The Future Creative #6

Will AI make us smarter?

AI has made astronomical leaps and bounds in the last two years. From being something very technically challenging to wrap your head around, to being something that now everybody is clambering to be part of, the AI train (or shall I say pan-dimensional rocket?) is cruising at full blast.

Part of that mass adoption is that AI has become a lot easier to learn and use, while becoming a part of our lives in all sorts of ways. I could try to list them but problem is about a hundred new ones seem to appear every day. If you follow the VC news, a new startup for fintech, robotics, medical that somehow incorporates AI gets funding.

Indeed, it seems every time the word AI is mentioned a startup gets its "wings".

Nay-sayers, the Devils Advocates, all the gate-keepers and the Doom-preppers have their concerns about this rapid pace of development, and to be fair, they're not wrong.

Yet, I see also the more philosophical amongst the crowd saying that "....not that we shouldn't, but more about how?"

Thankfully, the EU AI Act that recently got passed in Europe "...that ensures safety and compliance with fundamental rights, while boosting innovation..."

This was necessary. It will help to regulate or remove nefarious actors who would create AI that takes advantage of people. Protecting peoples rights is paramount. Hopefully, more bills and acts will pass around the world to do the same, but while that stops bad AI, some AI that do a good job, within a legally or ethically acceptable framework inevitably creates redundancy in the workplace. The idea of an AI that takes over all our jobs and leaves us without purpose sounds on one hand as a great excuse to take an extended beach vacation, while others could cite that this is when the complete breakdown of society happens.

Here's the interesting part. What if I told you that AI could end up actually making us smarter, not dumber? With the latest improvements in AI, LLM's (Large Language Models) have allowed us to speak/write more naturally to the AI in order to make ourselves understood. In the (very) recent past we still had to rely on more cryptic abbreviations, numerical values, and brief descriptions in order to get our point across, and while the AI could answer it perfectly fine, It leaves the user having to gain considerable skill in speaking correctly to the AI for it to understand. Side note: my son will be learning Computer Language next year instead of taking French or Spanish, so maybe this is a non-issue?

With us being able to speak more naturally to the AI, I begin to wonder if having a greater command of one's native language would yield better results from the prompt? What if we got better at describing what we are trying prompt, would the result not be more comprehensive?

I am by default an optimist, and I view changes in life as something that is inevitable, and the only question one can ask is "how do I make the best of this?"

Currently for my profession I use Midjourney, Vizcom, ChatGPT, and adobe's Firefly. Other than Chat GPT, these all rely on my sketching skills and design knowledge in order to generate an image. I have noticed that when my sketches are tighter, with clean understandable line weights, or my prompts are more detailed with profession-specific details, that I get closer to the results I want, quicker. If I can speak more fully with ChatGPT would it then not yield the same results? Could a thesaurus and a dictionary be a permanent add to our desks again?

Speaking to all who are in a creative profession: I am not afraid of losing my job. It is however dependent on my ability to take responsibility for what I do and continue to grow in my skills with AI, and more importantly the skills of my profession. If I take command of those, I will always be ahead of those that seek to replace me with just AI.

By default I am an optimist, and view changes in life as something that is inevitable. The only question one can ask is "how do I make the best of this?"

Keep learning, my friends!