Episode 84: AI ain't your friend. A Q+A

AI can write a decent paragraph, mock up a concept, and spin infinite ad variants in seconds.

The scarier question is what it does to us when we start believing the machine more than we believe ourselves. I’m coming off a live “AI and You” webinar with a packed Q&A, and I’m taking the biggest questions into the studio to answer them with more honesty than a corporate slide deck will ever allow.

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Transcript

Webinar Recap And What’s Next

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I recently recorded a live webinar called AI and You. And if you weren't there, you missed a damn good and informative show. The audience was hungry and curious and had real quality concerns about the role of AI in their lives and work. In the last forty-five minutes of the show was a healthy Q ⁇ A. But even in forty-five minutes I couldn't possibly answer all the questions, or answer them thoroughly. So here on The Right Questions, I will answer some of these at length. But there were so many good questions that the rest will be answered in part two of this podcast next week. And just as a caveat to answering these questions, I am not against a I. I am against you losing your voice. So let's get to this. Glenn

Will AI Replace Young Designers

SPEAKER_00 1:28

says, A lot of my students hear from designers and visiting speakers who say AI won't replace you, but people who use AI will. Not to mention what will happen to their brain. Believing in what AI spews or allowing it to make creative decisions for them, especially at that age, will literally reshape their brain into something less open for individual thought. They will be literally buying into a hive mentality instead of following their own purpose. Good, good work, good ideas, and creativity always win. And if you can make that happen, even AI assisted, then bully for you. And no one, Glenn, is getting replaced. That's impossible. What makes us creative is that we follow our gut, not a computer. We are all born wildly creative, and we have an opinion and we put it in our work. This makes us unique and individuals capable of creating a name and reputation for ourselves. I cannot stress enough that trusting yourself is such a big part of creativity. By the way, Glenn, you have the wrong influences coming to your school. You should hand out long, thin reeds and sticks to your students and let them roust out any rat who comes to infest their creative souls.

The Pressure To Automate Ads

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Question number two is a tough one, and this one comes from Eric. Eric says, I'm leading AI implementation as an in-house art director. One of the directives from executives is whether we can use AI to quickly iterate on paid ad creation. Example, create two to three creative approaches and then use AI to adapt that creative for A-B testing and optimization. It feels terrible accepting that as a workflow. We're a team of three handling all of our creative output across the company, which includes packaging, point of sale, campaign, etc. It's tempting to allow AI work as a way to keep up, but it feels so, so, so wrong. What is your take on that dynamic and keeping up with competitor brands who are using this approach? Eric, here's a major problem here. Most creative agencies are understaffed. You've got three people doing the work of many. You use the term keeping up, and all I hear is treading water, and I feel for you. But here's the bad news. The example you are citing of quickly iterating is what AI is good for. It's not creative, but it can replicate and do variations on an existing theme. It can churn out many shiny turds in seconds. And the sadder news is agencies and marketing and corporations will always go the way of all flesh. They will always look for the cheap and easy and fast way. Hence your three-person staff dancing as fast as they can. Look at the well-loved Everlane story, a brand built on ethics and transparency being sold to the hungry trash compactor of fashion, Sheehan. Build another business going the way of all flesh. It is difficult to do the right and ethical and moral thing and sustain a large business. Because money and keeping up shits on everything. Companies will start, if they haven't already, to use AI to augment creative or replace it if they can. Agencies are historically afraid to trust themselves and trust their teams. Eric, I've always said the worst thing you can do for a client is to give them what they want.

The Ethics And Environmental Cost

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Question number three comes from Troy, and Troy asks, putting the impact of AI on our craft aside for a moment, when I think about the environmental cost of AI and its impact on communities that are already marginalized and don't have the resources to push back, I struggle to see a genuinely ethical way to use it right now. Considering those two things, is it possible to use AI ethically in any circumstance? Um my answer is thus. No. Considering the environmental impact and how AI data centers are literally being forced down the throats of communities already stressed, that cannot bear the extra weight of AI, water, and energy consumption. And you forgot to add that the people who are bringing this horror into our lives, Zuckerfuck and Altman and that drugged up Musk guy, and Jens Jin Jensen Huang and Peter Teal, that these are some of the scummiest, greedy douchebags to ever exist on this planet. These fucks and all their companies like Meta and Palantir and Claude and ChatGPT and yes, even Canva and Adobe do not care one shit about you. My dear friends, yes, it should bring you pause. It should be a concern. As far as any ethical and moral hesitancy you may have, you are correct. There is no way to possibly balance that out. And I get it, this podcast is on the internet, and we all use bits and bobs of variations of AI, whether we asked for it or not. But we can be imperfect and still fight the system. And we can even use the system to fight the system. But we need to figure out how to find and join any resistance groups we can. We need to stay informed and not ignorantly drink the Kool-Aid. And not just for our selfish creative pursuits, but for the future of our children. And I say that with all the drama and all the urgency and all the import I can. The

