AI trains on data from the past - how can it be the wave of the future?
The scenario shown in the comic above sounds too dumb to be true, but I have recently seen it happen. Well-meaning people use AI to create a poster, flyer, or web page for an artists group, failing to realize how tone-deaf it is to do so. Sadly, this seems to be a trend.
Why is AI "art" a bad idea? Well to understand why, you have to understand what AI is - or what the various forms of it are. Generative AI, including LLM (large language models) are really the poor man's AI in that there is no real intelligence involved. Rather, the neural network trains on millions of images and billions of pages of text and then tries to generate content based on a user prompt. There is really no "intelligence" involved, just copying ideas from the past.
There are other forms of AI that require far more computing power, and perhaps these may have actual intelligence - but that's a scary thought for another day.
But one thing that all AI types have in common is a need to train their neural networks on a data set. I wrote about neural networks back in 2010, and they were old hat even then. What has changed since the early days is the increase in computing power available as well as the willingness of Billionaires to sink billions of dollars into data centers to create more powerful neural nets.
But regardless of the size or sophistication of the neural network, it still needs data to train on, just as our own neural networks (our brains, which AI was modeled after) require a couple of decades of training before they are suitable for real work. And as we know, often this training goes off the rails, and the human brain is badly programmed, resulting in disastrous results.
But whether it is a human brain, a squirrel brain, or ChatGTP, all neural networks require training data, and such data comes from either historical data or from real-world experience. There is no source of future data to tap into - the future doesn't exist, yet.
So AI tends to show us things that are from the past, particularly the cheaper forms of AI. Tales of AI solving math puzzles or curing cancer are often just that - tales. Often what these stories boil down to is the AI summarizing the results in the field, not generating new ideas.
If you take this to its logical conclusion, the result is bleak. If more and more people use AI to generate documents, e-mails, artwork, movies, music, or whatever, the "content" that AI will "train" on will comprise little more that other AI-generated content. It is an infinite DO loop, as we used to say in Fortran. Innovation will not accelerate, but rather slow down, as AI agents spend more and more time naval-gazing and human beings spend less and less time innovating.
At least that is my take on it.
Sadly, the use of AI seems to be on the rise - it is hard to avoid as every tech platform defaults to AI-generating options, and many do not even have a means of disabling it. Many folks I know just give up and use Google's AI search result summaries, rather than look at the source data. I know, it is easier - like falling off a log. But in life, the easy answers are often the wrong answers, particularly when it comes to finances.
The use of AI in the arts is particularly troubling, as it directly puts artists of all sorts, out of a job*. Painter, sculptor, musician, actor - all are being replaced with AI agents and "prompt engineers." (Boy, being an Engineer used to mean something - but I digress). The result is more enshittification of life. Arts and Crafts shows devolve into AI-generated slop, with few real artists on display - much as "farmer's markets" have devolved from farmers selling their wares to people reselling food they bought wholesale, or just people selling junk made in China.
Sadly, we as humans are not entirely prepared for the changes wrought by AI. For example, our arts association hasn't yet addressed the issue or formulated a policy. What happens when a member brings in an artwork that is wholly or partially created using AI? And how do you tell if it is AI unless it has a watermark? Some uncomfortable conversations will ensue - but necessary conversations, nevertheless.
Sadly, this Pandora's box has already been opened and there is no going back. And speaking of Pandora, have you noticed a lot of music these days sounds awfully generic? I was at a resort recently and the "DJ" was playing tunes that had "lyrics" that sounded like English words, but were nonsense. AI slop - for your ears.
* And it is not like most artists are making a lot of money to begin with. Makes one wonder why tech bros seem obsessed with eliminating low-paying jobs, instead of the highest-paying jobs. Couldn't an AI CEO save any company millions, if not billions of dollars? Just a thought.