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It's actually easy to fall into the AI trap... |
I am of the opinion that we haven't fully considered the ramifications of
reaching the destination we are all racing towards. It's entirely possible to
come upon a future reality where we will not be able to control AI.
I don't know about you, but that possibility freaks me out.
Having been on the front lines when the prediction of "a computer in every
home" was made – and seeing how we've become so tethered to the "computer" in
our pockets (i.e., smart phones) – I know human beings are very susceptible to
being charmed by big tech. This new reality should be alarming to all of us.
A few years back, a fellow craft blogger posted about the subject of AI, testing its potential ability to create a simple craft project. She did a small experiment using simple prompts that resulted in a set of instructions that could be followed to upcycle a plastic container.
Most of the comments that followed were dismissive of the project itself
(i.e., underwhelming, not original, not very creative, "no soul", etc.) but
let's be real, it wasn't as if the subject matter was conducive to being
turned into anything trail blazing. The significant part was that AI did the
job that it was told to do and did so without any spelling or grammatical
errors. In my life, I've encountered many people who can't do that. (That
was the gist of the comment that I added to the discussion.)
Fast forward three years and the AI landscape has changed a lot,
a lot.
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| obvious AI image from Sewing Show channel on YouTube... |
YouTube videos can now be produced entirely by AI (more on
that later). Even creators who do their own content are front-loading their
videos with AI enhanced images. I can't tell you how many sewing vids are
now prefaced with a photo of the
finished item shown in multiples. It's now so amazingly easy to make AI images that a certain orange moron
knows how to do so.
And written content? Well, that was arguably the litmus test of AI from the
start. The quality has now progressed to the point of it being so good that
it's being mistaken for human writing... or vice versa, in what must be one
of the most ironic examples of irony.
The headline here is from a July article in The Economist. It's
behind a paywall, so I did not read it, but I immediately thought of what it
might allude to: the idea that since internet AI pulls content from the
internet in order to create its content, the results might border on
plagiarism in some instances. It's up to humans to ensure that AI written
content differs enough from its sources to avoid trampling on copyrights.
You may be wondering when I'm going to "get to the point" and discuss the
actual topic of this post. 😉 Here goes.
About a month ago, I had an email exchange with a regular reader who told me
that she had discovered a passion for pictorial art quilting; a
method of quilting using a stylized image from an actual photo as the
underlying design. I nosed around the 'net for some further info and found a
tutorial on WeAllSew. (The image of the pear below is from that tutorial in case you're
interested.) From looking at images of the quilts that crafters had created
using this method, it suddenly occurred to me what the results reminded me
of: French impressionism paintings. When I did a search to confirm my
opinion on the similarity of the two art forms, the first AI sentence was:
"You are spot on!"
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| image courtesy of WeAllSew... |
In my case, however, what stood out from the get-go was that – unlike even
an anonymous comment here on my blog – this was an expression of admiration
straight out of the ether, impacting no one but me. As I said:
weird... and extremely disconcerting.
Then I tried something else. I asked AI about me. Specifically, I asked, "How trustworthy is eSheep Designs blog?"
Here's what it reported:
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| AI's summary of this blog's trustworthiness... |
It wasn't a random choice to ask about the "trustworthiness" factor. AI
enhancements have made many things impossible to trust, even in the sewing
world. For example, Etsy has apparently been bombarded
with AI generated patterns that are literally unusable — but that might be a
whole other blog post.
Anyway, I did a few more inquiries about me and received more or less the
same type of findings. My opinion? AI certainly knows more about me than my
average reader does. By sifting through everything I've ever written here
and cross referencing my various profiles (at places like
AllFreeSewing and Spoonflower), it collectively "knows" every detail that I've ever shared on the
internet.
Which means that this little experiment made me quite thankful that I've
always been somewhat wary of sharing details about me on the internet.
I'm just one person, but I don't think we should be embracing AI with open arms. Yes, it some ways, its rise seems inevitable (shades of Terminator, which is hardly a reassuring comparison), but when we look at how much AI has advanced over the past few years, we should be saying "Hey, let's slow down a bit" rather than "Race you to the cliff!"
Oh, and to get back to the challenge that a fellow blogger did for an AI
generated simple craft tutorial? Nowadays, you can get AI to do an entire
craft video tutorial...
I clicked on the first link but didn't watch the entire thing. It was enough
for me to see that a person can now use AI tools to make complete videos
showing someone crafting with wood. A recent article in the newspaper – that
we still get delivered once a week – showed a woman doing some sort of
handiwork with a smartphone strapped to her head. She was being paid to film
herself doing <whatever> so that AI could replicate it. 😖
This is where we're at now. People actively taking part in destroying their
own livelihoods. Everyday AI content proliferating our lives and making it
difficult for us to know what to trust. And occasionally, AI might pay you a
compliment, just to mess with your mind.
If you keep up with the news at all, you already know that what I've brought up in this post is just the tip of a gargantuan iceberg.
Should we be okay with this? Let me know your thoughts.
'Til next... 🇨🇦🍁
'Til next... 🇨🇦🍁
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