Here's mud in your AI

Sometimes a craze is just a craze.

In the 1950s they were pushing the Atomic Age and added radioactivity and atoms to branding for everything. You could even buy a toy atomic energy lab with real uranium.

I am strongly reminded of the way they're adding AI to everything now whether it's useful or not. I hope that in a few years this mAInia will have died down and we can just carry on creating as we did before.

In fact more than that; I'm hoping that before long we'll arrive at a point where "AI-free" becomes a badge of quality so the market will HAVE to sit up and take notice, rather than telling us we’re doing Being Consumers all wrong.

However, I do like to think I'm not being New Technology Baffles Pissed Old Hack here. AI definitely has a place. For example, analysing large scientific datasets, archive entry labelling. You know the incredibly tedious stuff that humans would find mindnumbing or actually impossible to do.

I don't think it has a place replacing creative people like writers and artists. Or copywriters. Even writing the blurb for the back of a cereal packet has some enjoyment in it and requires skill.

Skill is something an AI will never have. Ditto originality.

Besides it's not really AI is it? Calling these systems Artificial Intelligence is as ridiculous as SpaceX calling their orbital heavy lift launch vehicle Starship.

A term coined by SF fanboys who missed the satire and commentary in most good SF because they were too busy looking at the cool rockets and robots.

Don't get me wrong; I like a good robot or spaceship as much as the rest of us. But in SF these are usually window dressing, not the whole point. Likewise I found generative AI images and text amusing to play with for a short while – but only when it was a bit shonky and silly.

While AI may eventually be of use as an additional tool in a creative's kit, it’s not a replacement for real effort or talent, and never will be. The only reason it’s being treated like that is because the money heads at the top see it as a way of dispensing with those pesky creatives who have always been thorns in their sides when it comes to profit.

You can get my AI-free / No-AI stickers on Redbubble.

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