That was a few years ago, and back then most people doubted my opinions. I just assumed that if AI tools could produce good new variations on Mozart, Shakespeare, and Michelangelo's works that they could probably replicate workflows involving facts and math much more easily. It seemed obvious to me.
Now, as public perceptions normalize AI usage to this degree, I do wonder, as I did back then, what is the end of the process. The user interface is easy. The results are high quality. The tools are becoming very commonplace. So, where does that all lead to? Is it a benefit, and if so, for whom?
I enjoy creating my own projects without AI, just as I prefer writing with my own words, but I realize that I am witnessing a change in humanity towards a time when humans will no longer value the experiences that I enjoy quite like I do because most people will do everything by asking AI to do it.
That is the part that I wonder about the most, even more than the point of creating job stealing tools to enrich billionaires. I wonder about how future people might not see the point in learning skills, perfecting crafts, or mastering subjects if they simply always ask AI to do everything for them.
In my opinion, it is essentially an existential crisis, for human beings, if humanity has produced technology trained from all of human achievement and all human knowledge for the purpose of streamlining the humans out of all workflows to save time and money. It is a strange world we now live in.
Personally, I am certainly not opposed to using technology. I spend most of my time these last few years learning about 3D modeling and animation on the computer, but I did spend years learning to draw, and years playing the guitar, and years learning to write stories, all of which I enjoyed a lot.
As I get older, I think a lot about quality of life, so this AI revolution does make me wonder if young people using AI to write for them, create artwork and music and video for them, will they experience the same joys in their lives that I did while learning to draw and play guitar. I do not know.
It is a serious question that I cannot answer, in that I do realize that if AI tools were readily available when I was young, I would have explored them quite thoroughly and used them to express myself in every way possible. So, I do not know that I would have learned about how to create things.
If I was young now, and I could use AI tools to express myself, would I practice an instrument for years, learn about songwriting, and learn how to record my own music myself like I did do? Would I practice drawing simply for my own amusement? Would I learn how cameras work? I do not know.
It makes me sad, to comprehend that so many joys that I experienced in my life, through learning how to create art and music and stories and photographs and video, may be missing from the experience of most creative people in the future, because they will use AI to do so many things to save time.
I do think it is likely that young people will express themselves more easily with these tools, so there is a trade off, but the satisfaction from learning and practicing may not be there, so I wonder about how that will feel, to simply ask a machine to express things for you with immediate results.