Stop Worrying About AI
Technologies endlessly evolve and become stronger and smarter. Get ahead of it, not behind.
“An insidious contagion and morally dissolute”, “the root of all evil”, “it creates forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories”
As long as technology has been around, society has feared that the technology will create a society that is too useless to evolve any further. However, the type of that technology taking over was and is still evolving. The above quotes are from people criticizing books, the internet, and the printing press in that order (maybe they were right about the internet…).
AI was first invented back in the 1950s. Sure it’s an incredible technology and can learn similarly to how we do, but it only learns what it is provided. If you use an art generating AI, it is going to produce art based on your prompt and the information it was previously taught. Let’s think of AI like a sponge. Say you pour plain old clear water on your sponge. Tons of it, gallons upon gallons of water on your sponge. Once the water dries away, it is clean and any residual chemicals the sponge had on it was washed away from the water. There is no dish residue lingering in the crevices — it’s as clean as it gets. Now that you have just given your sponge water and it’s chock full and ready for a squeeze. This time, you say to your sponge before squeezing, “Give me milk.” You give your sponge a squeeze readying your glass with some chocolate sauce. And what do you get? Water. You only ever gave it water and it knows nothing else other than water. AI works the same way, sopping up information you teach it like a sponge, only to return what you ask for with an association to something you previously taught it.
AI is a powerful tool, but so were books, the printing press, and the internet when they were first invented. They reshaped the way we live and work and AI will do the same. This technology should be used as a tool to help progress you forward. It does not have a mind of its own and it will not steal your livelihood if you don’t let it. Figure out how to use this tool to make your life easier and get ahead of the ball by using it. Don’t continue writing books by hand when the printing press prevents hand cramps.