Hey Subscriber First Name,

In the immortal words of Michael Corleone: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"

More thoughts on AI—feel free to skip to the links if you're as tired of the topic as I am. The thing is, this rush continues unabated:

• This morning I downloaded an update for Spark introducing...Spark AI.

• Yesterday, Adobe announced the addition of Generative AI to Photoshop (beta)—a subset of the tools available in their web-based Adobe Firefly app.

• Last week an AI icon appeared at the top of all my text boxes in Squarespace.

I don't really use Spark anymore, and while there's a free trial available, the AI feature is ultimately part of the app's Premium subscription, so I haven't bothered testing it. But I did play around with Squarespace AI while redesigning 1EYE SOCIETY's About page, and I can tell you the results were terrible: every line it generated read like bad copy from a used car ad parody.

As for Photoshop beta: all attempts so far with these new Generative AI tools have been laughably bad. I'm not being a grouch here, we're talking ridiculous—faces without noses, scenes with impossible perspectives, elements that don't even make sense, distortions, etc. I have experience with Firefly, which can be interesting, but at the moment this is just subpar.

All of these implementations will evolve, and they'll get better. That's a given. But this gluten-free phase where everyone is racing to slap a label on their app regardless of quality, or actual usefulness, only serves to muddy the waters imho. It elevates our perception of this technology as broadcast-ready and reliable (it isn't), bypassing all ethical, and technical caveats in the process.

In an interview with The Guardian, Geoffrey Hinton (the "godfather of AI") explains the current situation:

This development, he argues, is an unavoidable consequence of technology under capitalism. “It’s not that Google’s been bad. In fact, Google is the leader in this research, the core technical breakthroughs that underlie this wave came from Google, and it decided not to release them directly to the public. Google was worried about all the things we worry about, it has a good reputation and doesn’t want to mess it up. And I think that was a fair, responsible decision. But the problem is, in a capitalist system, if your competitor then does do that, there’s nothing you can do but do the same.”

Do the same should be emblazoned on a baseball cap.

I love technology, but all major changes have come at a cost while society mostly adapted, without much questioning about long-term implications. It's our collective default mode. But this time, even the people responsible are raising the alarm, so why aren't we listening? Especially when the benefits to the general population don't come close to outweighing both current AND potential costs?

So far this year I've unsubscribed from two blogs I'd followed for a very long time. Both suddenly exploded with completely generic, repetitive content. When a post promises 500 ways to do something (I'm not even kidding), lists each one as a bullet point, and repeats its title/subject in every other paragraph, something's off. And when the next day it's 300 ways to do something else...well.

...

There are applications for AI that will likely fuel incredible advancements. We already have on-device ML tools that speed up menial tasks in all kinds of applications. But should we really be harnessing the power of a server farm just to avoid replying to an email by ourselves? Because that's what Spark AI promises.

Yay.