Why AI is not "just another tool"

To art is to human

In the real world. A photo from a recent hike in Ticino.

What follows might not be some of my best writing. It might be confusing or meandering – and it is certainly not complete. But hear me out.

Over the last year I have been trying to formulate a balanced view on AI and how it affects us practically and spiritually. Yes, you read that right: Spiritually. We’ll get back to that.

The reason I still haven’t found a fixed abode for my opinions is that, just like AI, it keeps evolving. It’s like excavating on a huge architectural dig. I get a few meters down and find a palace. I could stop there and be delighted at my find. But then I decided to dig a little further and discover this palace was at the top of a hill with an entire village below it. And on, and on, and on. Every time the perspective changes.

Every time I form an opinion, it’s deleted further along the line. And, unfortunately, it never ends with some rousing call to action that is grounded in logic, only in philosophy.

Where I am completely unwavering on AI, however, is on truth. As a journalist, the “truth” is the diamond we all search for. The advent of photo-real video and image generation is the antithesis of the truth. Almost anyone can generate images of almost anyone doing almost anything.

This is a cancer for our society because it erodes our faith in every institution – if it wasn’t bad enough already.

And, yes, you might call AI-generated images “janky”, but a word I have heard to describe the capabilities of AI so well is “yet”. AI isn’t generating completely flawless videos of people…yet. AI cannot create an image that could bring down an entire government…yet.

Laugh at how janky Will Smith’s (why is it always Will Smith?) music promo video was all you like, but this is just getting started.

AI is not just a tool

Because AI is not like any other tool. This is a phrase I have heard time and again as people try to justify using AI in the creative process. It simply is not.

To master a tool – say a paintbrush – required hours of practice to bend the paintbrush to fit your vision. The paintbrush did not change in that process. It didn’t try to make itself fit your needs better; it did not eventually begin dancing across the page creating the image in your mind. No, you had to master the tool; you, in a way, had to evolve towards it.

AI, meanwhile, is evolving towards you. The way I see AI is like an alien that has landed on Earth. It’s trying to figure us out. It’s downloaded all the information ever created. In fact, you can almost hear AI imitating Neo in The Matrix: “I know kung-fu.”

In an AI engine’s perfect world, we would also be AI, because we’d be able to provide it with JSON and Markdown scripts of what we want in tabulated format. But we don’t. Therefore, while we evolve towards AI, it is evolving towards us.

At which point, then, do we become obsolete?

Art is human

I recently watched a fascinating video by Thomas Flight, whose video essays on film and, more broadly, art I find consistently captivating. His delivery is always impeccable, his production is fantastic, and crucially his videos are the product of deep, deep thinking.

His latest video – “Why AI ‘Art’ Feels So Wrong” – is another excellent piece. He delves deep into the matter of “slop” and what constitutes “art” versus “artifice”. One of the things that really resonated with me is that using AI to produce “art” by definition changes the meaning of the thing.

Art is not essential. It’s also something profoundly human. Every creature on the planet spends its life looking for food, seeking shelter, reproducing, and so on, but to be creative for the sake of it is uniquely human.

I am also strongly of the belief that art is a school of hard knocks. I often hear the argument that, by automating some of the “mundane” or “procedural” parts of the creative process, we can open our minds to the greater creative puzzles.

To me that is bullshit.

For me, becoming an expert in your craft – be that branding, writing, design, whatever – you’ve made some shit stuff, either it was shit to start or you made something shit.

That’s the process.

The idea you could simply automate half the creative pipeline is abhorrent to me for three reasons:

1. Your lifting up the drawbridge of every junior creative coming in your wake. Those people who are yet to graduate the apprenticeship of the mundane cannot gain the experience to reach the top.

2. Making diamonds out of dirt is a skill you simply have to learn. It makes you a better creative. In fact, some of our best ideas come about during those tasks.

3. And then what? Are you saying that we will simply reach an arbitrary no-go line in the creative pipeline? Remember that AI is evolving towards us. Automate half your pipeline and I can guarantee you the other half won’t be far behind.

