Yes, ok. Last thing anyone needs is another designer bleating on about all-things-artificial and how the industry (profession? Calling?) of creative-service types are doomed, because the very next iteration of MSN ChatSH*T will take your job (and obviously it’s bound to happen. I can clearly recall seeing Microsoft’s suite of office tools for the first time and thinking, boy, is my career doomed. I’ll never be able to craft presentation’s as good as that software can.) But, sorry, here we go.

I was pondering (had some time off. Hooray! I can hear you thinking) when was the last time that anything artificial actually made me say to myself ‘you know what, this is seriously better than the real thing’? Now it’s an interesting question for lots of reasons. 

Take the medical industry using tech to scan for cancers or decoding gene sequences. When you can do both faster than an actual pair of eyes, that’s got to be good.

Vegans. I know, there’s a few of you out there who have to defend the ‘but bacon’ conversations. But you don’t have to treat animals disgustingly just so as a porkEggBun can be yours at 6.45am while you rush towards your next traffic jam on the way to a crucially important meeting in Runcorn. When a zoomTeams call probably would have done the job, and you with a Facon sarnie and an extra 30 minutes in bed. 

Artificial sweetener? Hmm. No thanks. Not butter? Umm… Nut butter. Er. 

So, anyway tech is lovely, and automating some things, bring it on. 

Appreciating my little pean here to actual rather than artificial ain’t going to make much difference if you’re determined to defend tech automation is the answer for everything. But like I say, where it works to make lives better, all the better. 

But can we please hold back with the ‘I imagined this myself’ when using a machine to do the thinking? Before you decide to add to the fatberg of content that’s blocking up the internet (and, as beautifully and ironically pinned by a journalist on The Atlantic, that most of what’s online - including the reflux of robot content - will only ever be viewed by robots looking for content to drive up traffic to more robot content…) 

I’ve started to imagine ‘not generated by actual imaginations’ as a bit like plastic. Super convenient. Great for transporting stuff needed Right Now. Practically invisible. And ending up inside us and everything else, impossible to dispose of and tragically, short-sightedly wasteful. Not to mention the energy it consumes to generate it. And the plastic.

And much like trying to debate a ‘Actually, Richard, the facts are…’ point by a determined-to-correct you mansplainer bent on not being shown that just possibly there might be more shades to this than have met their eye, while fun comment-bait, isn’t ever going to stop the AI pantechnicon pedant in their tracks. So the response is usually, ’nah, not bothering. Will just pretend it away.’

I guess I’m really just wondering, perhaps (it’s not my job to tell you, nor really my place to say) that you give your brain a chance first?

You might think better because of it and spare the rest of us what the mansplaining machine ‘thinks’. 

Or worse, not think at all before replying.