WALL OF TEXT: TRAINING AI

 

WALL OF TEXT: TRAINING AI: My futuristic sci-fi dystopia, in which movies, music, artwork, etc., become automated and corporations have copyrighted every iteration of every idea, is becoming obsolete already just a year after publication. Thanks, DALL-E. This isn't a game. This isn't fun. This isn't some cool meme website. We are teaching an Artificial Intelligence what is acceptable given a certain text prompt, and what is not. We are teaching it how to replace artists and graphic designers. It's only a matter of time before this tool matures enough to put all of those people out of work, and then what? A little while ago we figured out we were teaching Facebook's algorithm how to recognize us. Was meant to be a meme website, oh look at this cool thing. These things are being presented to us as fun diversions, but I'm not being paranoid when I declare we are teaching algorithms how to replace us. We are teaching them what we like, what resonates with us, what works, what doesn't. Every time you click share, you are telling an algorithm yes, this is correct. I don't think anyone anticipated that we would teach computers how to replace us. In theory this could lead to a sci-fi utopia in which work is obsolete and thus no one can profit and war and money become things of the past and yay socialist paradise. So far, all I can envision is corporations owning all of this and making artists and writers and filmmakers obsolete, forcing all of us to compete for the few remaining tasks because the only reason to force people to work for a living is to separate us into haves and have-nots. Everything will one day become computer-generated, and we won't recognize it as such. People won't be needed to create things, and yet we will still be expected to earn a living. Please don't make me a prophet in hindsight. Resist the direction technology is going. Don't engage in teaching AI.