So, in this article, we’ll explain why you don’t have to worry about AI anytime soon. AI can do a lot of magical things, that’s true. And there’s a near-infinite supply of possible uses for AI, too. That’s also true. But, AI isn’t this all-encompassing, all-powerful tech that’s sentient or anywhere near that. Take AI art for example. There’s this vibrant conversation happening right on, especially online, about what AI art means, if we should be worried about replacing artists with neural nets, and if it’s at all a scary thing to exist. But the good news is here, folks: AI art isn’t that scary. While we can use AI to answer questions and parse information, and we can even generate images and sounds, this is a far cry from replacing artists. You can input your tests into a textbox and have a beautiful piece of music created. You can’t get AI to write you a sequel to your favorite book in any satisfying way. You can’t get AI to just develop for you a video game, either. The fact of the matter is that AI art isn’t really AI that can make art in the way we usually think about it. We’re still a ways off from AI movies and sentience and all that kind of mind-bending science-fiction technology. Yes, AI is a fantastic tool to rely on in the creation of art, but that’s actually something that directly benefits artists and creatives, not harm them. Ultimately, what’s scary about something like AI art is if AI could produce art that’s engaging and compelling and that can’t be clocked as something made by a machine. If that were possible, there might be reasons to worry, even if there are other reasons why that might not be the worst thing ever. Nonetheless, that’s simply not possible in most contexts. Sure, you can point to the odd graphic design competition in the here and now that ended up won by something AI-generated, but unless you’re really reaching for a reason to feel some existential dread on that particular day, this just isn’t something happening in the real world that’s worth worrying about. Harm isn’t being done, and artists aren’t losing their jobs en masse. This can describe most of what AI can do right now. Yeah, it can do a lot of amazing things that are worth doing, but most of those things are highly technical and would otherwise be extremely difficult and time-consuming, which is a win for everybody. What AI isn’t doing is taking over human jobs and replacing those humans with machines. Not in any meaningful way. Okay, but what about if AI was much more powerful? What then? So, what if AI could actually take a text description of a song you liked the idea of and write that song for you in an instant? Of course, that’s not possible, but what if it were, what then? Well, there are actually very good reasons why that might not sound halfway as concerning as you might think. First up is the human culture component of all this. Even if AI art could well create a song just like that in an instant, most fans of music like being fans of actual human musicians, too. For example, vocaloid music exists, and while that might not be AI, it’s still definitely a lot closer to it than normal music. But nonetheless, it’s not so popular. There are a lot of reasons for that, but no doubt, some of it comes down to people wanting to see what other human beings can create and have to say. This is all to say that unless there’s a major shift in human culture and everyone decides they’re okay with AI making our art, or anything else, even if AI could do it, it wouldn’t go that far. But, okay, say all the people at all afraid or weary of AI die out, and say the generations left decide that, well, they don’t care what’s AI or what’s not. Whether a show was made by a computer or by actors, they don’t care and they just want a good show. Say all that happens. Say the market for AI art just becomes the market for regular, natural human-created art. There are still serious problems. The biggest one of which comes down, as it always does, to money. Let’s use video games as an example. Say we could use an AI to just create video games for us. And imagine it was possible to use that AI to make games just as good as human-created ones. Maybe even better. Say all of that is totally possible, and say people were willing to buy that. The problem then becomes an economic one. Say it would take a team of 300 full-time staff four calendar years of full-time work to make a complete, AAA video game that fans are sure to love. That’ll take the money to pay all their salaries as well as the necessary equipment and working space required. Millions of dollars, no doubt. But how much money do you think it’ll take to develop and train an artificial intelligence so advanced it can build the systems required for video games, test them for fun, iterate, debug, and do everything else that’s done throughout the development of a video game? Billions? Trillions? Who’s to say. The point here being that why would even a successful, wealthy company invest in developing a technology that’s never been successful in bringing a product to market to make a product they know they can make for less in the traditional way of using humans to do so? The answer here is pretty simple: no business would. So, it’s not just a question of what AI can do and if people are willing to let AI do that, it’s also a question of whether it’s efficient to actually use AI. On a big enough timeline? Sure, absolutely. The technological march onward is inevitable, and with technology, once that cat’s out of the bag, it’s not going back in. Human beings have created things of almost unbelievable power before that we didn’t understand at the time, and we almost certainly (inevitably) will do that again. AI is even a good candidate for such a thing. But we’re probably not seeing a Cyberpunk dystopia or rise-of-the-machine scenario where humanity is destroyed in our lifetimes. Just as one day the sun will explode and that’s something for future humans to deal with, assuming we’re still around by then, that’s a problem for future humans. There’s nothing to be done about that now. However, there is much good to be done with AI in the here and now. Lives can be saved, and so can money, too. We can make hard tasks a lot easier, and we can accomplish new, never-before-done goals. We can build amazing things that were once the domain of science fiction. AI, as a tool, can enable the human race hit the next step in its evolution. Yes, as time goes on and AI matures, there are real and serious problems that we have to face and address, but there truly isn’t much need to sit at home as we head into 2023 and be worried about what AI is going to do to humanity.
