Fascinating Assessment on the Current State of AI

[JohnH]

I don't know how drastic of a difference AI will make for the jobs of people like advertising reps or graphic designers, but it will definitely have an impact.

We have completely gotten out of really trying to find any graphic design work anymore.

I pay a local marketing agency to set up my paid Facebook ads because I don't have the time and expertise to dig into the technicalities of Facebook ad audiences, and they clearly use AI to to create graphics, image captions, sale descriptions, and I suspect even the Facebook audiences themselves. Especially at the beginning, I had to constantly issue corrections to AI descriptions/rephrases, but that got a lot better with time, and in the year or so that I have use the service, the ads have been quite successful. All while spending basically the same ad budget I was before when I set up the ads myself.

I have avoided “Internet marketing” as a business since there is really no way to do so effectively without engaging in dishonesty, and I’d offer a worse service than my competition which is willing to engage in dishonest behaviour.

Just the way it is.

The interesting thing about AI is its relatively low cost while helping a person or business become more productive. But it all has to be fine tuned, properly prompted, and overseen by humans in order to get the right results, so it's not going to eliminate all jobs. It's just that many people holding certain jobs will need to adapt in order to preserve their positions.

It will help wealthy people become wealthier, and will make life worse for everyone else.

I am open to hearing how people should “adapt”. How many times should people be expected to “retrain”? And who pays for that?

The enthusiasm to replace virtually everyone with machines (and simultaneously try to cram wages and benefits as low as possible for anyone still working) is one of the less appealing behavioural traits of the wealthy. It is particularly sad to see conservative Anabaptists who get sucked up into this particularly worldly conduct.

[mike]

I’m aware of that. I’m just asking what the comfort level is with using marketing images that are entirely fabricated.

I am comfortable with it, as long as the consumer is aware that it is not a photo of the actual product. Advertisers often do not bother to mention this, because it is so widely understood in food marketing. However, where I heavily use AI or stock photography, I sometimes, but probably not always, use disclaimers such as:

Photos may be serving suggestions or stock photos rather than actual product.

[mike]

I don't know how drastic of a difference AI will make for the jobs of people like advertising reps or graphic designers, but it will definitely have an impact.

We have completely gotten out of really trying to find any graphic design work anymore.

I pay a local marketing agency to set up my paid Facebook ads because I don't have the time and expertise to dig into the technicalities of Facebook ad audiences, and they clearly use AI to to create graphics, image captions, sale descriptions, and I suspect even the Facebook audiences themselves. Especially at the beginning, I had to constantly issue corrections to AI descriptions/rephrases, but that got a lot better with time, and in the year or so that I have use the service, the ads have been quite successful. All while spending basically the same ad budget I was before when I set up the ads myself.

I have avoided “Internet marketing” as a business since there is really no way to do so effectively without engaging in dishonesty, and I’d offer a worse service than my competition which is willing to engage in dishonest behaviour.

Just the way it is.

The interesting thing about AI is its relatively low cost while helping a person or business become more productive. But it all has to be fine tuned, properly prompted, and overseen by humans in order to get the right results, so it's not going to eliminate all jobs. It's just that many people holding certain jobs will need to adapt in order to preserve their positions.

It will help wealthy people become wealthier, and will make life worse for everyone else.

I am open to hearing how people should “adapt”. How many times should people be expected to “retrain”? And who pays for that?

The enthusiasm to replace virtually everyone with machines (and simultaneously try to cram wages and benefits as low as possible for anyone still working) is one of the less appealing behavioural traits of the wealthy. It is particularly sad to see conservative Anabaptists who get sucked up into this particularly worldly conduct.

Advertising is worldly?

[mike]

I have avoided “Internet marketing” as a business since there is really no way to do so effectively without engaging in dishonesty, and I’d offer a worse service than my competition which is willing to engage in dishonest behaviour.

John, I've PM'ed you a link to an ad with a ChatGPT-generated graphic from my business. I'm interested to see if you think this ad contains something dishonest. If anyone else would like to evaluate the ad, PM me.

