Brett's opening, essentially a rephrase of "We stand on the shoulders of giants," illuminates the limitation of AI in that any one of us humans is intimately connected to the entire history of our species while any AI only contains the current data set available to its training on the Internet. Also, we should never forget that the 'Luddites' were a labor rights movement, not just anti-technology, and we do not own AI.
This essay is a superb foray into the limited field of AI; but as our world necessarily degrades its energy use, as it 'depowers' so to speak, we all will make collective choices of how to use limited resources such as energy. On my boat I have limited solar and wind power; so, do I use that to run the Blu-ray player and monitor, or do I just read a book by LED light? On a social scale, do I run mass surveillance and artificial intelligence, or do I travel by rail to visit my family?
In the reality of a sustainable planet, AI might have some niche uses, but it is not the answer to prosperity and well-being.
Our culture’s artifacts are the manifestations of our cultures soul, which is, as you point out, exploitation. Tereza Coraggio @Third Paradigm has written a brilliant book called “How to Dismantle an Empire” on how we might get ourselves off that treadmill if we want to.
Hi Brett, another thought-provoking piece. My view is encompassed in your phrase about the eccentric BBQ hut owner. These leaps of insight or intuition to escape the norm will never come from AI. How would Copernicus have fared trying to convince an AI world convinced and reinforced by the pattern-recognition technology, that the Earth was not the centre of the universe? AI will be fantastic for cataloguing and storing all the previous thinking in an instantly accessible form, but the truly novel lightbulb moment is humanity’s evolutionary purpose as far as I can see. Btw I believe AI is part of our evolutionary story, but only as the emissary to humanity’s master. You’ll understand where I’m coming from if you’ve read Dr Iain McGilchrists work
It is massive - in more ways than one. I took the audio version while I was working and took notes. It’s one of those books that changes the way you think. This time because it informs you how you think.
As always thought provoking and rebellious. I love it! I can definitely see the need and popularity of using “AI free” on creative pieces. Thank you Brett!
Below link is an interesting read along the same theme of creativity:
Definitely on the right track in terms of how the market directs capital. From an evolutionary standpoint we have even ceded aspects of our nature to corporates who then organize to manipulate our impulses and senses. Tastes, status, belonging all get commoditized, and consumed. Lots to unpack.
The worst things ever done by humanity are always packaged as ''democratization'' or in the name of democracy. Great article provoking a lot of thoughts for those that have time to stop and think.
I actually have done a lot of work on fintech and its claims to 'democratising finance' in the past - in reality it inevitably just means automating finance so that Big Tech and Big Finance can fuse together - this is what my book Cloudmoney is about
I quite enjoy reading your articles and this newest one, having the FreeTrade banana sticker imagery made me picture a new movement of "whole foods", "UPF-free", "single-ingredient" content. Sorry for food parallel because that's the field I'm passionate about, but UPF is the product of the food farming and look at the number of research investigating its harms which came only recently. Now with AI and arts/essays being factory farmed, there will be a time for higher appreciation of the AI-free digital creation, in the UPF-free fashion.
Great article. Maybe though, we don’t acknowledge how much we are already using AI to reinforce class barriers between the working and middle classes. We have started to look down on those who use AI to achieve what is often the same result (especially if the writing is formal). Doesn’t this reveal a kind of insecurity among the creative classes? We take pride in our ability to craft things better than other people can, then that pride is shattered by a machine doing it too. The one thing a machine can’t do is actually spark an original idea. That is the real mark of creativity. It isn’t crafting language. It’s doing something original
Thought-provoking. While you address many of the problems associated with technology, there may be another fundamental failure — the refusal to accept responsibility for the harms done. Invention casts a moral shadow. Instead of trying to understand how a new technology may effect others, and then mitigate those harms, they deny any accountability. We require new drugs to be tested for efficacy and side effects. We require food to be labeled to account for health concerns. That we do not do this for technology that completely changes society is insane. The tech guys will make their millions or billions; as usual, everyone pays the orice.
Where can we find Neo-Luddites who are actually organizing and actively doing....anything? I'm done hearing "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" and ready to get to the machine-breaking part.
you say that IA art 'feels' empty to the beholder. But you also say that some people can't 'feel' the difference, for example, in your writing So it seems to me that AI creativity is good enough, much of the time.
If content production (as it is now called) is a mass conversation, between humans, then robots should not be welcome. I'm concerned that AI generated content will soon be so voluminous as to drown out human generated content; we will consume more and AI content because the human content is too hard to find. We can see the beginnings of this on Instagram and youtube already. Why is this a concern? For me mostly because AI serves elites, like all new tech.
