HAVE YOU PUT your foot into the netherworld of artificial intelligence (AI)?
If you are on the internet, use social media in any form, follow specific political party palaver, or get tidbits of news online…you have been touched by AI. And probably didn’t even know it!
If you have, in the least bit, a creative personality – attend college, delve into the world of creative writing, i.e., poetry, song lyrics, story-telling, or photography, artist rendering of subject matter that interests you, entrepreneur, etc. – you have been exposed to AI. And, possibly, fooled by the intricacies of this emerging technology.
Several entrepreneurs of my acquaintance use AI to compose social media copy; they do this to save money they used to pay copywriters. Now, they simply give an AI application (app) a simple direction – “Write 25 words on a topic — “Why should a potential customer check out my Facebook page?’” — and mere seconds later, the app whirs out 25 words fitting the instructions.
Huh? How is that possible?
AI technology allows an application to go into the internet universe and, within seconds, scan billions of bytes of information and apply the bits and pieces that relate to literally millions of proffered tasks to pop out an answer.
An AI application might answer that question this way: “AI is an intelligent system that can control and modify its actions to produce an output. An objective function defines the desired output, changing its behavior to achieve it. This type of system uses logic and mathematical computations to determine its behavior.”
Then, as an after-thought: “As we move toward a more digitized world, we must also ensure that it’s not misused.”
OKAY, WHAT DOES that mean, and what is the goal of AI technology?
Again, “The goal of AI is to make a smart computer system (that thinks) like humans to solve complex problems. The goal of AI is to allow machines to learn from data so that they can give accurate output. In AI, we make intelligent systems to perform any task like a human; AI firms teach machines with data to perform a particular task and give an accurate result.”
The dangers of AI are too many to be ignored. An AI site quote: “AI can perform various tasks that humans (might think about doing but) can’t do. It can also do creative work and display superhuman creativity.”
Research shows “AI is being used today to improve healthcare in general, and is tasked with seeking solutions to specific diseases, to streamline banking functions, and to provide a holistic approach to businesses to handle customer complaints”.
What does the future hold for AI development and use?
AI could answer that question this way: “The utilization of AI in the classroom, workplace, and life in general, has shifted from being narrowly focused on automation-based labor cost savings to augmentation of human capabilities, as exemplified by generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, increasing the prospect that AI can play an active role in solving complex problems.”
Right now, AI is being used in nefarious ways: Creating social media memes that look real enough to fool anyone gullible enough to believe anything they read or see; creating pornography images of celebrities and ordinary people simply because the AI “tool” allows it; creating a fully orchestrated song by a deceased artist utilizing his or her exact voice from online recordings and mimicking the voice; using AI to generate political fake ads that are intended to harm actual campaigns for actual candidates.
All of those scenarios – every single one – have already been done and created real problems for real people.
Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is a victim of AI tomfoolery. The technology was used to create nudes images of her, which were posted on the “X” social media platform (formerly known as Twitter).
WHILE CONGRESS TWIDDLES its bipartisan thumbs, with political party officials more concerned with bad-mouthing President Biden and ex-President Trump, Microsoft has beefed up protections for victims of nonconsensual explicit images generated by its text-to-image tool. Why? Because millions of folks complained after those AI-generated naked photos of Swift went viral.
According to a news report, the users were able to skirt some anti-porn generation protections by slightly misspelling celebrity names or by using suggestive phrasing that is not explicitly sexual.
Songwriters are nervous: “AI-generated music is an emergent technology created with artificial intelligence algorithms that mimic music tracks’ exact tempo, pitch, and range to create new songs.” And, then, there’s this: “It’s super easy to make AI music with AI music generator apps ….”
So-called “artists” are generating paintings using AI apps.
Students are using AI every day to write formal research papers, “compose” poetry to enhance puppy-love romances, write essays to get into college…and the list is endless.
The point is: Technology can be exploited for sheer evil intent, for money, for fame, or for no reason at all, just to prove it can be done.
Creativity, human creativity, is endangered by a technological “toy” that started off as a “Whoa! Look at this!” discovery and has cocooned into a potentially evil entity which could easily kill the human spirit to create, to improvise, to grow within ourselves.
Human effort via creative mind-channels needs to be protected via tough legislation, sooner rather than later.
To many people, seeing is believing.
Not any more. The future is scary and the technology needs to be corralled by strict laws…like yesterday.
George Smith views the world from the back porch Bedspring Ridge, a dogtrot house he built in Sutton, Arkansas on old family land on a spot where his great-grandfather’s house once stood. There he lives and opines with his wife BobbieJean and a rescue dog, “Li’l Dawg.” A former newspaper reporter, editor and publisher, he has a master’s degree in business, is a retired director for a global technology company, has been a business owner, student of government and the behavior of politicians. He has been a college instructor, national motivational speaker, community development and festival development consultant and is a published author.