[mike]

Let's say you're selling bowls of hot chicken noodle soup in your restaurant. The photo on your restaurant menu, even if it was a photo of a bowl of soup that your restaurant made, is not a photo of the bowl of soup that your customer will get delivered to their table. Is that being dishonest with your customer? It could be a photo of a bowl of coup that you purchased from istockphoto.com. It could also be an AI-generated photo, which increasingly for purposes of low-resolution advertising uses, is virtually indistinguishable from stock photography. Does all of this represent dishonesty?

There's the old thing of comparing restaurant menu photos of their products with the actual items served. Here's an example. https://www.businessinsider.com/fast-fo ... deflated-6

[ohio jones]

Let's say you're selling bowls of hot chicken noodle soup in your restaurant. The photo on your restaurant menu, even if it was a photo of a bowl of soup that your restaurant made, is not a photo of the bowl of soup that your customer will get delivered to their table. Is that being dishonest with your customer? It could be a photo of a bowl of coup that you purchased from istockphoto.com. It could also be an AI-generated photo, which increasingly for purposes of low-resolution advertising uses, is virtually indistinguishable from stock photography. Does all of this represent dishonesty?

Even if it were the actual bowl of soup served to the customer, it would still be a stock photo.

[Szdfan]

Let's say you're selling bowls of hot chicken noodle soup in your restaurant. The photo on your restaurant menu, even if it was a photo of a bowl of soup that your restaurant made, is not a photo of the bowl of soup that your customer will get delivered to their table. Is that being dishonest with your customer? It could be a photo of a bowl of coup that you purchased from istockphoto.com. It could also be an AI-generated photo, which increasingly for purposes of low-resolution advertising uses, is virtually indistinguishable from stock photography. Does all of this represent dishonesty?

There's the old thing of comparing restaurant menu photos of their products with the actual items served. Here's an example. https://www.businessinsider.com/fast-fo ... deflated-6

Even real food in ads has been doctored by a “food stylist” to look better than the reality. The burgers at McDonald’s look a lot better in the ads and on the menu than in real life.

https://www.businessinsider.com/food-ph ... cks-2017-9

[barnhart]

Back to the original topic, I am beginning to suspect AI is in some sense impossible, that it will never be truly intelligent, just better at mimicking human behavior. Is it possible the "wow" factor will wear off and we will adjust our valuation of the type of work AI is capable of producing downward to account for the built in falsity. When the printing press was new it had the power to overthrow governments but eventually people developed a more analytical approach and learned not to trust everything in print. Now the garbage is full of print barely read or not read at all. Maybe the net effect on AI will be to value or highlight the things that are real.

[Ernie]

Back to the original topic, I am beginning to suspect AI is in some sense impossible, that it will never be truly intelligent, just better at mimicking human behavior. Is it possible the "wow" factor will wear off and we will adjust our valuation of the type of work AI is capable of producing downward to account for the built in falsity. When the printing press was new it had the power to overthrow governments but eventually people developed a more analytical approach and learned not to trust everything in print. Now the garbage is full of print barely read or not read at all. Maybe the net effect on AI will be to value or highlight the things that are real.

There will always be place in the world for genuineness, humanness, and personal touch. Some people may get along without this for a period of time but I expect their worlds to eventually dry up or come up short.

I hope your prediction about an AI future is correct! Until we get there, we as a society may have some really dysfunctional decades.

[barnhart]

A while back someone introduced me to a Spotify music channel where the books of the Bible had been written as songs. I found it interesting and well done so I listened for several hours while working. Then I began to notice little phrases and musical motifs kept repeating and the voice had a limited range of emotion.

I investigated a little further to discover that it was all AI. If it had been injected one song at a time into a stream of content like a radio station, I likely would never have noticed, the lyrics were well written, engaging and correctly summarized the material they were based on and the music sounded great. Maybe a non- musician would have gone much further without feeling something was off and maybe a writer or poet would have been tipped off by the lyrics sooner than I was.