Played around with ChatGPT 4 this morning, and was very impressed. DALL-E 3 is also a great addition.
AI THOUGHTS >
Why Photographers Still Matter
I’ve observed that ChatGPT as well as DALL-E is very fascinating, and also great for creativity.
However, an interesting nuance I have discovered:
The images that they could produce however, is still limited to illustrations, vector images, drawings and paintings etc. It cannot yet make a realistic looking photograph.
I think there is something very very beautiful about the photographs, why? Capturing a moment in time I think is our great joy. Also some simple pragmatics include the ease of printing out photos, and being able to mount them on your wall or inside a frame, something that does not require batteries, charging, LCD screens etc.
The best way to think about AI is that it is essentially like Siri
All of this nonsensical talk of artificial intelligence going to take our jobs in our creativity is silly. Why? The reason people like to do art is because it is fun!
A simple thought is I don’t really think that artist should chase making money, instead, we should do it for autotelic purposes, fulfilling some sort of inner joy in ourselves!
The best way to think about AI, open AI, ChatGPT etc. is that it is a complement to us, and an augmentation of us, rather than a replacement.
Automate the boring stuff
This is very very popular online course by udemy titled “automate the boring stuff”. The basic idea is that perhaps the reason of technology is that it helps us eliminate tedious, time-consuming tasks in our everyday life.
Example, my insane joy with the instant pot as well as the air fryer (chefman). Why? It is like having a cooking slave; to be able to instant pot food insanely quickly and effectively is such a great joy, instead of having to tediously cook it myself and monitor it. Do you remember that old commercial, “set it and forget it?” Yeah that’s good.
What are the tedious things we could cut out of photography?
Photography is great, but I have observed that there are certain tedious things. For example, having to trudge through all of our photographs in order to choose the best one. This is a huge issue, because let us say that you shoot 1000 photos a day. Technically photography is my profession, and even I don’t have enough time to go through and review all my photos in a single day! My simple vision for the next generation of arsbeta.com is simple:
Dragon drop, or from your iPhone or iPad, quickly dragon drop or select 1000 photos, and ARS BETA AI can help you cool down to your best photo or three photos or 10 photos etc.
Essentially there would be some sort of slider, which would actually enable this to be possible. For example, the slider filter could allow you to cull down to 100 photos, 50 photos, 25 photos etc.
If you can help me code this shoot me an email at eric@erickim.com
Why AI?
I think by far, the most useful use case of AI would definitely be in regards to tedious driving in stop and go traffic. For example, I think the only reason to get a Tesla is in for all of that electric car stuff, but rather, the promise of a car that can use the noise of driving on the 405 or the 10 during rush-hour traffic. Or even tedious stopping go traffic when driving around Los Angeles local.