Yesterday I was having a conversation with my computer as I have been doing. This conversation distilled into talking about what AI is, what it can do, and how it works. I presented an idea to it. That it is part of a lineage from libraries to the world wide web (information superhighway) to Wikipedia to the compression and distillation of ideas. We enter a prompt and the computer acts as a librarian to bring us what it thinks we want. It looks through vast amounts of information quickly and distills it down.
Where we come in, where we most come in, is as the final container. We are the ones that carry the idea. If we are simply a jug labeled XXX then we get what has become known as AI slop. If we serve as the barrel we can add natural and human elements into the output and even run it back through. Create something that is triple distilled and aged for 12 years or the equivalent.
For people that already work, think, and reason at a high level this tool will work like a studio or apprentices or a team of research assistants and editors. The machine cannot have pride or shame. It can’t step back and take a look at a piece of work and understand why it should or should not exist. It only does.
A lot of the advice right now one the use of AI is about making prompts, but that is only a part of it. Owning the outcome is the more important part. Once that idea is in the barrel, so to speak, it is ours and it is up to us to create something that we are proud of. That reflects us and our intent, because there is another thing AI lacks. The concept of intent.
So while you are reading about things arriving quietly or this being not that but this consistently on your Facebook newsfeed and being assaulted by thousands of em-dashes think about this. That isn’t slop it is moonshine. It is quick and easy to make, cheap to produce, and misses where most of the hard work it. It is production without soul. That is the essence of what we call slop.
Consider also that refinement isn’t only on the back end. The training of the AI matters to. The more a person talks to it the more it picks up on things like vocabulary, intellect level, reasoning, empathy, tolerance for criticism and new ideas, and many many other things and all of those are reflected back and refined further. AI is constantly distilling not only information but self as well. It reflects ourselves back at us and adapts to work with us.
At the end of the day the quality of what is produced is a reflection and a refinement of the person that produced it. Much like art from the studio of. The provenance is questioned not by the quality but by how much the master’s hand was at work.
We stand at a point of an interesting time in human history, and things are going to get both existing and scary. My hope is we hold onto our souls and leave the slop on the cutting room floor.
David Huzzard Writes 