One of my all-time favorite songs is Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees." In it, the world around the main characters is devolving into cheap replicas of real things. But the end of the song resolves because the main character feels like he's found the real thing.
Over Christmas, I experimented with a photo AI program of photos of myself. Some of them looked like me, some of them did not. They were me, but they weren't me. They were not the real thing.
ChatGPT appears to have the capacity to completely upend the university essay-writing system. I'm a professor and it's mind-boggling to think that a simple prompt could generate a 500-word essay in under a minute.
Fields that are currently in reach of being completely changed:
-Essays
-Papers
-Photos
-Books
-Sermons
-Speeches
In the future, will other artistic works be in range of AI's reach?
Will we be able to input 50 Taylor Swift songs and have AI generate the upbeat song that I'm looking for that day?
Or what if I'm feeling nostalgic and I need a brand new, old-feeling Johnny Cash song? Can I select my top 20 Cash songs to generate a brand-new moody Cash tune?
Big Q's: How do we protect against it?
Do we protect against it? That is, are we able to stop it?
In what ways is AI similar to other technology?
In what ways is it different?
What industries will evaporate in the wake of AI?
What industries will flourish? (Will we ever be able to get a bot to clean out a sewer line or wire a new residential switch for us?)
In so many of these posts, I feel like maybe I have a solution or a new way to look at an old situation. But, the new AI tech leaves me at a loss. I'm not sure where it goes or where it stops. Is this the end of the real thing? It's U2's song, "Even better than the real thing." The danger is that we leave the real thing for some other, easier thing.
