Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) really as bad as people say? It’s not a yes or no question, and as with many new technologies, there’s a lot of nuances to consider in the discussion. I am a game design major at Samford, but my primary focus within that is 3D animation. All the time, people ask me if I’m worried about AI taking my job or if AI will replace artists. I always answer no, as I believe human art has something AI will never have.
I’m also not going to say I love AI. I don’t really use it that much, unless I need it to find a mistake in 100 lines of code or write a difficult email, but generally the idea of a computer server having more knowledge and a better vocabulary than me is a scary idea.
AI as we know it is a large language model, which learns through a neural system modeled after our brains, using pre-existing data, equations, images and videos. So, while AI can learn patterns within an environment, it cannot create an internal image of that environment. But that’s just it: AI can’t make anything truly original. If I give it a generic prompt for an image, it will unabashedly copy another (or multiple) artist’s styles without attribution.
In the specific context of generated video, AI can’t go in and make small changes based off of feedback, develop its own style or understand the purpose of what it is generating. It’s for that reason that I think artists are safe from AI in the professional market. Entry level jobs that are sometimes outsourced to people on websites like Fiverr may be replaced, but the core industry will see more of a rearrangement of roles than anything else. Even Disney is engaged in a lawsuit with Midjourney, saying that the AI will copy and distribute generated images of its characters, which Midjourney argues is protected by fair use.
I think that’s upsetting, and artists should be able to choose whether AI is allowed to learn from their work or not. If YouTube told me that an animation I created and published on their platform would be used to train an AI model, I would remove it, for the sole reason that I don’t want it to copy my ideas or creative style.
There’s a lot of other moral problems that come out of the creation of AI, such as the effect of its consistent use on our brains and the abuses of AI image generation, but there are also some potential upsides. In the medical industry, AI pattern recognition is used to identify potentially cancerous cells earlier. In everyday life, people can use AI for more repetitive tasks, like data entry, transcription and summarization.
In the art industry, AI will be (and already is) used as a tool, especially in the filmmaking world. For example, almost every film that uses any kind of visual effects will employ a technique called “rotoscoping” which is the process of masking out the subject(s) in the footage to separate them from the background. This is a very time-consuming process that doesn’t require much skill and yet many times, whole studios will be contracted to a movie just to rotoscope. AI has now made this an automated process, which means that while artists may not have those entry level opportunities, movies are cheaper to make, which allows for larger teams and budgets in other areas.
So, is AI just like any other double-edged sword of the modern era? Culturally, many people have developed an attitude of one-sidedness towards it, with some saying that it is going to be humanity’s downfall, while others think that it is our future and want to depend fully upon it. I don’t like either of those options, which is why I’m writing this article. I think as time goes on, we will not only understand AI’s limits, but also the dangers it presents and the regulations it may need to undergo.
No matter what happens with AI, the most important thing people can do is stay informed. Understand how AI works, how to use it and how it affects our lives. If you do that, you have a greater chance of surviving “The Terminator”.
Staff Reporter
