Every time I see posts like this I remember a frequent argument I had in the early 2000’s.
Every time I talked with photography students (I worked at an art school) or a general photography enthusiast, I got the same smug predictions about digital photography. The resolution sucked, the color sucked, the artist doesn’t have enough control, etc. They all assured me that digital photography might be nice for casual vacation photos and maybe a few specialty applications but no way, no how, not even when hell freezes over would any serious photographer ever consider digital.
At the time I would think back to my annoying grade school discussions with teachers who assured me that (dot matrix) printers just sucked. Serious writing was done by hand and if you didn’t know cursive you might as well be illiterate.
For some reasons people keep forgetting that technology marches on. The dumb glitches that are so easy to make fun of now, will get addressed. There are billions of dollars pouring into AI development. Every major company and country is developing them. The pay rates for AI developer jobs attract huge amounts of people to solve those problems.
And up to now we have zero indication that the current approach isn’t a dead end. Bill Gates, for instance, thinks that GPT-4 is a development plateau: https://heise.de/-9337989
Bill has made some famously bad predictions in the past. Here’s a small sample https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/the-worst-things-bill-gates-ever-said-a6990046.html
It’s possible that the current $100 billion market size of AI and all the AI job openings are completely misplaced but that’s indication that a lot of people have pretty high expectations that AI will continue to grow.
Ah, yes, famous expert in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Bill Gates. I’m personally curious what Taylor Swift thinks about Chat GPT 5, myself. That girl’s got a lot of money, which means she must be smart and has smart opinions on topics like generative AI and the efficacy of currently undeveloped LLMs.
Certainly, but none of those technologies completely replaced things. The existing way of doing things became hobbies and remain the preference over the technology which disrupted the field.
Not to mention, technologies will sometimes flop, only to resurface later in a completely different package. The PDA was maybe popular for a year? But now we all have smartphones which effectively capture that concept. The Wii U failed, but the Switch has been wildly popular.
It’s probably premature to say that AI will completely fail, but also that AI will completely replace everything. I just used a Polaroid camera this past weekend at a wedding, and it was enjoyable in a way digital cameras or phones wouldn’t have been. I still write things out at work, particularly if I’m trying to wrap my head around some math or a difficult concept. Typing it out doesn’t work as well.
I think it is safe to say that there are some things AI will never be able to replace, just like there are some things digital cameras couldn’t replace, nor our phones.
My wife still likes film photography. We’re even thinking of setting up a dark room in the basement. Turns out it’s a huge PITA to find someone who knows how to repair a Mamya and, despite her best intentions, every photo she’s taken in the last decade has been digital.
As near as I can tell film photography and hand-written letters are things people do for fun. Both digital photography and modern printers can produce outputs that are are nearly indistinguishable from film or handwriting. I’ve been at weddings with Polaroids too. It’s fun but the pictures aren’t very good. The color is off, the resolution is low and they fade faster. The only advantage is that everyone gets to do a fun retro-thing. There’s nothing wrong with that, I have a lot of hobbies that involve doing things the old fashion way just because it’s more fun.
When we actually need the results to work well we generally go for the most modern technologies we can afford. When the main purpose is the enjoyment that accrues to the creator, there’s still a lot of room for older technologies.
That’s what I expect AI will eventually get to. Right now AI art is largely a novelty. Soon it will be the standard and creative artists will find interesting things to do with it that none of us are considering now.
There’s either the “it’ll never work” take or the “it’ll destroy the industry!” take, and both are kinda childish. New technologies are tools, nothing more, nothing less. Learn to use them and they’ll make your life easier. Integrate them if they’re threatening your livelihood. Learn and adapt, it’s how progress has always worked.
Same. Remember the same arguments. Heck I still get into it with clients sometimes. Usually snark works
Me: wasn’t 2013 nice? I had a full set of hair and didn’t have to diet, but as much as I might miss 2013 it isn’t 2013 anymore. Time to move forward.
I’m guessing this argument has been going on longer than either of us can remember.
There was a long time when guns were considered interesting toys but not something a sane person would take onto the battlefield; especially not without some sort of backup. Hell, the “three musketeers” were more known for their fencing than their firearms skill.
I’m sure back in the day some chucklehead complained that papyrus was cute but anything important had to be carved in stone tablet.
