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AI is making content production more accessible than ever. That’s an amazing thing. The potential future on offer staggers the mind. One problem though, is that we’re still at the bulky car phone stage of this technology – if that – and already our world is being overwhelmed by crapness. Crap content, crap customer experiences, crap social interaction.
There is wonderful work out there for sure – some of the best ever. Creators – production equipment in the hands of the target audience - have opened up a universe of depth in niche content. This democratization of content production will continue to lead to more interesting and exciting uses.
The rub through is in the reduced amount of time before picking up the metaphorical pen. One of the benefits of things being a bit less accessible and a bit harder to use is that it forced the creator to pause for a moment before beginning. The process of working through drafts helped to hone not
just the creative construction but also the creators’ thinking.
just the creative construction but also the creators’ thinking.
"Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so
hard." - David McCullough.
Writing my book forced me think for hours about storytelling, video content, and production and to align my thoughts. AI generated text forces no such process, no such understanding on the behalf of the writer. By skipping directly to the result and foregoing the sculpting of the idea we arrive at an output that is poorer for the lack of inspiration that was provoked in its construction.
Everyone seeks better faster cheaper without understanding that the corners that we cut may well contain the essence of success. And yet the perceived ease, speed and cost of computer augmented production make it a hard argument to resist. Just the other day I was asked by a client why we couldn’t just use AI to easily make an animation look amazing.
The hype generated by the venture capital Gods of our age, who have invested the budgets of countries into these fledgling technologies doesn’t help of course. The danger of AI – for now – is not so much in its genius ability destroy humanity, but in humanity surrendering our thinking too early to a technology that is still so far away from being what we perceive it to be. Anyone who has tried full self-driving in a Tesla will know the dangers of taking the Zeus of Silicon Valley at his word.
Now that data is the oil, the ‘black gold’ of our age we edge towards the concentration of all efforts on that which can be recorded and optimized. As our mothers might have said, we know the price of everything and value of nothing. Some things should not be optimized, the most important things in life cannot be recorded empirically and so they have no worth in a system that reduces everything to a binary score.
Looking on Pinterest recently for inspiration for a birthday cake for my daughter I was continually stumped by the hyper-imaginative but superfluous AI generated cakes that now flood the platform. Just months ago I could go on there and know what was possible in the sphere – now as beautiful as some of them are – they no longer inspire or educate in the same way.
On Amazon, our experience is optimized to oblivion, shaving split seconds off our products journey to us at what cost? I was recently surprised to see Thanksgiving spelled wrong on a banner ad on the platform. Does it matter? Will it affect sales of the item? Probably not – in fact it probably helps them.
So what can we do? Have faith. To be creative and to tell stories are the two of the most fundamental elements of the human condition. We have been doing these things since before we were Homo Sapiens. We will continue long into the future. As more and more content floods into our lives, only the very best, the most appropriate (interesting, exciting, informing) for the audience will rise to the top.
As humans using fantastically exciting creative technology, we will be the ones to create that.
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