I just finished working on another post whinging about A.I. and you might well be wondering why I care so much about this specific issue, I don't enjoy whining about things that are pissing me off as much as others seem to. Bizarrely motivating though a good rant often is, it's not something I particularly enjoy doing or want to be known for.
Instead then, with this post I'm going to try and approach it from the other side, talking about the positives of human endeavour rather than the negatives of A.I. As Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, "Real stupidity beats Artificial Intelligence every time." (Incidentally, he came up with Hex, something extremely similar to modern A.I chatbots, in a book released in 1994.)
When I say "Art" I don't mean just pictures, I mean the umbrella term that means any form of artistic expression. Anything at all, whatever medium speaks to you. Incidentally, I suppose performance art is the one I got two degrees in, but in terms of practice (due largely to opportunity to practice) writing is my main one lately, but I've dabbled in others too.
This speaks less to my being in any way multi-talented than it does to me being indecisive and easily distracted by shiny new ideas. This is the main reason I've never managed to finish a novel despite having at least six works in progress at any given time.
Well, I used a word there I don't like to throw around, "talented." In my experience, when people use that word, they treat the concept of talent as a god-given gift that one either has, or doesn't. You know where I'm going with the next part, this is not the case. Talent, or skill, or whatever you want to call it, is not a gift. It is a reward.
Sure, some things come easier to some people, we're all wired towards different things, and where on any given aptitude scale we start out does seem pretty random, But anything you practice, you'll get good at, mobility on that scale is not just possible, it's inevitable. Any given artistic skill you may be honing needs practice like your body needs exercise,
I think people in general are pretty bad at understanding the concept of granular progression, or how quickly improvement can build. It's not exactly an artistic endeavour in itself, but in aid of one day being able to write faster, I am practicing touch-typing as I write this, trying to use all ten fingers on the correct keys. Muscle memory still isn't quite there, but trouble with numbers and using the pinkies aside, I flatter myself I've got to be decent at it. Until last year I was a habitual "claw" typer. index, middle, and thumb for spaces was all I used. my then-max speed of roughly 40 words a minute, is now something I can comfortably match and exceed without really trying. (But good lord was the early going frustrating.)
Thing about that is, I was of the age where this was taught in school, which apparently it no longer is, but I slacked off, fell behind, and while I was still looking down at the keyboard and hunting and pecking with my index fingers, I'd look to my left, and one of my school friends (visually impaired I might add) had a black cardboard covering over his hands to prevent looking down and words were materialising on his screen at speeds incomprehensible to a tween who hadn't got his head around the concept of practice yet.
Some people, I think, have trouble getting their heads around learning a skill as opposed to having one, and those that don't universally underestimate how much there is to anything. Separate even from that is the challenge of being mindful of your own progress when surrounded by people to whom you compare inferior. I never cared enough about touch-typing to want to get good at it back at school, and it's only a year or so ago it occurred to me to try. But do you know what taught me the value of putting in the time as well as the creeping nature of gradual improvement? It was Kingdom Hearts.
I am being 100% sincere. The Disney/Final Fantasy crossover PS2 game about using the power of friendship and a massive key to twat the concept of darkness over the head while Donald Duck refuses to heal you. That Kingdom Hearts. I did write the story under this, but it ended up being really long, so I think I'm just gonna make that its own post. The point of it being though, being denied the ability to cheat my way to beating Ansem, and subsequently, Sephiroth, and having nothing else I felt like doing, I discovered the simple joy of actually putting in the time to make things happen, which, bizarrely for a fan of JRPGs, I had not yet internalised.
Beating a video game might seem trivial, and it is. But that was the first time I accomplished a goal that took any amount of commitment and continuous effort. (no, I didn't do particularly well in school to that point.)
But this is the point. If all you're interested in, is the result, the product, then I understand why things like generative AI appeal to you, and, with all due respect, I don't think you'd even comprehend how people would see the difference, but the difference is there, and people do see it.
If you look at things in, what I've come to refer to as a mechanical way, then the difference between a hand-drawn image and an AI generated one may be very little at first glance, (assuming the AI didn't warp it, which I've seen happen a lot, you can't really get away from this stuff on social media these days.) But, I've come to realise something about people and specialisation. There's always more to it. I'll repeat that for emphasis. There is always more to it.
I'm not just talking about art anymore, I could be talking about any area of expertise you could think of. Anything anyone could specialise in. I've also observed that people tend to think anything except their specific specialisation can be automated by AI, and I've come to believe, that they are all wrong.
During the 2020 lockdown, I saw this anecdote about Chess floating about that also made me think about this, and I'm gonna paraphrase it for brevity.
Basically, all else being equal, an adult will beat a 5 year-old at chess, 100% of the time, that same adult will lose 100% of games to an experienced amateur, who will lose 100% of games to a Chess grandmaster. To that Chess grandmaster, that experienced amateur stands the same chance of winning as the 5 year-old: 0. To them, they are the same.
Those layers of expertise can exist in any field. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a real thing, it is entirely possible to not even know enough about a thing, to know how little you know. Would you listen to a five year-old who barged into your office, telling you how to do your job? No? What if that same five year-old told you your job could be done with AI?
How the hell would they know, right?
If you need a different example, former professional basketballer Brian "White Mamba" Scalabrine who, as I understand it (I don't follow basketball, I just heard a story, so forgive me if any of this is wrong.) was one of the lower-tier players in the NBA. He famously did a show called "The Scallenge" where he would go one-on-one with volunteers, who were fairly confident due to his relatively low performance (I stress, for the NBA, which is the point here.) he won all four times, letting only 3 baskets past, and scoring 22 throughout the challenge, coining the immortal line "I'm closer to LeBron than you are to me."
So if you wouldn't listen to the five year-old, what about the adult? The one who doesn't play chess, but would still beat them every time? I'm betting, if they're not in your field, the answer is still no. Because even if you're the experienced amateur in this story, you're closer to that grandmaster than they are to you.
So the next time you think something is doable by AI (which, famously, is wrong about everything anyway.) Remember that, like ogres, areas of expertise, have layers.
Even apart from that though, if I have a wider point to make, it is that the process is the point. No Chess grandmaster thought they'd be one from day one, no expert in any field had it fall into their lap, and it's not a bad thing if you don't understand something, none of us, know what we don't know. All of us are the 5 year-old in most fields, and the only functional difference between the 5 year-old and the inexperienced adult is knowing that those layers exist.
The difference between AI Generated artwork and human-made, may be very little to those who don't care, But to anyone who does, even a little, it's obvious when something was made with care and commitment to craft. Machine learning is impressive, but humans are still undefeated in intuition. Let's not give that up.
Author Brandon Sanderson (Who I will get around to reading one of these days) gave a talk that he titled "We are the art." He made the point better than I can, or indeed, am currently, that the point of becoming an artist is not to sell art, the point of art, is to turn you into the artist you want to be.
The product is incidental, the process is the point. You will be amazed how far you go with practice, and what kind of artist you can become. It's worth the effort.
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