The Thing About AI…

Here is a non-tech related fun fact about me. I’m not the best chef. I can make the basics but if you want something even remotely interesting, I’m going to put in a lot of effort for a very ok result. I’m not very good at looking at 5 ingredients and saying “oh I can make X”. Recently, I was in that spot. I had 4 or 5 items and didn’t know what I could make with them. It felt like an odd query for Google. Even if I figured out a way to format it properly, I knew the result would be recipe websites which are up there with car dealerships as some of the worst sites on the web. Instead, I asked Bing Copilot what I could make. It gave me a list of about 5 outcomes. I picked one and it gave me the recipe. Call me “impressed”. I’ve experimented with Copilot a bit beyond that but for the most part, it’s best use for me is to give it the lego blocks of my kitchen and let it tell me how to assemble. 

Earlier this week, a number of Taylor Swift NSFW AI images were circulating on X/Twitter. The Verge has an excellent recap. This appeared to get move coverage and I sense it’s for two reasons. 1. Taylor Swift is probably the most famous person on the planet who is not a soccer star or political leader. 2. AI and how it’s used as been bubbling under the minds of non-tech folks for a bit and this is one of the louder “it can do what?!” Moments we’ve seen so far. Deepfakes, fake celebrity voices/video isn’t new. It is being generated faster, and by more people than before. It reached a point where tech CEOs and even the White House have responded. Again, this isn’t new. I sense one could find Taylor Swift AI images going back years. However, it’s reached a point in the public conscious where more folks are paying attention and seeing the good, and the bad.

In case it’s not obvious, I think this is really abhorrent behavior. Celebrity status does come with some downsides in privacy like flight tracking, and paparazzi but I don’t think anyone should be subject to non-consensual image generation.  

Something that sits on my mind, and I battle it internally daily, is it breaks my heart that we have such a powerful tool in the internet and it is used for such nefarious purposes. People do things like spread fake porn, companies do things like design outrage algorithms to keep you engaged longer (to sell more ad space to other companies). Politicians use it to stoke the flames to keep their power. There are obviously good use cases too! I love digital books. My family has lived in different timezones for almost 30 years and the internet helps keep us close. The internet allows me to watch my BGSU Falcons play when they would have played maybe one national tv game a year just 15 years ago. There is good, and there is bad. I often refer to Jonathan Haidt’s work about the good and bad on social media. To summarize, the good can be it can connect people who can’t be physically close, but the bad is it feeds us algorithms focused on making us feel bad and the largest effect on that is on teenagers. I’m thinking of AI the same way. Growing up with the internet, I was always hopeful on how it can change the world. As an adult, I see how it has changed the world and while some things are positive, so many things are negative. AI appears to be the same. I can see some utility but I fear greatly on how it will be used by individuals and corporate entities alike. 

What I don’t know, is what any of us as individuals can do about it. I can blog about it, which is something. At the moment, that’s my only solution.