As I’m sure you’re aware of if you have any connection to the internet, (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this) every section of business and entertainment has been fixated on AI.. the generative and not-so-generative kind. It’s unavoidable at this point: there’s an AI to read your emails, they have a chatbot in Minecraft to help explain the game, Youtube has had an influx of scams and content farm channels that are milled out using LLMs for the video, the script, the thumbnail even. I’m sure in a weeks time, someone’s going to invent an AI-powered mirror that’ll give you beauty tips. A large amount of people swear by these AI chatbots and models, insisting that it’s the future, the next step for humanity, that they’ll solve all of our boring human problems…
And I just do not understand why we want the problems gone.
Starting from the top, why do people choose to use these chatbots & AIs? Most of the time, they seem to be looking for something, whether it’s an answer to a question or a full on companion in a rough patch of their life. An AI seems like a good choice then; an impartial service that takes in data & facts from the entire web and gives you the best possible answer, all for free! And since these models “grow” and “adapt” to you as you use them, their answers can become a better fit to what you need.
...ok so the first question I have is: “Why use ChatGPT instead of just Google or DuckDuckGo?” A search engine & an AI both pull from the same places to give you an answer, so why not just use the search engine? I think it has to do with *how* they give you an answer. Something like Google (if we ignore the AI summary, I will get to that some other time) simple hands you a set of links to websites with your answer, if not just gives you a quote with a source. Something like ChatGTP, meanwhile, sources nothing unless you ask it too. It will tell you what it finds, in whatever way you want to hear.
I think another reason people use these AI is something a little deeper, less easy to understand if you happen to do it; creating art, videos, stuff like that. There has been a MASSIVE push to use AI & LLMs to mass-produce artwork, videos, music, and even movies. Take out all the busywork & difficulty of drawing or producing, so that more ordinary people can create what they want to see. Ok, I follow you…
...except the tools have been there the whole time. If you want to learn how to draw, you can just grab a notebook & follow a guide & practice. If you want to make videos, just grab OBS & an editing software, they’re both free. Same with music, same with movies, same with anything an AI can do, really; just put in the time & effort to learn, and you will learn how to create.
Right there, I think that’s why so many people swear by this stuff; it lets them bypass the ‘boring’ steps of art, and get to the ‘fun part;’ finishing & showing off their creation. If you don’t actively make videos or art (like me), you may not understand why I’m against using AI to skip the boring development period of learning & failing. So let me use a better example: let’s take 2 runners, Alpha & Beta.
Runner Alpha & Beta are in a race to see who can hit the finish line first. Beta is all-natural, runs with nothing but the legs & lungs they were born with. Alpha, meanwhile, swears by this new fancy rocket shoe that takes all the pain & hardship out of running, and it lets them hit the finish line way faster than Beta. All Alpha cares about is winning and proving he’s a good runner with his shoes, while Beta’s thinking about his next run, and how excited he is to get back to practicing.
You wouldn’t call Alpha a real runner, right? That’s what I feel about AI, and why I just don’t understand the people that swear up & down that it’ll solve all the problems of life. If we take that same scenario, but replace running with art, would you call Alpha a real artist for using a fancy self-drawing pencil? If all he did was gloat about how much faster & better he can draw compared to everyone else?
I certainly wouldn’t. Life unfortunately has a lot of boring to it, there’s a lot of stuff we don’t want to do sometimes. Problems require you to find solutions, and I don’t think delegating that to an AI will make it easier. Just my two cents though.