conversations with the machine

I've spent a fair bit of time chatting with various AIs this last couple of months. There's a lot of backlash in various arenas, mainly, but not exclusively, creative, about "AI slop" and whilst a lot of the critique is undoubtedly fair, there is something of a pitchforks and torches feel to a lot of it. It's hard to have a normal conversation about the pros and cons without somebody getting incandescently shouty.

I've been using it a fair bit over recent months at work; not, I should stress, to do my work, but to to assist, review and help with analysis. My gut instinct is that it's a tool, like any other in some respects, but I'm also quite conscious that in others it most definitely is not.

But it is an available tool, and a valuable one, and I'm also aware that if we don't make use of it and become familiar in the use of it, others will. Some of those others will be our competition.

Away from work, I'm particularly curious about the impact of using something like AI on artistic integrity. Again, it's a subject that it seems you can't really have a sensible conversation about without risk of irrational escalation.

Which isn't to say that such fears are not without justification. I don't consider the concerns irrational, only the way some parties may choose to express them, typically in a way that so often scales exponentially into a personal attack. In my view, that just shuts down reasonable debate. It certainly makes me reluctant to want to enter any debate with them.

Anyway. On a lighter note a little extract from one of my more recent conversations with the machine: