Been thinking more about AI.
There was an incident a few weeks ago about a video game “caught” using AI. The developers left some placeholder text and translations in, consisting of 0.3% of the game’s content. And everyone lost their freakin’ monkey minds. Which left me wondering, “does it really matter”? The editorialist thought it did, because A) AI is built on theft B) there were easy substitutes like lorem ipsum. Translations may take time and money, but it’s the right professional thing to do.
But when has a company ever been concerned about “the right thing”? They are always going to pick the thing that costs the least time and money. In software engineering, they call it the MVP. Minimum Viable Product. The least you can do and still be considered “done”.
This is a motif that repeats every few months. Some company is caught producing something created or aided by AI. They deeply apologize and remove it or the audience backlash brings down its score. Like the company sticks its head out the window and asks “is it all right to use AI yet?” The audience says “no”, so the company pulls its head back in and waits a few more months.
Companies will always always always do whatever it takes to save money. Microsoft has laid off 20,000 employees in 18 months so their managers can reach their productivity bonuses. UHG is getting sued by their investors because they actually did stop denying so many claims after Luigi assassinated their CEO. Then the investors said that was not disclosed to them, so they are suing.
I think there’s an uncomfortable truth that we all need to accept. AI is coming. You’ve heard this before. Some of you are accepting it. Some of you are resisting it. But I’m looking from a mountaintop aged forty-four years. I’ve seen this happen before. It happened with cell phones. It happened with the Internet. It happened with DVDs. It happened with social media. This is a rising tide of technology and it does not care that you’re standing in the way. Especially if there’s no paywall.
Any studio making use of generative AI is sending a very clear message: they don’t care about the cataclysmic effects AI is having on their own industry, they don’t care that so much of AI content is slop, they don’t care that millions of people out there who are their prospective fans and customers are wholly opposed to its use.Luke Plunkett, from the linked article
The reason for the backlash is that consumers do not want non-human-created art. They’ve read science fiction and they know the stories where AI puts people out of jobs. AI can do it faster, better, cheaper, or some combination thereof. They are shouting down the slightest usage because they want to get in front of the wave before it crashes down. But I think these people are shouting into the wind. This is toothpaste you can’t put back in the tube. This genie is not going back in the bottle.
For one thing, I don’t think the majority really cares that strongly. I think they’re just going along with the crowd because it feels righteous, like Kony 2012. Couch potatoes will always make a tweet striking against the corporate “man”, but that’s all they’ll do. You see them burning Waymos in L.A. but they’re not ripping out the touchscreen McDonald’s menus. Boycotts do nothing because A) these movements are all decentralized so you can’t get everyone on board B) these companies are so rich that a handful of boycotters won’t make any difference. This is not the Civil Rights Movement–these aren’t Mom and Pop diners. Amazon delivers to the world.
No matter how much you protest and yell, people with power are going to do what they want to do. Citizens have been protesting the use of nuclear weapons ever since their inception. That’s about eighty years. There is a permanent shrine in front of the White House gates to that effect. Has it ever worked? Are there fewer nukes now? Did anyone in power listen? More than half the country protested the actions of Donald Trump in his first term, including impeachments, scandals, and convictions. Did it do any good? Who’s the president now?
Humans will trade convenience for quality every time. They traded the grand experience of a movie theater for a home VCR. And there was the mass onslaught of what one might call “video slop“. Badly lit horror movies and “shot-on-shitteo” science fiction and aerobic workouts. For every Pinocchio, there were a thousand Nukies.
We’re willing to pay more money so our food can be delivered to us, rather than go out ourselves. And before that, fast food was the option instead of a home-cooked meal despite the lack of nutrition.
You say you don’t want translations or subtitling by non-humans… until you’re deaf and realize how crap the closed-captioning industry is. Or you need to figure out how to fix your computer and the only YouTube video about it is in Russian. Or you want your anime faster. Final Fantasy VII became a huge hit despite the poor translation. I’d like to see a comparison between how an average paid translator vs. AI deals with OG FFVII’s script.
