The Pope's Coat

I'm sure you've all seen this image which went viral a few days ago.

History, I suspect, will look back on this as a watershed moment. 

Because the image isn't real. It was generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

What's extraordinary about the Pope's Puffa is that it fooled so many of us - including a great many experts in photo manipulation and AI. It marks an important moment in time when we, as internet users, can no longer tell fact from fiction. Social commentator and technology reporter Tom Scott calls this 'a new Napster moment'. 

You might recall that when Napster - a file sharing platform - arrived back in 1999, no one gave it much thought. But it went on to spawn a host of similar and ever-more powerful file sharing systems that completely changed the way we bought music and movies. It pretty much killed physical media  and helped to create the download market. Record shops closed. Video and DVD shops closed. And a major source of income for musicians was gone forever. With reduced sales from albums, artists had to make their money from live gigs and sponsorship. So ticket prices went up and we saw the emergence of appearance-based pop - where bands were specifically created from groups of good-looking men and women in order to appeal to advertisers. Then TV shows like X Factor and Pop Idol came along and the manufactured band became mainstream. Then TV shows like The Voice came along so that people who weren't quite as glamorous had a chance to be noticed.

All of that from Napster.

And now the Pope's Coat marks a moment in history that may also signal a seismic change. 

The acceleration of development of AI is extraordinary. Just six months ago, an AI generated image would have fooled no one. This one fooled almost everyone. And the image went viral on the same day that a Scandinavian company announced that they are close to creating an AI 'pilot' that can autonomously drive and control all operations on board container ships. They believe these vessels won't need any crews within a couple of years. And, on the same day, the university I lecture for announced that the owners of the programme we use for marking student assignments is developing an upgrade to include anti-AI software because students are increasingly using systems like Chat-GPT to do the work for them.

Back in December I wrote about my concerns regarding AI (see here). It's not the technology per se that bothers me - it's the use to which it is put. AI is not about developing systems to help humans. It's developing systems to replace humans. And the people throwing the most money into development are doing so in order to put us all out of a job. Why pay a graphic designer or working artist when a computer can do the work for free? Fine artists will continue to create work for an elite and will become an elite themselves, no doubt, but the jobbing artist will be on the dole. And what about all those people who drive for a living? Once the self-driving vehicle is allowed on the road, no one needs to pay or insure drivers anymore. That's an awful lot of unemployed delivery drivers, cabbies, long-distance hauliers, pilots, train drivers (and possibly insurance agents) that the government will suddenly have to house and feed.

More importantly, humans need a sense of purpose, as well as a source of income, in order to be happy and have a decent life. 

If AI takes that all away, what's left?

_________________________________________________

Footnote: 

Shortly after I posted this, it was announced that Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Yuval Noah Harari, Andrew Yang and over 150 other tech luminaries have signed a petition calling for a 6-month pause in AI training for 'safety reasons'. You can read the letter here.