🌱 Adapt or Drown - Remembering My Goal

AI AI AI

Having popped out of the blue seemingly after 2020, starting with Will Smith eating spaghetti in a distorted fashion, it went from people thinking, “This could never replace my job,” to then increasing allure and power over people, in a very short few years, in every aspect: productivity, dating, and work. Even those older have felt the pressure I realized when I recieved this email:

“https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening This article is saying “Get ready, ‘cause here it is. Adapt or drown."" (Feel free to read it before continuing)

Now, I had discussed with her Linux and different technical stuff, but having this article sent to me out of the blue with little context made me confused. Did she just want me to give my response to it? I suppose she did, so I wrote away. Before I share that though, here’s some background info.

I’ve been seeing countless jobs posted for Graphic Designers saying “Train our AI to design”, (ahem) I mean, “Train our AI to be better than you.” While an AI can never be human, simply because humans cannot design what they didn’t design themselves (in themselves, that is), I find it interesting how many works by AI act as templates, even though they take from real people designing them, they can’t make those sites original. This makes me think how the internet will become a conglomerated mess of copy-pasted sites in increasing enormity. In fact, people are already starting to change how they see lip fillers and those things, while that seems a different topic— I don’t think so, because it illustrates the mentality people have which is likened to that Star Trek episode from the 60s: No one wants duplicates of the same person, to look exactly like and behave as another person does. Even identical twins don’t act identical (note to myself: research that MrBallen episode on the identical triplets and the study involved there). And so the same is of websites, with their main target in making money, if people are already tired of Ads, newsletters, and pop-ups of the like, what will interest them in going to a copy-pasted website? Those are my thoughts as I write my response to my friend.

“This is a great example of innovation being a lost art, I’ve been reading “Innovators by Walter Isaacson” and it discusses computer history in great detail. Most of the inventions today stemmed with the 50s, they’ve just gotten smaller (transistors, microchips, etc.), even with OS’s like Windows and Linux there haven’t been new ways of designing operating systems (there have, but the don’t have funding), so it seems like the last of innovation was before the 80s. Even AI, though we consider it to be innovative, was thought about by Alan Turing in the 50s as he was developing one of the first general-purpose computers. He thought that AI would have a mind of its own and think, but Ada Lovelace, who first thought of the general-purpose computer (multimedia and video, not just for math like everyone thought back then the computer would only do) said something like, “Computers will never think because they take from humans” (I’d have to get the exact quote), there’s also an interesting distinction between Lovelace and Turing in their differences between religion that led to their differing views of AI in computers, but that’s a whole rabbit hole!

AI just takes from what humans have already done, so it will never be innovative unless people themselves are innovative again, which is surely what makes the situation scary with the job taking and such as the article discussed. Funny side road real quick, as a graphic designer, the designers say about AI is that it’s always templated; copy-pasted designs that, when everyone uses AI for their websites, will make all websites look the same unlike early internet times. Not only is this the same for design, but coding and… plastic surgery? I’ve been watching this gal called Lael Henson who deep dived into how everyone looks the same on social media (and even into everyday life) because they all get fillers, botox, ozempic that makes their faces all look the same. Reminds me of that Star Trek episode! (who also discussed AI funny enough) Anyhow, it seems like a conjoining of different niches working toward everyone to be copy-pasted. When AI does the work everyone can do, people stop trying to learn those things- most critically, code, because the internet: banking, email, hospital systems, etc. rely on code for working and automating. One of the realizations I had in this, was when studying web design there’s what’s called a framework (just code, haha) called Tailwindcss which simplifies CSS (what makes this email look put together). Now, web designers don’t know regular CSS, so when this framework dies (as they all do), the work to go over each page in every website using Tailwindcss will be huge… and guess who uses this framework the most? AI, which just makes it even more convenient for developers! I took this knowledge and applied it to the greater picture (Linus Torvalds switching the code building Linux (C or C++, very complicated) with Rust (easy peasy), and realized that, even though AI can just “fix things”, who’s going to fix AI?

That’s where I’m not worried, because if these systems fail because of people choosing simplicity > functionality, I’m just glad to be in a position where I have sheep to milk, green tea to brew, and a garden to eat!”

Reading this nearly a month after writing it, I’m a little embarrassed how naturally I wrote so detailed. Only because I usually write differently than myself depending on who I’m talking to XD

Anyhow, I find it interesting how people are filled with so little hope. It makes sense, because of the increasing violence in the world and how people are reliant in getting their food from the grocery stores, live on hardly an acre, and often times try fitting in the mold instead of growing out of it. I’ve lived in the country all my life, and while I still notice the suburban habits my Dad has, I’d feel claustrophobic not having options. But then again, I see how people are tearing down what has been built from the generations before them (internet, etc.) simply because of convenience, greed, etc. and so it seems obvious to me that, and why I highlighted the last sentence in my response, that the simple things are what last- rather than increasing complexity in hardware, software, taxes, traffic, etc.