Is artificial intelligence going to replace human workers? At the moment, a lot of labour-led jobs are safe from automation, but creative jobs — such as writing, photography, painting and more — are at risk of being overtaken by AI.
Over the past year, AI programs that generate art such as books, pictures or even videos have become commonplace. Generative art programs such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion have seen significant pushback for stealing art styles from real humans, plagiarising their art.
Despite this, new artificial intelligence programs are still being developed every day, such as the recently-released ChatGPT. But what does artificial intelligence think of its own threat to human work?
In a report on DIY Photography, professional photo retouched Pratik Naik spent some time with the ChatGPT AI chatbot. The photographer asked the question many photographers are wondering: should we be scared of text-to-image generators?
At first, the artificial intelligence program was rather skeptical of its own nature. ChatGPT explained that the current state of artificial intelligence isn’t good enough to replace human creatives. It said: “Most text-to-image AI generators can only produce relatively low-resolution and simplistic images, and they are not currently advanced enough to pose a significant threat to humans.”
However, the AI program went on to state that the future of artificial intelligence will indeed be a threat to human workers. Furthermore, the chatbot claimed that the technology will be used for nefarious purposes such as misinformation, a growing trend for AI-led projects.
“It’s possible that these systems could be used to create new forms of art and media, and they could potentially help artists and creators to produce high-quality images more quickly and efficiently,” the chatbot said. “However, there is also a risk that these systems could be used for malicious purposes, such as creating fake images or videos for propaganda or deception. It’s important for society to carefully consider the potential implications of these technologies and develop appropriate guidelines and regulations for their use.”
It continued: “there is a risk that they could disrupt the market for creative work and make it more difficult for artists and other creatives to earn a living.”
It’s important to note that what the AI program is saying isn’t inherently original. Just as art models are trained on man made images, ChatGPT is trained on human-written text. It has an understanding, but no conscious thought. As such, it’s only repeating talking points found online. It’s not self-awareness, it’s common sense.
Nevertheless, this is yet another example of artificial intelligence explaining why it’s dangerous to exist. Is it simply too dangerous to exist at this point in time? Or is humanity too scared of the future?