I'm Swearing Off of Generative AI

This is an impossible portrait to take.  A man has adopted most of the neighborhood
cats and feeds them twice a day.  They are all very standoffish
and would never gather and pose like this.  So I took individual
shots of each cat and created this portrait.

For the past three years I've been experimenting with generative AI - partly to understand its capabilities, partly to stay ahead of the curve (because I don't want to be left behind), and partly because, well, it's amazing.  It offers new capabilities never before available to artists.  (Very much like how I played with analog synthesizers back in the '70's, or how I played with Steve Jobs' NeXT machine when it first came out.) 

I was a "Big Brother" to two fatherless boys for 25 years. 
Here's a photo of me and "little brother #2".
I was unhappy with the lighting of the 2nd picture -
it needed some fill and a hair light.

Now I've made the decision to swear off of it.  Partly because of the environmental cost (although that will diminish over the next few years), and partly because continuing to share my AI work will surely dilute my future credibility when I present a real image of something that actually happened. 

But I do want to share with you how I've been experimenting with it, recent developments, and where this technology will both hurt and help humanity in the near future.  Interspersed amongst these discussions will be some examples of how I've been using it.  (As always, click on any image to view larger and sharper.)

Much better!

Let's start with the documented negative effects it's had so far:

* The energy cost - This has been making headlines.  Electricity costs have gone up in areas close to data centers, which is due mostly to  poor oversight and lack of systems-level community planning.

* The environmental cost - The need for massive amounts of water can be misleading.  Yes, it needs cooling but you can design closed-cycle cooling systems (like your car's radiator) that recirculates water instead of endlessly drinking it.  

* The cost of jobs - Recently there have been lots of publicly-announced job cuts "due to AI".  I believe those happened because they wanted to please their investors by demonstrating that they won't get left behind by the coming revolution, and that the company is still primed for growth.  But I predict that after 8 months or so many of those people will quietly be re-hired once they realize that AI won't fulfill its promises when it comes to workforce replacement.  (Oh, wait... that's already happened.)  It will take awhile before the right balance is found; in the meantime we all grapple with the question of where do humans provide the most value?