Andy’s got a point here. There’s been something nagging at me about all the AI stuff coming around at the moment. I don’t think I’d quite articulated it in my own head, but it’s this.

As cool and interesting the things being created with AI right now are, why would we want to give all the fun stuff that makes us human to the AI to do?!

I want to create my own images, write my own articles, write my own code… these are creative expressions that are part of the human experience. I’m not saying that they can’t be a helpful in some ways, like giving you a creative start point, or making suggestions to improve what you’re working on, but surely we still want to feel some creative ownership over things?

And like Andy says:

If they came forward with “you’ll never have to process an expense again” or “our ‘AI’ will manage your inbox for you”, I’d sign right up for that shit.

Andy Bell

The other thing that’s bugging me about all the hype around these things at the moment is the sustainability aspect of it. Think about all the useless crap that’s being generated using these AI tools. Now think about the energy that’s using, the data centres, the hardware, the water for cooling, the CO2… just so people can generate funny images that they’ll never look at again but will be stored forever.

Obviously I don’t think we shouldn’t try new technologies. That would be ridiculous. These things have tremendous potential to benefit humanity and the Planet. But like everything else, we humans have difficulties with self control and generating waste.

This post was brought to you by my own hand, not AI 😜