Why AI Is Not Intelligence

SPEAKER_00 10:24

next question comes from Neils. Neils asks, Aren't we giving the term intelligence too much value in general? Correct, Neil, AI is not intelligence. That is a misnomer. It cannot dream or prognosticate or understand how the wrongest answer may possibly be the rightest. It has no puns or dad jokes or malaprops, and it cannot feck perfection. It has no trauma that informs its decisions. It has no heartbreak or loss that makes it a really good writer or artist. It has no fear of public speaking or shyness that helps it craft lovely work while holding back the fear. It is a mimic, a very fancy, expensive sideshow trick. It has zero emotional intelligence, no common sense, although most people don't either. It is a pattern recognition and probability prediction machine that regurgitates a good guess. It feels intelligent, but it is ultimately a very sophisticated calculator. It is a very shiny thing, and we are monkeys. But the worst part, the dangerous part, Niels, is that we're using it to second guess our own intelligence. We're using it to figure out things that we should figure out for ourselves. We have begun to collectively doubt and outsource our instincts and our very powerful gut feelings. We're losing the ability to prompt ourselves. We have to ask the ultimate prompt, the ultimate question for creatives, and that is what do I think? What is my opinion on the subject?

Ask Yourself What You Think

SPEAKER_00 12:47

Right now, you're thinking, oh man, I wish James Victory could be my mentor, my guru. Hell, I wish he was my coach. Well, you can make that happen. Go to your workisagift.com. There's a questionnaire that will probably help you out, but it'll also give you access to a free call. So let's talk. Let's free you from overwhelm and creative frustration. Let's build your business and help you get paid to do what you love. Again, go to your workisagift.com. Let's talk.

Raising Kids Without The Easy Path

SPEAKER_00 13:30

This last question comes from my man Aaron. Aaron says, It's hard to put trust into a system that you can ask the same question three times and get three different answers. This is the sad fact that most people don't understand. If AI is an inevitability, how do we bring up younger generations to understand that? How do we help them realize that their mind is powerful and that they shouldn't just take the easy path? My fear is that humanity is just too pacified to resist. My darling man, Aaron, you have three questions here. And I will answer them. Number one, AI is not inevitable. Anyone who phrases it that way is a rapist. Sorry, but that is rape language. AI is not inevitable. We do not have to like it, and we do have a choice. It is not our fate and our future like some are trying to push. It is not inevitable. It is only ubiquitous and unavoidable, but we always have a choice. We can't throw up our hands and say it's inevitable. We have to find new answers for ourselves, especially because we are creative. Our answers will always come from creative thinking. And we will create a better answer than AI being a heavy yoke we have to bear. Your second question is how do we bring up younger generations to understand? Yes, this is a very scary thought. I have an eight-year-old and a ten year old. And they are going to need good examples, like you, Aaron. And here's the thing, kids don't need AI. They need foundational skills of literacy, read books, and how to read a graph, maybe, and some basic understanding of math and critical thinking and creative play. They don't need AI. So we need to teach them. We are all teachers all the time. We teach by our example and we lead by our actions. We teach by how we treat others and how we treat AI. So those of us who care will have to step up and lead the way. We'll have to be vocal and set boundaries for ourselves and for kids and for technology. And we've got to be the best we can. And you also say humanity is too weak and pacified to resist. There are very sad notes of truth here, Aaron. We are a people of addiction, and we are addicted to comfort and security. But our most sinful addiction is the one of convenience. We should have shut Amazon down years ago, but we can't, because we're a shopping culture, and they have fed us convenience through a tube down our throats. And now we have the further convenience of asking AI to remove the struggle of writing a fucking email. God zooks. We have to figure out how to starve this beast. It thrives on our collective money and attention. So how do we remove that? We all need to look around and find where the resistance is and join that movement. Here's a good thought. I think there's only so much that the human spirit can tolerate. And at some point, hopefully sooner than later, we will see through the hype and the bullshit. Something's gotta give, right? Aaron, you are the beginning. And everyone listening who has gotten this far in the podcast, we are clear thinking, creative spirits, and we are the resistance. So take a breath and know that you are not alone.

Resistance, Hope, And Part Two

SPEAKER_00 18:24

I'm James Victoria, and I love you, and I believe in you even when you don't. And more questions will be answered in part two of this podcast next week. Thanks for being here.