Today I am presenting a speculative case about AI. You might remember that yesterday I concluded that much of the readily available AI (Co-Pilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc) in their free forms at least are still very much working on the quality of their prompts and thus fall back on the old adage of garbage in, garbage out (otherwise known as GIGO).

Some time ago, I did a bit of a deeper dive into AI and, in particular, I spent an article discussing whether, through the use of AI-enhanced CGI, actors were under threat as equivalents could be reproduced for a fraction of the cost and particularly at the high end. Why not make a Tom Hanks lookalike, but call him Tim Hinks and put a small mole on his face. It is not Tom Hanks. You get the idea. At the time I made the point using Star Wars: Rogue One as an illustration, because it featured a CGI Carrie Fisher (I literally saw that scene on screen as she was dying - I time checked it and have mentioned it before) and a CGI Moff Tarkin, played by the late, legendary Peter Cushing. Unlike when Carrie Fisher died after the release of the film, Peter Cushing was a long time dead by the time he was reprised and as such this raises moral questions about whether it should be done. In fairness similar questions can be raised concerning Carrie Fisher's last appearances in The Rise of Skywalker, but in this case it was taken from unused and stock footage, although they did also create a younger Princess Leia for one scene related to her Jedi training. While still very much alive, something similar was done to Harrison Ford, in the latest (and probably last) Indiana Jones Film. For the first 30 minutes or so, he was thwarting Nazis during the Second World War and thus he needed to be made to look younger - more in tune with his appearance during the original trilogy - before being brought into 1969 as a much older man. The difference was that he was alive throughout the process and still is.

Illustrations aside, it does show that actors are now disposable and can simply be reimagined through the use of technology.

I have spent the last couple of days looking at AI for interior design and while it is still not quite there yet the technology is getting better all the time. People will no longer employ others - a theme I will pick up on again - when they can do it themselves through AI.

There is a lot of talk in the crypto community about using AI-trading-bots and telesales are now all too often done through authentic sounding AI voice synthesis - the big giveaway is they don't shut up when you ask them to, but that will evolve as the AI learns and adapts.

AI can now be used to generate films, pictures and all kinds of art as well as novels (I am not too sure if the latter is too much of a step up from software that is engineered to create frameworks and prompts to aid in the writing - for me even that somehow contaminates the artistic process.

Finally, just before I bring things to an end, there is likely to be a future - one of us and them - that goes beyond wealth, in which AI will be used to create enhanced humans, who will be stronger, smarter and fitter and have greater longevity than the rest of us. If we think society is uneven now, just wait and see.

The point I am leading to is that we are becoming expendable and by the time we start discussing robots even the need for any physical or manual labour will be taken literally out of our hands. I recently looked at Jeff Bezo's Blue Origin and one of the things that he wants to do is off-world polluting industries and get people living and working in space. He also stated that robots would be doing much of the heavy lifting and I questioned this contradictory principle. If he wants people working in space, but robots doing much of the work it, at the very least, restricts the capacity for human engagement.

So, we are seeing before our very eyes, the creation of a world of human obsolescence, which on one hand gives us more time for pleasure and fun, as many futurists have been predicting for years, but on the other hand, if we are not working for a living then other than the 1% of the 1% who will make sure they own everything we will be restricted to a life of poverty unless we evolve into a Utopian society where money no longer means anything and AI sets us free. Somehow that smacks of a kind of Communism and it will never be so benign. One thing that might be interesting to point out is that for most of human history we got by without structured and formalised work and just did what needed doing, from the very lowly (tending the Lord's crops - of the manor that being) to the high and mighty and even in very primitive societal structures it was all on a "need" basis rather than fitting to a regular humdrum routine. 

AI and Robotics may liberate our time, but at what cost to the quality of our lives?

As always stay safe and well my friends  

NB. The AI-header image is Borg inspired from Star Trek, but it gives you an idea of what might be coming...