I was alive before the pocket calculator was invented! Those were the days of mechanical adding machines – like the one on the left. Occasionally, we had lessons with them at school, to introduce us to the marvel of mechanical accounting.
It was wonderfully satisfying to turn the handle and stamp the answer on the paper roll. The mechanical clunk was reward in itself – as addictive as the one-arm bandits you found in pubs and seaside attractions back then.
Then came the pocket calculator. It did amazing things like adding, subtraction, division and multiplication! It had cool light-up, numbers that glowed red for danger. If you typed in 59008 and turned it upside down, it would spell the word: Boobs – what not to like for teenage boys falling asleep at the back of the maths class – (British maths – not math)
However, using either machine, I could never make anything add up correctly. I still have trouble making sums add up today. But, the maths, rather than the arithmetic, did interest me. Maths is more philosophical than the boring computation of arithmetic.
The year after my GCSE O’levels – when I was about 17, they trialed the use of calculators in exams. Well… we were appalled! It was as if the sky had fallen in. We hadn’t been allowed them, so why should younger upstarts have the benefit?
There was serious concern nationwide. Was this was the end of maths, or even civilisation itself? If children didn’t learn their arithmetic and times tables, the world would surely grind to a halt. They’d not understand how maths worked. You need to know what’s going on under the hood to know which buttons to press.
Do we still have concerns about pocket calculators – or home computers, which were the next panic to come along? No. But wait… doesn’t this story sound the same as the concern we are having about AI today?
We question ourselves as creators. What is the point of learning to write, draw, paint and create if AI can do the work in seconds? Why invest in all that heartache and stress, building and improving creative skills, when you don’t need them anymore?
The heartache and stress are the point – that’s what makes us human. That’s where the emotion and insight come from.
Evolution, resulting in human intelligence, developed by mitigating pain and hardship. We learn though trial, error, risk and overcoming failure.
AI intelligence is statistical. The next word choice probably makes sense to us in the context.
Human intelligence is existential. The next word is chosen through lived experience and shared context. The next idea emerges from the cross-fertilisation of a lifetime of experiences.
AI knows what tends to happen.
Humans know what it costs to make wrong decisions.
AI is like a pocket calculator. If all you do is push the buttons, you become a button pusher.
If you know why you are pushing the buttons in a particular order, then you are a mathematician. You are looking for new ways to combine numbers and functions to solve human problems.
As an artist, you know why that particular line should be thinner, or why it should be a different shade of orange. Creativity comes from a lifetime of learning and experience. Humans don’t throw up images that are likely to be correct in context/ they work them out – they do the maths,as it were.
Artists working with AI are asking AI to manifest the images they have already created in their imagination.
AI can’t do it alone. It needs the prompt. Without precise prompts, AI can only hash up an amalgam of already extant art.
It is your individual experience that makes the creation worthwhile. It’s the skill, life story, knowledge, emotions, wins and setbacks, loves won and lost, friendships and enemies that count. All these things go to make you the individual you are. AI can only begin its work when you ask it – when you have already had the idea. AI output comes after it has ingested your ideas into its database and mixed them with with everything that has gone before.
AI is a tool, just like the pocket calculator. The calculator doesn’t do maths, but it can do the boring task of repetitive arithmetic. Adding columns of numbers is boring, so why not outsource the drudgery and use your brain for the real stuff… the maths – the original thinking.
Same with creativity and AI. Some parts of creativity are tedious and repetitive, like the planning of backgrounds or working out perspectives. AI can do that in a snap.
So, either become a brilliant prompter or learn to draw. Drawing gets the idea out of your head and gives AI a starting point. Show it your workings and it will know better what it is you want. After all, a picture says a thousand words.
But to get the finished article, the one you really want – do it yourself. It’s Human intelligence that will become the premium product. And you are only going to achieve that through pain, hardship, hard work, talent and a little luck.