In a recent discussion I have with a group of non-tech people, the topic of Generative AI was brought up (...again), so I thought I write a thought piece on it, to share my views so far on Generative AI.
Like any new tool, it has created uncertainty leading to fear that content creators are going to be replaced. Firstly, I am very optimistic about the new AI tools. Well there could be some bias here given that I am passionate in the field, reason enough for me to be optimistic regardless. :)
Coming back, in my opinion, I doubt the replacement will happen. In fact, what I strongly believe in is “Augmented Intelligence” rather. Content creators can now use these Generative AI models increase their productivity, to generate a “base” content and creators can then edit the generated accordingly. Think about it, if the content creator is to write something from scratch, fastest typing speed record right now is 212 words per minute (WPM) with a DVORAK keyboard, rather than a QWERTY keyboard. A blog post is usually about 700 to 800 words, which means it takes about 4 mins. I am sure ChatGPT or Bard can go much faster than that. Similar thought process can be used in an image generation example as well.
Another reason why I doubt there will be replacement is this. Strangely enough, regardless of language, it seems like it is still easy to differentiate whether a paragraph or articles are written by humans or by machines. Besides the bombastic vocabulary that is written by LLMs, I find that human writing has a certain "experiential" angle to it, as compared to LLMs which can be quite hollow in terms of "experience", in other words, the article can be quite 'souless'.
As such, regardless of text or images, human input is still needed which leads to my point on "Augmented Intelligence".
I HAVE THE POWER!
From another angle, Generative AI now gives people like me who cannot paint/draw well to save my life or have lousy writing skills access to create reasonably good images or text content easily. This allows me to generate decent content. Thus I foresee there will be a “content explosion” and hit the equilibrium of a new normal where content creation is easily in the hands of more people and it is up to the human being to be better at curating and processing content to grow their knowledge and wisdom. It is very similar to the earlier years where producing video needs a large team with heavy duty computers for edit, but now with smartphone that has a good camera, microphone, anyone can now post their own content online.
Image Generator Engine
One of the biggest issue about writing engaging articles or presentation is finding suitable images to accentuate the points. It actually can take quite a fair bit of point, to look hard enough to find suitable images and results are not guaranteed. Sometimes, you just have to settle for a "95% suitability" images rather. Once copyright issues can be settled where there is a win-win between human image generator together with image generator, perhaps an image generator engine could be made available for speakers, presenters, teachers and instructors (ahem...ME!) to create the images that I want for my presentation deck with the big assumption that my prompt engineering skills is fantastic. It will certainly cut down hours of search for me! :)
What are your thoughts? Please share them with me on LinkedIn. :)
<After Note> Interestingly enough, this popped up on my YouTube feed. The "content explosion" is real!
Consider supporting my work by buying me a "coffee" here. :) Please feel free to link up on LinkedIn or Twitter (@PSkoo). I just started my YouTube channel, do consider subscribing to it to give support! Do consider signing up for my newsletter too.