Stuck In a Disgusting World Of Artificial Slop

How AI is Going To Make Me Rich

I stole the subtitle of this essay from

Sinéad Bovell

. When I read the words, I prickled. “Ew. AI”

But what a deliciously clickbaity headline. I dove in.

Sinead is a tech prognosticator and writes brilliantly about the future. Her recent article explains that sophisticated AI agents may be able to democratise investing as well as asking what happens when we’re all using the same systems. It’s interesting.

I read it, it made sense but will I take the time to do the research and learning that it would take to implement AI investing strategies? Nah, probs not.

Sinead and I play in very different sandboxes, but I do think AI can make us rich. Even if you’re a moron, like me.

The Robots Aren’t Coming, They’re Here

I probably unknowingly use AI in everyday life, it is so entrenched already but I never actively use it. I stopped using Chat GPT about six months ago when I learnt how bad for the environment it was.

Found on Facebook. AI generated imagery highlighting the issues of climate change…..

After writing that sentence, I figured I should drop the data. So I went to Google it.

Hang on though, I thought, I bet Google also uses significant processing power. So with an irony that isn’t lost on me I googled “Chat GPT energy use VS Google” and here’s what Google’s AI overview (!) told me;

A single ChatGPT query uses about 2.9 watt-hours (Wh) of electricity, which is roughly 10 times more than a Google search. This translates to around 39.98 million kWh per day for all ChatGPT requests, according to Business Energy UK. A single ChatGPT conversation also uses about 50 centiliters of water, equivalent to one plastic bottle, according to a Forbes article.

It breaks my heart when I see what we’re using this energy for.

Sure, some people are imputing multiple sources for AI to scour and spit out educational texts. Some scientists are using AI to aid research. And there’s the finance example I kicked off with.

But what I see it used for the most, is personalised meme-ification ‘art’.

Look, I turned myself into an action figure. Look, here’s me and my awful children as Studio Ghibli characters. Look, here’s a famous moment in history, but everyone is a muppet.

It’s so disposable. It floods social feeds, it’s seen for a second and then it’s scrolled on. Then everyone who saw it wants to have a go. It spreads like a virus. No one really cares what you made, they just want to see what they can make. I want to see what *I* would look like if *I* was made of Lego.

Anyone who points this out in the comments, gets piled on. “It’s just a bit of fun”

I have a bit of a sick fascination with looking at boomers reactions to AI on Facebook. But the problem is that the imagery is rapidly getting more sophisticated. I see murals online now and I’m not sure if they’re real. The tsunami of fake imagery (not to mention deep fake tech) keeps us distracted and distrustful.

In this excellent video, Stoobs describes how the first target of AI companies was the arts.

She says; “They know that people don’t give a shit about artists. They know that people who don’t work in the arts are resentful of people who do, because they have a sense of purpose and fulfilment in their lives and they don’t hate their jobs. So even though they’re incredibly under paid, over worked and under appreciated// that’s the perfect place to start replacing people with fucking robots”

We all have and will develop different relationships with AI.

Harriet Richardson

started using Chat GPT after a breakup.

In this hilarious/ sad/ fun article she realised “I hadn’t been using ChatGPT to help me process the loss of a relationship. I’d been using it to replace it”. These systems reflect back to us everything we’ve taught them about ourselves and about humanity in general. People are already getting addicted to the faux connection it appears to offer.

At the end of the piece, Harriet feeds her article back to Chat GPT, I won’t spoil the weird, meta, creepiness of it, but it’s worth a read.

My grandma was 100 when she died. One of the last things she said to me was “I’m too old for this world!”.

She never had a mobile phone or any kind of personal computer. She listened to music on cassette. She was, by the way, probably the happiest and most optimistic person I’ve ever known. Correlation does not imply causation. OR DOES IT?!

I worry that AI is destroying our kids brains, making them lazy and unable to think for themselves. And while I say it, I remember that they said the same thing about television and radio before that.

Yesterday the New Yorker published a piece on students ‘rampant’ AI use - to cheat. Essentially, the entire structure of academia has been destroyed in just two years.

One of the students interviewed for the piece said “I use AI a lot. Like, every day and I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”

Teachers interviewed say they want to retire and that writing, real writing is now akin to basket weaving. One former teacher says “We’re in a new generation, a new time, and I just don’t think that’s what I want to do”

As a species, on the whole, we don’t like change. We hold on to what’s comfortable and familiar, sometimes for too long. If you don’t adapt, you get left behind. And as I write every word of this I know that there’s every chance it’ll age poorly and I will be an old man shouting at clouds.

Me - 2027

Kodak invented the digital camera (in 1975!) but went bankrupt in 2012, clinging to the belief that film would always outperform digital.

Blockbuster Video got destroyed by Netflix. BlackBerry by IPhone. Kennedy beat Nixon because he understood television. Obama understood social media.

How silly it might be, then, for me to reject a revolutionary technology and choose this as a hill to die on.

I don’t want to use AI and I believe that’s the very reason I’ll be successful.

Last week I gave a keynote at a prestigious university, with a PowerPoint that looked like it was put together by a six year old. In a few weeks I’m taking the same presentation to New York and speaking at one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world.

I used to apologise for my slides but I’ve started to realise no one notices. It’s the stories that matter.

I don’t know how to use photoshop. I needed a ten minute zoom call to fix the mic on my podcast. I’m a Luddite, but I’m doing okay.

There’s a beauty in AI screwing up hands. It must be so jealous

If you make art with your hands or you write original thoughts the AI has probably already been trained on your back catalogue. It will do everything within its circuits to be indistinguishable. But it will never be human.

Never before has a technology so appealed to the ‘get rich quick’ crowd. The promise is minimal effort, maximum reward. But in a world where the easy option is to get a machine to do it, the hard path, the years of mistakes and the honing of skill will be more special than ever.

The people who want it at the touch of a button, the people who think there is ‘art’ in writing prompts, were never your people to begin with.

If your art can be enjoyed IRL, it’s real, it’s tangible. Your paintings have small mistakes in them, that means something, it tells a story. Your writing is structured incorrectly, that’s what gives it its charm.

As we go further down this path, screen fatigue and malaise will set in. Community and human interaction will matter more.

AI will make you rich, because you are not AI. You are the alternative. You are human (intelligence).