What I Really Think of AI

It wasn't that long ago that the term AI was an unknown entity. I recall as little as 9 months ago, I was decrying its presence in our lives, predicting it would lead to the downfall of civilization.

And then I realized I had been using AI myself in my own work editing podcasts for clients and myself for quite awhile. Maybe not having it produce an inane word salad that I cut and paste onto someone's show notes. The tasks I were having it do were more "behind the scenes". And yet I decided to try out some of the tools available, and wouldn't you know it, they put out a halfway decent product.

Now cheerleaders for AI will say things to the effect of, "That's great, now you can invest your energy into other things."

I guess you can. Like scrolling mindlessly on Facebook and Twitter.

The catch to these time-saving technologies is that you need to intentionally invest your energy that you're not putting into those tedious tasks into things that are truly valuable.

And we tend to choose the path of least resistance at every possible turn, don't we.

People I follow in my circles say that AI is so wonderful because it makes things like podcasts all the more accessible to more people.

I suppose it does. It also dilutes the quality of the medium as a whole. So aren't those people promoting these products really shooting themselves in the foot? You profit in the short-term, and lessen the long-term quality of your product in doing so.

It's why I will never cut and paste something that some AI machine churns out. I will say those things sometimes give ideas I would not have thought of otherwise, so in that way they're useful. 

But there are entire industries that literally cut and paste something that an AI bot gives them and pass it on to their customers or clients.

Email marketers do this - and have the audacity to call themselves email marketers.

But what makes this all the more frightening is the people who actually consume these things don't know the difference. Sorry to use an old cliche, but we've been dumbed down, conditioned to be satisfied with mediocrity in just about every part of our lives.

So for my part, I'll continue to use AI in my work, more or less as I've described in this email.

But certain things are non-negotiable. 

These emails you read will never be written by ChatGPT; not even a prompt asking for ideas on what to write about.

I'll never practice my instrument with AI. I don't think anything like that exists, but it wouldn't shock me if something comes on the market in the next two years that claims to do just that.

And when it comes to my interviews, the background replacement feature on Zoom is my limit when it comes to AI enhancements. 

I don't even want to know what so-called improvements are coming in that area. 

Every great accomplishment in history has happened by someone or a group of people overcoming tremendous resistance.

When machines make resistance redundant, well, we have a problem.

And no one will even know what it is, let alone be able to confront it.