Ask the American public if they want a wiretap and they’ll say ‘No.’ If you ask them do they want a feature on their phone that helps the FBI find their missing child, they’ll say, ‘Yes.’Lois Freeh
Disney moved from hand-painting to digital coloring. Did anyone care about the colorists losing their jobs? Did animators go extinct because Adobe Flash came out? Who complained about the restaurant’s dishwashers when the automatic dishwasher came out? Is anyone trying to protect the truck drivers about to lose their jobs to self-driving vehicles?
People are going to use AI. From corporations to software engineers to artists to authors to chefs to homeless people. At first, just a little. Just to see how it works. Just to see if you can make a funny picture of Shrek kissing Peter Griffin, or how a book report on Black Beauty would look if William Faulkner wrote it. Then you start using it like a search engine, asking questions for things that Google can’t comprehend. Like what is the average capacity of all major league baseball stadiums. Or what’s that word for an old-timey garbage collector. Or give me ten YA Fantasy books written in the last three years with a female protagonist on a quest and doesn’t involve romance or war.
Where you used to be able to spot generative AI a mile off, we’re now needing days and even weeks after release for its use to become known. In some cases you can’t even rely on Steam’s AI disclaimers, because neither Clair Obscur or The Alters used them. It’s getting to the stage where I just can’t trust video games, and it means I’m starting to approach every game I play dubiously, every piece of key art and character portrait guilty until proven innocent, clouds hanging over every image and line of dialogue.Luke Plunkett, from the linked article
When the singularity happens–when humans can upload their consciousness into a computer and live forever and make copies of themselves, there’s going to be protests, you bet. “Don’t give up your humanity!” “These uploaded intelligences aren’t real people.” “They’re going to launch nukes at everyone!” You know what’s going to happen? All those people are going to die. And then the only ones left will be the immortals. (I’ve been watching Pantheon, if you can’t tell.)
People make these changes too, not just corporations. We saw that with Napster and MP3s. Changed the way music is produced. Definitely threatened its “stability” because why buy an album when you can get it for free. They’ll sacrifice a fancy CD cover and album art for not paying a dime. I don’t know why anyone would get into the music industry today when there’s no profit in it. Maybe that’s why all the pop artists look and sound like clowns now.
And of course, we’re all forgetting about the one big thing that boosts technology advances forward–porn. What grew the Internet? Pics and cybersex and credit card transactions. What else experienced a boom when VCRs came out? Video porn. On day one, phones were invented. On day two, phone sex was invented. Do you think no one ever masturbated to those Renaissance paintings of full-figured women? Ruben ain’t just a sandwich. Porn is the only reason VR hasn’t completely died yet.
This is what really prompted me to write this article. Cause I started thinking, if you can make a person using AI, you can make a naked person using AI. I know, I’m a little slow on the uptake. But this was the first time I realized I could produce a picture of anyone I want naked–a celebrity, my next-door neighbor, my wife, that lady at the DMV. Not just naked, but doing whatever I want them to.
Out of curiosity, I looked at what resources were available. You’ve probably seen them advertised–AI girlfriends, but those are just text. Picture and video generation is still mostly behind a paywall, but leaks will always happen. Results are varied when it comes to realism, but if you like hentai/animated, I can’t tell it’s not human-produced. And I don’t care.
It’s like in the South Park episode where the Internet goes out and Randy Marsh uses an “Internet Porn Simulator”, which is a guy hiding behind a cardboard cut-out of a computer who quickly draws and holds up a picture of whatever you searched for, like “Brazillian fart fetish porn” and “Japanese girls puking each other’s mouths”.
Besides, human-made things can still be crap (see Star Wars: The Acolyte) so what does it matter? We’re living in a “post-trust” world. If you spend all your time worrying about whether the thing you’re watching or playing used AI any time during its creation process, it’s going to be a very long life. Same way you don’t want to think about who constructed your iPhone or t-shirt. I bet we’re bombarded by things constructed or aided by AI all the time and we just don’t know it.
So stop worrying, you’re just burning calories. Stop running into the wave and learn to swim with it.
