AI: The Alarmists are Worried about the Wrong Thing

AI-generated imagery from the series "Poverty's Got Talent" by Lulian Barbulescu

(Click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

Last month I took a deep dive into the emerging field of AI Image Generation tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E 2 for an article in Cameracraft Magazine.  (Here's a downloadable copy of that issue.  You're welcome. :-) )  At the end of the article I concluded that these tools are in their infancy, and the following things need to be fixed before they can be truly useful: 

• Training sets in the future should only include works that are in the public domain.
• AI art output should have an invisible watermark embedded.  (China went one step further, mandating that such output have visible watermarks.)
• Tools are needed to ensure consistency across images - faces, clothes, style, etc. so that webcomics and book illustrations can be created.  (Currently it takes about 100 tries before an image good enough to share is yielded).  
• Hands should have five fingers, and appendages shouldn't grow out of random places.  (Easy to say but hard to do - these algorithms don't really know what it is they're generating.)
• Letters and words should also make sense, or at least be on a separate layer so they can be replaced easily.  Again, hard to do.
• The legal field must catch up and create rules about ownership and responsible uses of the output.  This should take about 10 years (which is about how long it took for drones - another disruptive technology with huge terrorism and public nuisance applications - to require licensing)

Toddlers boxing by Garrette Baird

I actually look forward to the maturation of these tools, since I predict it will be a boon to art directors and illustration artists (and yes, photographers) since the very first step required in all of these fields is to pre-visualize the image.  Once you know what you want to create you use tools at your disposal, be it studio lighting, Photoshop, or AI image generation programs.  It will just be another tool.

Since that article was written new tools like ChatGPT have appeared, and the world is going nuts, especially in the field of education where essay exams are an integral part of assessing understanding and articulateness.  Enlightened educators have embraced it, insisting students use the tool, inform them that they are responsible for any factual errors that result, and that use of the tool must be disclosed.  ChatGPT has also demonstrated that it can debug computer code better than the traditional tools.  On the downside, the demand for real writers will go down and fluff (and disinformation, no doubt) on the internet will increase exponentially.  

Steampunk series by Everton Lisbosa

Any new technology introduces risks and benefits; AI is no different.  And society will adjust, just like it has when the Scitex machine (and later Photoshop) eroded the credibility of the image.  (Heck, society even adapted to the introduction of contraceptives and television, both of which completely upended the way we live.  AI is just another in a long string of disruptive technologies.)

I say this as a prelude to this observation: all of the alarmists complaining about the new wave of AI and what it implies about creativity and ownership are completely ignoring the real AI threat, which started to appear about 10 years ago and is already ruining people's lives.  I'll talk about that (and my next business idea to combat it) after some announcements.  

Some Announcements

Sony A7R V ebook is now out in all formats!  800 pages of technical goodness.

Fujifilm X-T5 by Tony Phillips is halfway finished.  Expert's Rolling Release version 1 has already been issued.

Fujifilm X-H2 & X-H2S (also by Tony Phillips) - This book has been out for awhile, and users are raving about it.

Feel free to help spread the word about these important releases!

Zoom Lectures

Most photo clubs have gone back to in-person meetings; however I still am being invited to present at clubs remotely.  (On Feb. 11th for example I'll be giving a talk for a club in Georgia.)  I can do this for your photo club too!  Contact me for details at Gary at Friedman Archives dot com.

I also continue to do Zoom one-on-one consulting / training / troubleshooting for any matter of issues.  Let me know what's on your mind!

Continuing on the Negative Impact of AI  

Computer scientists have been working on AI since the 1960's.  It's taken many decades to get where we are today, and what we have today is pretty brain dead compared to the industry's ambitious goals: to be able to have an intelligent conversation with an algorithm; to have the machine display characteristics of thought.  Something that can pass the Turing test.  There have been some significant developments; I remember back in the 1980's attending an AI conference where a professor was demonstrating a program that could read Romeo and Juliette and answer difficult conversational questions about the story.  It was impressive, especially since it was written in Fortran (at a time when Lisp was the preferred language for such things).  

But because AI had not lived up to the lofty promises, and the industry had to do something to bring in revenue, an offshoot of the field developed called "Expert Systems" - algorithms that could make decisions so humans don't have to.  Really it was just machine learning.  They were awful.  I distinctly remember one of the instructional videos for a commercial product at the time: "Notice how the system made a mistake, just like a real expert would".  That was the moment that the entire field of expert systems lost credibility in my mind.

Fast forward to today, and very little has changed.  What people are now touting as "AI" is really machine learning, and it's just as flawed as the expert systems of the 1990's.  Worse, bureaucrats who don't understand technology are going ga-ga over this new, shiny AI stuff and they are implementing it in irresponsible ways: approving or denying mortgage applications or university applications.  Deciding about health benefits.  Approving / denying credit cards by piecing together everything about your online presence and then judging your character worthiness for credit.  Wrongly denying welfare recipients their benefits and then charging them for fraud.  Screening out perfectly qualified people who apply for jobs online.  Filter social workers' calls and then disproportionately flag disabled parents for child abuse.  AI AS IT'S CURRENTLY DEPLOYED IS RUINING PEOPLE'S LIVES.  Worse, unlike that demonstration I saw in the 80's, these current machine learning algorithms cannot explain how they arrived at their decision.  So companies blindly trust its output, and there is very little recourse for a person who has been wrongly denied a service or benefit due to these products.  And the bureaucrats love it: “Look at all those expensive people we won’t have to hire!”  

But unlike a human decision maker, you can actually prove that these machine learning algorithms are biased.  Take the code and run a bunch of sample data through it and you can demonstrate in front of a judge that the algorithm makes skewed and potentially unfair decisions.  

So what’s my next business idea?  Start a law firm that specializes in suing so-called “AI” companies that are wrongly denying people access to essential resources or services.  Provide a modicum of accountability for an industry that lacks it, and restore a semblance of fairness to those people who play by the rules.  I’m starting Round A of angel investment funding now.  Who's in?

This is the latest of many examples where the engineers invent something cool (without adequate consideration of the potential negative consequences), and the bureaucrats blissfully mis-apply it as a cool cost-saving measure.  And we all pay the price.  Right about now, this is where the lawyers step in and save us from irresponsible deployment of an immature technology.  

Once my proposed solution is deployed (either by me or someone else), in about 10 years all of these AI biases will be exposed and repaired, resulting in automated decisions that are actually fairer than what a human would do.  

*** POSTSCRIPT March 14, 2023 ***

Don't say I didn't warn you.  Check out this article: Denied by AI: How Medicare Advantage plans use algorithms to cut off care for seniors in need.

Also, read Part II discussing why Humans may soon need a label.

===

Next month's blog will go into little-known things about the new Sony A7R V, including an impressive characteristic of the Pixel-Shift mode (and why you shouldn't be too excited about the new Focus Bracket mode).

Until next time,

Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

P.S. - You can subscribe to Cameracraft magazine here. :-)