When I was in architecture school, I once failed my writing assignment because my professor thought I had plagiarized. It was too well written according to him. ( Was it because I'm black? 🤔) I re-submitted the assignment with an added section but didn't change much of text I had written. I got 16/20.
Let's not forget that AI is only copying humans so it is only as good as the best writers. This regurgitation of preexisting content cannot become the model, and us, merely imitators. I worry that the quality of our writings will collectively decline if we keep relying on AI so that one tenth of a person does the work of one person as you said.
I used to write a newsletter called " Construire les futurs africains" ( Building African Futures). While I was researching I use to come up with unconventional ideas about the modelisation of African systems and the creation of sustainable prosperity. The AI boom came, and I wondered if AI could have helped me work better ( I had stopped writing my newsletter in the meantime) . So I challenged it but it was only coming up with subpar ideas compared to mine,and regurgitating world bank and IMF talking points on development. Even when I explained why these theories couldn't work, it only gave me thesis from academics and had few alternative thoughts. Maybe I wasn't prompting well, but when it comes to creativity, it is not as gas humans. However.
I think it is useful for research. My stance is that people are going to use AI no matter what. So I have to commit to use it for good. If we do not commit to use it for good, it will be used for bad. I want as much African entrepreneurs and investors as possible to learn about the best ways to build a prosperous African future in a sustainable an human way. To do this I need to study African systems extensively. I tried to do it on my own before AI, and it was too much for one person ( I was also actively looking for someone to work with me on this topic,but didn't find one) . I think using AI for this kind of project is justified.
But.
The problem with using AI for research is that it's mostly trained on western material. By relying on AI to either regurgitate "knowledge" or to help us think through complex topics, we risk re- colonizing or over colonizing cultures that are already in danger of vanishing due to the lack of awareness and preservation efforts.
Brett's opening, essentially a rephrase of "We stand on the shoulders of giants," illuminates the limitation of AI in that any one of us humans is intimately connected to the entire history of our species while any AI only contains the current data set available to its training on the Internet. Also, we should never forget that the 'Luddites' were a labor rights movement, not just anti-technology, and we do not own AI.
This essay is a superb foray into the limited field of AI; but as our world necessarily degrades its energy use, as it 'depowers' so to speak, we all will make collective choices of how to use limited resources such as energy. On my boat I have limited solar and wind power; so, do I use that to run the Blu-ray player and monitor, or do I just read a book by LED light? On a social scale, do I run mass surveillance and artificial intelligence, or do I travel by rail to visit my family?
In the reality of a sustainable planet, AI might have some niche uses, but it is not the answer to prosperity and well-being.
Our culture’s artifacts are the manifestations of our cultures soul, which is, as you point out, exploitation. Tereza Coraggio @Third Paradigm has written a brilliant book called “How to Dismantle an Empire” on how we might get ourselves off that treadmill if we want to.
Thanks for the tip - will check it out!
And yes, this is a great idea AI -free AND organic (so opposed to Astroturfed!)
Great article Brett, going to design my own 100% AI free sticker right away!
Excellent!
Would love to post my design here but can't see how to do that!
Would you consider making your AI-Free sticker available — perhaps via a Creative Commons license?
Yes indeed!
This is excellent. I am not an AI edit hater, but I totally grasp the impacts.
Thanks Steve 🙏
Hi Brett, another thought-provoking piece. My view is encompassed in your phrase about the eccentric BBQ hut owner. These leaps of insight or intuition to escape the norm will never come from AI. How would Copernicus have fared trying to convince an AI world convinced and reinforced by the pattern-recognition technology, that the Earth was not the centre of the universe? AI will be fantastic for cataloguing and storing all the previous thinking in an instantly accessible form, but the truly novel lightbulb moment is humanity’s evolutionary purpose as far as I can see. Btw I believe AI is part of our evolutionary story, but only as the emissary to humanity’s master. You’ll understand where I’m coming from if you’ve read Dr Iain McGilchrists work
I've held Iain's book in my hand before, but it's a big tome - I'll probably need to find time to read it!
It is massive - in more ways than one. I took the audio version while I was working and took notes. It’s one of those books that changes the way you think. This time because it informs you how you think.
I'm in. And have added your sexy-ass badge to the About page and homepage of my website, linking back to this piece. All too happy to affiliate!
As always thought provoking and rebellious. I love it! I can definitely see the need and popularity of using “AI free” on creative pieces. Thank you Brett!
