The Past's Perspective On The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
The Bleeding Edge, Edition #3
How hard was it to get information before the first prints were invented?
No, really, think about it. Before the first prints came out, every stroke written or illustrated was done by a human hand.
Not to mention paper as we know it didn’t exist until it was invented in China around 2,000 years ago. It took another 300 years to arrive in the Middle East. Papermaking took ANOTHER 500 years to enter Europe, arriving in the early 1400s. [source]
It’s interesting to think that the first text message ever sent was hand-delivered on rock and stone. There’s no off switch for a read receipt there.
In the 1440s, Gutenberg invented the movable print press. From then on, printing many copies of many books was affordable. It is estimated that by 1500 there were “fifteen to twenty million copies of 30,000 to 35,000 separate publications.” (McLuhan, 1962, p.207)
Before the printing press, 2 out of 3 English adults couldn’t even spell their names. However, within 200 years of the printing press, 48% of English adults were fluent in reading and writing.
Information written in books was no longer reserved for the educated elite. Instead, books became plentiful and cheap to own.
Prices and Quantities of Printed Books in England 1495 - 1639
The floodgates of information opened to society. As a result, humanity entered The Enlightenment, the “Age Of Reason.”
Simply put, access to information printed on books at a low cost made society better at a faster rate than ever.
The internet is to opportunity what the printing press is to literacy.
Let’s unpack that.
I'm afraid I’ll bore you with the obvious facts about what the internet offers us today. So instead, I will ask, when was the last time you went 72 hours without looking at your phone?
We love that black rectangle box.
Smartphones give us unbound opportunities to connect and express ourselves with other people. And man, we love connecting with other people.
We need it.
We need to connect with other people so much that we have evolved more methods of communication than methods to breathe.
Communication: Speech, body language, physical touch, facial expression, scent.
Breathing: Mouth, nose.
So when we evolve the internet to generate new forms of communication, why do we instinctually have a visceral reaction?
“AI will take all of our jobs,” “NFTs are pointless scams,” and “I will never support AI art.”
Science tells us why.
This headline is hilarious because it’s obvious: "New Study Explains why the Future is More Important than the Past.”
Funny headline out of the way; the study is profound.
"All of the experiments involved participants imagining themselves performing an action, either in the past or in the future. One scenario had participants imagine they were hired to input information into a computer for five hours, before being asked how much they should be paid for the job and how difficult the job was or was going to be.”
The study continues, “In all of the experiments, participants would place more value on the event in the future, even if the exact same event happened in the past. In the first scenario, participants always gave themselves more money if it was done in the future than when it was done in the past, even though answers about the difficulty of the task did not differ between the two groups.”
We exaggerate the future and downplay the past.
When I read something like this, it’s easy to understand why.
Let’s take it back to the third sentence of this blog. Before the first prints came out, every stroke written or illustrated was done by a human hand.
Today, with AI-assisted writing and illustrations, technology is removing the need for a human brushstroke once again.
Anyone can apply paint to a page. Anyone can take a photo. Anyone can tell a story. That doesn’t mean it will resonate with anyone. It takes decades of honing your skills to make your style yours. And even then, it won’t resonate with everyone. But it will resonate with some.
And some is all you need to be happy and support yourself.
Let’s ask chatGPT, “Were artists upset when Photoshop came out?”
chatGPT: When Photoshop first came out in 1988, it was primarily used by graphic designers and photographers in the professional industry. It was not immediately adopted by fine artists, as traditional art forms such as painting and drawing had been the primary mediums for centuries. However, as the digital age progressed, many fine artists began to incorporate digital technology and software like Photoshop into their work.
While some artists may have resisted the change and preferred traditional mediums, many found that Photoshop and other digital tools expanded their creative possibilities. Additionally, the ease and convenience of being able to edit and manipulate digital images brought a new level of accessibility to the medium.
Overall, it's hard to say if all artist were upset or not as it depends on the artist and their preferences but it's fair to say that the technology was not embraced by everyone at first, but many eventually found it to be a valuable addition to their creative toolkit.
On a broad enough timescale, AI writing and drawing tools will be just as standard as a designer using Photoshop today.
As generalized and specialized AI services like chatGPT progress, we begin entering the world of ‘If you can think it, you can create it.’
To be more precise, ‘If you can find the exact words to explain what you want from the machine, you can create it.’ The term for this is called prompt engineering. Those that do it well will have high-paying jobs landing in their lap. The money will be great for a limited time as more people learn the skillset. I told my computer programming buddies the same thing about Solidity code development two years ago.
When everyone on the internet can bring ideas to reality faster, society as an invention machine grows exponentially.
And by the way, artists, you’ll still have work. If you want to support yourself via your work, free from the grind of clients and assigned projects, NFTs offer a worldwide network of potential supporters who can instantly buy your work with a few clicks.
Well, that was fun. Let me know what you think of all this in the comments! Was all this obvious? If you’re reading this right now, you’re a core supporter of this newsletter/blog/journal, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
You don’t know how excited I am to write this stuff. But, more importantly, you don’t know how excited I am to improve on it, from the topics to the writing to the marketing and the readers’ involvement.