AI is a word I could honestly want to hear less. Everything these days has AI now, even if it actually doesn’t. Simple algorithms and processors are marketed as having AI something (even if they possibly couldn’t run AI anything). Much of the courses at my own college campus now has to add verbiage to their syllabus explaining what is considered bad or good usage of AI, be it to cheat, create essays, or be the foundation for students’ assignments. My next coffee maker might even claim to have AI for making the perfect brew, or whatever. While AI can be useful in some applications, it really doesn’t do much of anything that humans could not already do, like writing and thinking… Rather, I would think that AI is more disruptive and evil than it is useful and good. AI generated content is pretty cringe and feeds into the annoying clickbait mass produced internet dumpster that youngers dive into; and you have to be careful, because some content can look pretty convincing, until you think to realize it’s probably AI generated. I miss the days on the internet where something was either real, spontaneous, or staged. Now today, we have to discern if something is real, staged, AI, or a mix of all 3?
Honestly, AI’s biggest and most positive usage might just be for researching—unless you’re an expert with Boolean operators, used to using several search engines and the right combination of words (and with time to spare), generic search engine searches just aren’t effective at answering complex questions or things you’re genuinely curious about. Yeah, it pretty much just saves time. Now back to the evil part-AI generated content, like videos, and even people. The image for this post is a not a real person, but AI. Thankfully, AIctors, or AI actors, are illegal in California. Well, not entirely. To be specific, it is illegal to use AI to duplicate an actor’s voice or likeness without their consent (AB 2602), and this includes deceased actors (Ab 1836—you’d have to get consent from their estate). At least we won’t be seeing AI generated movies and AI actors resembling real life actors to try and bait people into seeing AI junk. But man, with how widespread AI is, there’s gotta be a whole lot of legislation to stop potential/existing nefarious plans involving AI. It’s worth noting that the writers strike not too long ago (you’d remember it by the many TV shows or movies that got delayed or cancelled) was in part, against AI.