Below link is an interesting read along the same theme of creativity:
https://substack.com/redirect/608a48d3-a2ae-43fb-a056-8f92049d49b9?j=eyJ1Ijoib3N6ZmwifQ.cjGsdvQlgUwnMYnpg9qZPqulTJHkBaV2FcMlAjh5mNg
Definitely on the right track in terms of how the market directs capital. From an evolutionary standpoint we have even ceded aspects of our nature to corporates who then organize to manipulate our impulses and senses. Tastes, status, belonging all get commoditized, and consumed. Lots to unpack.
I will be creating my version of 100%AI free for my writing as well. Thank you for this.
Great!
Would you consider making your AI-Free sticker available — perhaps via a Creative Commons license?
The worst things ever done by humanity are always packaged as ''democratization'' or in the name of democracy. Great article provoking a lot of thoughts for those that have time to stop and think.
I actually have done a lot of work on fintech and its claims to 'democratising finance' in the past - in reality it inevitably just means automating finance so that Big Tech and Big Finance can fuse together - this is what my book Cloudmoney is about
I quite enjoy reading your articles and this newest one, having the FreeTrade banana sticker imagery made me picture a new movement of "whole foods", "UPF-free", "single-ingredient" content. Sorry for food parallel because that's the field I'm passionate about, but UPF is the product of the food farming and look at the number of research investigating its harms which came only recently. Now with AI and arts/essays being factory farmed, there will be a time for higher appreciation of the AI-free digital creation, in the UPF-free fashion.
Great article. Maybe though, we don’t acknowledge how much we are already using AI to reinforce class barriers between the working and middle classes. We have started to look down on those who use AI to achieve what is often the same result (especially if the writing is formal). Doesn’t this reveal a kind of insecurity among the creative classes? We take pride in our ability to craft things better than other people can, then that pride is shattered by a machine doing it too. The one thing a machine can’t do is actually spark an original idea. That is the real mark of creativity. It isn’t crafting language. It’s doing something original
Thought-provoking. While you address many of the problems associated with technology, there may be another fundamental failure — the refusal to accept responsibility for the harms done. Invention casts a moral shadow. Instead of trying to understand how a new technology may effect others, and then mitigate those harms, they deny any accountability. We require new drugs to be tested for efficacy and side effects. We require food to be labeled to account for health concerns. That we do not do this for technology that completely changes society is insane. The tech guys will make their millions or billions; as usual, everyone pays the orice.
Where can we find Neo-Luddites who are actually organizing and actively doing....anything? I'm done hearing "if you can't beat 'em join 'em" and ready to get to the machine-breaking part.
you say that IA art 'feels' empty to the beholder. But you also say that some people can't 'feel' the difference, for example, in your writing So it seems to me that AI creativity is good enough, much of the time.
If content production (as it is now called) is a mass conversation, between humans, then robots should not be welcome. I'm concerned that AI generated content will soon be so voluminous as to drown out human generated content; we will consume more and AI content because the human content is too hard to find. We can see the beginnings of this on Instagram and youtube already. Why is this a concern? For me mostly because AI serves elites, like all new tech.
When I was in architecture school, I once failed my writing assignment because my professor thought I had plagiarized. It was too well written according to him. ( Was it because I'm black? 🤔) I re-submitted the assignment with an added section but didn't change much of text I had written. I got 16/20.
Let's not forget that AI is only copying humans so it is only as good as the best writers. This regurgitation of preexisting content cannot become the model, and us, merely imitators. I worry that the quality of our writings will collectively decline if we keep relying on AI so that one tenth of a person does the work of one person as you said.
I used to write a newsletter called " Construire les futurs africains" ( Building African Futures). While I was researching I use to come up with unconventional ideas about the modelisation of African systems and the creation of sustainable prosperity. The AI boom came, and I wondered if AI could have helped me work better ( I had stopped writing my newsletter in the meantime) . So I challenged it but it was only coming up with subpar ideas compared to mine,and regurgitating world bank and IMF talking points on development. Even when I explained why these theories couldn't work, it only gave me thesis from academics and had few alternative thoughts. Maybe I wasn't prompting well, but when it comes to creativity, it is not as gas humans. However.
I think it is useful for research. My stance is that people are going to use AI no matter what. So I have to commit to use it for good. If we do not commit to use it for good, it will be used for bad. I want as much African entrepreneurs and investors as possible to learn about the best ways to build a prosperous African future in a sustainable an human way. To do this I need to study African systems extensively. I tried to do it on my own before AI, and it was too much for one person ( I was also actively looking for someone to work with me on this topic,but didn't find one) . I think using AI for this kind of project is justified.
But.
The problem with using AI for research is that it's mostly trained on western material. By relying on AI to either regurgitate "knowledge" or to help us think through complex topics, we risk re- colonizing or over colonizing cultures that are already in danger of vanishing due to the lack of awareness and preservation efforts.