Talking About AI

With more communication about AI, its value, promise, and delivery, I wanted to continue developing the idea of 80/20 Aesthetics.

Who is to use AI, why, and to what effect? If you were to seek creative service, what is the delta you’re missing when you use chatGPT instead?

It is as subjective as where you buy your coffee: a function of perceived value against existing or imagined alternatives.

All value in an algorithm, as vast as we can imagine it to be, is bounded. It can never truly surprise (be creative) for the sheer fact that it is meta-fixed. The most innovative chess-playing algorithm cannot handle a change in the game’s rules. It can only offer value within the domain and correlation trained on. It can’t make surprising juxtapositions or novel arrangements of ideas (be creative) continuously. It is bound to by its sandbox.

Until all configurations are exercised, we might find some novel (as with Go), but these are simply a function of the algorithm’s speed, our needs, and how fast we encounter all of these. It is a single-use utility. At some point, those would run out and be useless for future algorithms. Like buying jeans on Amazon, everyone knows it is an anecdotal, inexpensive, and ultimately wasteful business offering.

And here comes the idea of sustainability of thinking. Funneling human creativity solely to developing dead-end algorithms (since algorithms can’t talk to each other) is terrible for creatives, their career, and the planet.

This builds on https://being-in.space/8020-aesthetics and other work in AI.