My Unpopular Stance on AI

I’m neither pro nor anti-AI. But…

AI image generated by author via Nightcafe

It’s trendy these days to despise or adore AI.

Not as many people have an in-between stance. Or at least, the people in between may hesitate to speak up, because both the anti and pro-AI crew have such loud and fierce voices.

But now I will be loud and fierce about my more nuanced views of AI.

Let’s start with the toughest question:

Is AI stealing from artists?

Before we begin, I learned from a critical thinking course that the word choices we use, really impact how we feel about something.

For instance, are we performing “abortions” or are we “murdering” a child? Similarly, “terrorist” and “freedom fighter” have very different vibes.

For AI, do we call it “stealing,” “crawling,” “scraping”; or “training” and “machine learning”?

You can see how different the words feel, right? Stealing, crawling, and scraping give us a visceral disgust reaction.

But training and learning sound much more benign.

If you think this is manipulating language to alter perception, you may be right!