way too broad, and we need to push our governments to implement stricter regulations around that. The unfortunate reality of our legal system is that for artist protections to come into play, there will need to be crippling litigation. We’re seeing that already in terms of patient data and GAI use in the healthcare sector. Corporations will just do whatever they want, in their own best interest, until they get slapped with a class action suit or the government sets up a regulatory agency to closely monitor the use.
I don’t have Adobe or Photoshop either. I’m using a photo-editing program that was last updated in 2004. 😀
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YES!!! That is one of the reasons why I don’t have a social media account. Though, stopping collection of personal data entirely is nearly impossible. If it’s not your social media account, it’s your smartphone or the TV – even if you deny all the adds and analytic tools. There are still some analytic tools, which you had to agree to, running silently in the background.
What even bothers me more is the in-transparent non-declaration of those data collections. When loading an update, it’s often declared as “bug fixes”, “better performance” or even “higher security”! They seem to think end users are stupid and won’t recognize that they try to sell an disadvantage as an advantage. However, the end user does not have any choice anyways.
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I thought I’d ask copilot:
Copilot! Wake up! [Slap]
Comment on the question and answer given in the following interview from a few years ago:
‘Some computer experts like Marvin Minsky, Larry Page, Ray Kuzweil think A.I. will be a great gift to Mankind. Others like Bill Joy and Elon Musk are fearful of potential danger. Where do you stand, Linus?
Linus: I just don’t see the thing to be fearful of.
We’ll get AI, and it will almost certainly be through something very much like recurrent neural networks. And the thing is, since that kind of AI will need training, it won’t be “reliable” in the traditional computer sense. It’s not the old rule-based prolog days, when people thought they’d understand what the actual decisions were in an AI.
And that all makes it very interesting, of course, but it also makes it hard to productize. Which will very much limit where you’ll actually find those neural networks, and what kinds of network sizes and inputs and outputs they’ll have.
So I’d expect just more of (and much fancier) rather targeted AI, rather than anything human-like at all. Language recognition, pattern recognition, things like that. I just don’t see the situation where you suddenly have some existential crisis because your dishwasher is starting to discuss Sartre with you.
The whole “Singularity” kind of event? Yeah, it’s science fiction, and not very good SciFi at that, in my opinion. Unending exponential growth? What drugs are those people on? I mean, really..
It’s like Moore’s law – yeah, it’s very impressive when something can (almost) be plotted on an exponential curve for a long time. Very impressive indeed when it’s over many decades. But it’s still just the beginning of the “S curve”. Anybody who thinks any different is just deluding themselves. There are no unending exponentials.’
Weigh in on where we stand today and provide your own predictions for the near future (whatever ‘your’ or ‘your own’ means in this case, please provide two contrasting explanations if you can) 🙂
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Linus Torvalds’ perspective on AI, as presented in the interview, remains quite relevant even today. He pragmatically focuses on the current capabilities and limitations of AI technology, dismissing the idea of an imminent “Singularity” as overblown. Current State of AI
Progress in Targeted AI:
Future Predictions Near-Term Future (Next 5-10 Years)
In summary, while Linus Torvalds downplays the notion of an imminent AI-driven existential crisis, the ongoing advancements in AI are shaping our world in meaningful ways. The future will likely see AI becoming more integrated into various aspects of our lives, but with a strong emphasis on ethical and responsible development.
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I’ll add that I as someone who enjoys art, both taking in what others make and making it myself, I will never stop making art myself, even though I need to use most of my time for other things – try to stop me and I’ll just make more!😋😋😋
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