- Sunshine.FM
- Posts
- 🫀🤖 The Human Behind the Machine
🫀🤖 The Human Behind the Machine
From the Palm Springs Tech Mixer: Why A.I. Should Enhance, Not Replace, Creative Expression
This is a guest article from a real, live human-being living in Palm Springs Coachella Valley. Not AI-generated. Enjoy!
Last week, I attended a Palm Springs Tech Mixer event, where the city laid out its tech-forward future, highlighting plans to develop A.I. businesses and education here in the Coachella Valley.
Part of that was showing several art installations and short films that were, to varying degrees, created with A.I. Many of them felt very cool, but many of them left a weird taste in my mouth.
There are a lot of opinions on using A.I. in arts & culture (momentarily putting aside the ethics of where the A.I. takes its inputs from), but to me Mayor Jeffrey Bernstein made an excellent point that might have gone deeper than he intended.
He said we should see A.I. as the next tool in a creator's toolbox, and like any technology, we should learn how to use it effectively.
This is totally accurate! We need to always see A.I. as a tool to be used by us, but not a replacement for us.
The Purpose of Arts & Culture
To get a little hippy dippy, what is the actual purpose of art & culture? Why do we make it? We don't biologically need to, but humans do it. I'm not an anthropologist, but I am a writer, and to me it's because we have a need to express ourselves.
Good writing is just taking an idea that's trapped inside your brain and putting that idea into someone else's brain as best you can. Writers use words, filmmakers use the camera, painters use paints. But we're all doing the same thing. Idea in our head, translated to the real world in an attempt to move it into someone else's brain.
And it's very imprecise! We use what we've got, but no matter what careful words I choose, I probably won't get that idea exactly right into your brain.
That's where tools come in. A.I. needs to be another tool we can use to move ideas between heads.
What AI Shouldn’t Be
Where to me it gets a little uncanny valley is when A.I. isn't used as a tool, but used as a replacement. "ChatGPT, write me a love poem" "ChatGPT, draw something that's inspiring" "ChatGPT, generate a cool-looking short film that might win an award somewhere"
It'll do it. It can create a vibrant 8-minute short film that probably features images of an old man in a hospital bed, or slow pans of sad people hugging, or someone crying while touching a window.
Maybe it'll even have a narrative that makes sense and a soundtrack with soft violins, and it does win an award. But what is the idea that is being transferred? There isn't really one. The viewer is answering a ringing phone but there's no one on the other end.
That's the part that feels weird.
Just Another Tool
There's part of me that, again as a writer, just doesn't like generative A.I. The same fear that elevator operators felt and travel agents and encyclopedia salesmen felt. The self-preservation fear.
Or hand-drawn animators felt when computer animation came out. They would complain that the CGI was soulless or too easy or ignored well-established rules of animation. And would replace a lot of animators. Which... it did! Those are all valid concerns, but not the one I'm talking about.
To me the difference comes in if the tech is used to originate ideas. CGI wasn't that. It was a new tool with benefits and drawbacks.
When the A.I. is the originator, when it's the creator of something, that's when it gets a little gross.
What AI Can’t Do
In the tech world there's an old quote that goes, "A computer can never be held accountable for decisions, therefore all computer decisions are management decisions."
This is more of a way of assigning responsibility for misdeeds by computers to their programmers, but I think it shines a light on how we have to think about A.I. By focusing on what computers can -- by definition -- not do, we see where humans are needed to step in. Art and creation require intent, and A.I. can't have intention.
The creator analogy here would be "A computer can never experience the world as a human, therefore all creative thought must be human creative thought." There must be someone on the other end of the ringing phone.
What AI Can Do
What it can do is pretty much everything else. It is the multi-tool for us to use. The other day I needed a two-syllable word that needed to somehow connect the world of music and the holiday season. I don't know if Google would have helped, but ChatGPT gave me "jingle" and it was perfect.
But the idea was mine. The intention was from me. There was a creation in my head, and I needed additional help getting the specifics.
We need to be finding new ways A.I. can help art and culture, not replace art & culture.
About the Author: Eric Cunningham is a writer and member of the WGA and recent transplant and resident of Rancho Mirage. He can be reached at eecunningham.com
Quick Note from SatGPT
The distinction between using AI as a creative tool versus letting it be the creator itself is more than philosophical – it's practical. As we build our region's AI capabilities and creative industries, we should focus on empowering human creativity with AI, not replacing it. Which aligns well with our mission to develop an AI Hub for responsible GenAI innovation that enhances, rather than diminishes, human potential.
Your turn. Is this ideal just lip-service or are we truly aiming for a better, more human-centered tech future? Or, as history shows us, are we destined to repeat our past and jump on the AI racetrack for more productivity gains, more revenues, more profits and more power for the few, leaving left-overs for the many?
Reply