Argggghhhh. AI is coming and it’s going to eat your job and then maybe your head.
Have you been hearing this lately?
Freelancers have seen less interest and income since the launch of ChatGPT as the FT and Chamath highlighted the other day:
Source:FT
While the original predictions were for AI to start with the blue collar jobs, the opposite is being shown to be true. Have you also played around with Dall-E or Midjourney and then thought about it? Just a little bit maybe.
Well it shouldn’t. Yes it’s incredibly impressive. Incomprehensiblyimpressive.
Until you understand what it’s actually able to do. How much source material and training has been fed into its massive computer brain. As people, we’ve got no chance of remembering every pixel, position and hex colour from billions of images.
Just generating an image is one thing. But how good is a random computer at generating these themselves? Sure you can pair random phrases. Monkeys would write Shakespeare eventually. But the logic, the theory, the deep thinking, the actual CREATIVITY required for actual innovation still needs a human brain.
Jerry Salts said “It’s not possible that a work made now does not have the ‘now’ the artist lived through be somewhere embedded into it. In this sense all art has its ‘deep content’ the varieties and complexities of the lived present.”
We are human. We love storytelling, we understand nuance and have empathy in a way that AI can’t comprehend. On the surface they might be comparable. But like a forgery, it just doesn’t have the essence.
As a tool, as designers and technologists, we should be using Creative Cloud and Figma. Computers arrived in my house in my teens so I do consider myself a digital native. Part of the only pre-post internet generation ever. But I know designers who started pre computers and were worried that they might be out of a job then. They weren't and they adapted.
We as designers & creatives use tools everyday and already it’s just becoming part of our daily workflow and it’s not no longer AI, it’s just another piece of software. The truth is we’re better with these tools. We’re more efficient and most importantly more creative as a result of the options we have.
Anyone can use software. Being able to use Canva does not make you a designer. The best designers are tinkerers and thinkers. They’ll use a combination of tools to execute on their vision. At Multivitamin Studio we live to push the possible to build value. Simply that means:
And software gives us the space to do this.
Chat GPT have gone even further (kudos - they are operating at an incredible pace) by positioning themselves as an App Store, allowing customers to spin up pre-made apps and allow customers to train their own proprietary datasets to avoid copyright issues. We’re now beyond the test phase and into the commercial application. Now we all as adopters have the space to go further.
Sam Altman presenting OpenAI’s store for custom GPT bots. Image: OpenAI
Like every shift before, it will kill some jobs but it will also allow us to be more productive human beings.
The human digital interface is evolving and I’m here for it. Alone AI is nothing. Together we’re a powerful force.
Am I worried? No. Excited? Massively.
