Social Media is buzzling with the AI hype: "AI and how it will change our lives forever!" Every facett of our live seems to be replaciable with AI. From writing, composing music, creating art and even coumminication.
But will AI replace us soon? Generate even more generic art? Make work more technical? Or are those wild claims and eye popping demos smoking mirrors for a new billion dollar industry.
ChatGPT is intelligent but not smart.
In the last few months I've looked into a few of the most popular AI tools to handle text, images, scripting and 3D. I'm shocked. Shocked of seeing such basic functionalities being praised as revolutionary. Most of it are just updated versions of what existed before (Photoshop Content Fill -> Photoshop AI Fill). Others look impressive but have yet to find quality and a meaningful place (AI generated text and images).
To understand how we can improve our work we first need to separate what AI currently is and isn't.
🔴 What AI isn't
AI isn't a replacement for skill or creativity. A student of mine said it best: "ChatGPT is intelligent but not smart." Meaning: Current AIs can give us informed answers but have issues putting them into the right context. The more context is needed for a task the more AI tools fail to deliver.
🧠 intelligent but not smart
❌ (occassionaly) dangerously incorrect
📝 good drafts vs uninspired final products
💹 overpromising
👺 bias information
⚠️ ChatGPT 2023 is "politically correct"
1. Proud to be black or a woman?
Good because ChatGPT will totally encourage you to be.
2. Proud to be white or a man?
Better be careful with your white pride, challenge harmful male stereotypes and your toxic masculinity.
The danger here lies in the bias answers guided by the believes of the OpenAI developers. At least with Google we know they curate what we see while the content is written by others. With ChatGPT, Midjourney, etc. we don't know the sources and can easily mistake them as legit/valid/accurate results. (Occassionaly ChatGPT will site sources that don't exist or aren't accessable.)
🟢 What AI is
AI is an assistant; a more transforming Google answering our questions and visions directly instead of showing a list of websites. This sounds like an understatement but it really isn't. Google was a big leap for our information age and so is AI. AI will transform information into bite-sized results instead of endless searching.
🐕🦺 Informed assistants
📝 Helps to create drafts, concepts, ideas and summaries
🎯 Google 2.0: Finds instant results with less variety
✅ Informed (but limited) evaluation and feedback
What is your biggest AI fear?
🤖 Replaces me
🖼️ Generic content wins
👨💻 Work gets more technical
🤖 Interesting AIs
Over the past few months I found this AI tools helpful in certain areas but a far cry from "taking my job away":
ChatGPT: Writing assistant ((summaries, copywriting, ...) and finding simple answers (feedback, lists, ideas ...).
Photoshop AI: Stronger and more creative content filling (currently: PS Beta).
NightCafe: AI art generator for concepts or as placeholders. The results are background material at best (see cover image).
AutoPod: Premiere plugin for AI supported edits.
Friends recommended also:
DALL-E2: AI art generator for concept art for your preproduction.
Midjourney: AI art generator.
codepen.io: Create custom interactive graphics for websites.
GitHub Copilot: Limited support AI for coding (alternative: ChatGPT).
Conclusion
AI support will become an important part of our culture. Using AI to help our work will become an essential part of keeping up. Still AI is far away from replacing us. More than ever we're needed as qualified managers who understand the skill and use AI to do the grunt job.
A great way to prepare for the AI shift is move to a technical role. Learn about the role of a Technical Director in our Free 7-Day TD Bootcamp: Technical Director.
Thanks for reading,
Alex
I'm Alexander, an Award-Winning Technical Director & Coach in Visual Effects, Animation and Games. My skills are solving technical problems, simplifying workflows and mentoring career goals.
For more check out our exciting TD Bootcamp, 21 Artist Show Podcast and YouTube channel.