For those reasons, “AI is just another tool” is a misguided idea, because where you give AI an inch, it’ll take a mile.

Let’s ask “why?”

I recently watched the film BlackBerry, documenting the meteoric rise and asteroidal fall of that once-famous phone company. In the 2000s, BlackBerry controlled nearly 50% of the US phone market. Today, it controls 0%.

Where I was reminded of the AI debate was when Verizon was confronting BlackBerry about “what Apple’s doing”. This was in 2007/08 when Apple had just unveiled the first iPhone. Everyone is going nuts. BlackBerry’s investors want to know: What are you doing about it? How are we competing?

These conversations happen all the time in business, but never have they been so united around a single issue. Every business right now is asking, “So, how are we using AI?”

Because no one wants to lose out. The way our economics is constructed means no one wants to be caught napping. But no one is asking “why?” I only wish we could slow down for a beat to ask that question.

So, what hope do we have?

I know, right? Uplifting stuff. But here are at least two things that can give us hope…or could.

Fast-food art

Restaurants have gone through the same thing we’re going through as creatives today a long time ago. The advent of fast food could have destroyed the restaurant industry. Think about it: Fast food is – well – fast, it’s cheap, it’s moderately tasty.

To go one step further, a restaurant’s biggest competitor is your kitchen. It’s convenient, you’ve literally paid for it in rent or through a house purchase, you can make whatever you want within your skillset.

So, why go to a nice restaurant? But we still do. The restaurant industry is massive and it doesn’t look to be going anywhere. There will still be an appetite (pun intended) for excellent food, excellent experience – and excellent art.

I do believe that, while the road ahead looks bumpy, human-created (ugh) creativity will still have an outlet and be absorbed by people looking for it. If you are just wanting trashy slop, artifice, and general noise: It’s there for you, like McDonald’s. If you’ve come to be moved by something, to witness someone’s deepest expressions: That, too, will be there.

I strongly recommend reading my friend Alex Roddie’s Substack as he grapples with these discussions in a much more coherent way. As an artist with a computing background, he’s someone to listen to.

Policy is key

Secondly – and this is one that is still pending – policy.

Think about this for a second: Who gave Sam Altman the power to control the fate of humanity? Like, seriously, this is a tech guy being interviewed on the future of the jobs market. Not a politician, not someone accountable to anyone: A guy who invented something that has completely revolutionised our lives that we have to bear the consequences for and work out how we use.

So far, politicians have been asleep at the wheel. I have not heard a peep about regulating AI in any substantive way from governments. I hear a lot about being “pro-innovation”, but very little about protecting some of our most powerful assets: Art, culture, and even a protection of our faces.

One final soapbox

I work in a setting where I sit alongside many creatives. Our business is also grappling with AI, and is putting measures in to protect certain aspects of our brand. But, as with many policies I have read, they often focus on images and video.

I hear a lot less about protecting copy. Let’s get one thing straight here: Copy is art, too. I have heard far too many times that “everyone is a writer”. Let me tell you, I have read a lot of garbage copy in my life (and this post may well be in that category for you).

I just want to wave a little flag here to say: Protect copy, because writers produce messages that resonate.

My parting thoughts

If you’re still here, well done. This post feels a bit like Frodo’s adventure to Mordor, with many side-quests and wrong turns along the way. I’d like to think it maintained some kind of coherence.

There are so many more feelings I’d like to imbue into this post, but until we find a way for us to telepathically transmit thoughts and emotions between one another, my words are the only means I have to do so.

I also want to get something straight: I do use AI. I use it at work due to a big project I am working on, and I use it now and then for research when I simply cannot get what I want out of Google (for instance, trying to recall a half-remembered movie quote or plot line) or when I need an “impartial” (sorta) sounding board.

What I hope you take away from this is an awareness. I cannot give some grand proclamation to end this post, and I could’ve gone on for much longer, but I hope to have at least added to the discussion.

This isn’t over. It’s just beginning. Then again, it might all implode next week.