AI: We’ve seen that movie before

In light of all the discussion of “artificial intelligence” tools being developed I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey again. The movie shows a computer controlling a space ship that is able to interact with the crew. The computer is supposedly perfect and without error, however in the end it turns against the crew on board.

Today’s environment people are making use of text and image generators, such as ChatGPT, with very little known as to where this will lead. There are people, even amongst those developing the technologies, that are saying that there are serious issues to be acknowledged. Sometimes I wonder where were some of these tech companies on current issues such as privacy, harms of social media and misinformation that we are already dealing with? These issues are likely to be amplified by the new tools being developed now.

While much has been said about the negative side of AI, there will likely good things to come out of it, but there still are questions to be answered. Technology has always been promoted as something that will allow us to be more productive, but productive for what? How do we counteract technology that on the one hand works to help us with something, may work against us in terms of separating us from others and with the natural creation around us? How do we take advantage of what is coming while still encouraging a desire for human creativity and imagination? Relating to this I don’t think that any technology, including AI, can do away with human creativity and imagination as there have been many technological changes that have still allowed creativity to thrive.

Taking a somewhat different path I once wrote a poem (no ChatGPT back then) “In memory of Hal’s darkroom” about my first Macintosh computer and using Photoshop and similar image editing software to work with my photographs. There were questions about digital photography in those early days and this was also true for the world wide web and yet now they are both readily accepted as part of how we work. It also connects with 2001: A Space Odyssey as my Macintosh had some sound effects from the movie. The poem also alludes to a couple of Apple ad campaigns.