Rant #278

"Technology is not inevitable." Molly Crabapple

Illustration for Whit Wolf Publishing

The machines are coming for us all. I listen to too much doom and gloom stuff on the internet. I blame Molly, my girlfriend. She's amazingly smart and doesn't listen to comedians making dick jokes as is my usual drift. She listens instead to something about technology, social issues, those sorts of things. She was interviewed on a podcast called “Tech won't save us” and I thought she sounded super smart and made the clearest points I've heard anyone say in the media about Artificial Intelligence.

We have talked about the issue of AI since it hit the public in January. She was immediately alarmed about it. I am a Gen Xer and have seen the persistent trudge of technology since the 80's. My neighbor, Tommy who lived across the street was immediately in to the computers that came out in the early 80’s. He had the first Atari system and we played Pong and Asteroids and we thought this was incredible. He would get in trouble at our school for sneaking in to the “computer lab”, this little corner of a room that probably had 4 or 5 of the first personal computers(?) purchased by my school. I tried a drawing program a bunch of years later in college and hated it. It could only make tiny squares of color, you had to use a mouse, and it was so unsatisfying. I graduated college in '90 and my college made a huge investment in computers the following year. I at least had become aware that this was a thing I should be paying attention to and thought maybe I need to go back to college already!

The big thing that seemed to challenge the illustration world was Photo Shop. It came out in 1990 but I don't remember using it until '98 or '99. I barely used it because I painted all my illustrations by hand. I only used it to adjust contrast or colors a little bit before emailing it to a client. My scanner was more important to me than the computer, really. I heard all the exact same things today about AI as they said when pushing for everyone to adopt photoshop. The artists said, “This will replace us.” “Take our jobs...” and on and on. The PS pushers would have such a positive spin for every concern. They would say, Well, MAYBE there might be some jobs lost, but there will be many more “new” jobs created! It's inevitable! Everyone will be using it! Smiley/happy happy/blah blah unicorns. And then there was the “...and don't be such a Luddite!”

The word Luddite caused a deep dive into who were the Luddites? Mostly all by Molly. Why do we use the term as a put down on someone who doesn't want to embrace new technology? It is a pretty wild story to read, but, King Ludd was right. My summary: they were justifiably worried that the new automated looms would devalue or replace their skilled labor with unskilled, extremely lo-paid, factory workers. They turned out to be correct and the main reason they failed to sustain their resistance is that the British government sent in many troops to put them down. To kill them. A profound thing that Molly said while we were talking was that no technology is inevitable. Today the tech argument is basically the same. But it really isn't.

I've had amazing art directors. A few. Just a few. The drop is pretty severe after amazing. It drops to very competent to barely competent... at least from my experience over 30 years. Ninety-five percent are in the competent group. Most of the ones I worked with after '05 were way overworked to be able to have quality for anything concerning their job. They became less picky, less interested in how something was painted or if it was done digitally. My work would suffer for it. When I knew “just enough” was good enough. I wasn't as focused on making something I'd be proud of because I knew what they notice and what they didn't in an illustration. The size dimensions and file size became more important than the actual image. “Just enough”.

AI isn't that great. It has its moments and like a friend called it at first, “It's a magic eight ball. Give it a shake and let’s see what comes out. People will get tired of it and it will be like any other gimmick.” But I knew art directors and they like “good enough”. AI doesn't have to be great, just good enough. Also, it will be cheaper and SO much faster than a human arti… oh wait, the art director could, the editor could type in a prompt for the illustration that will spit something out that’s good enough in a minute to go with a good enough article also possibly written seconds ago by a chatbot. AI could do the whole thing from words to pictures. All it has to be is good enough.

Go King Ludd!

Oil on panel. Commission for my friend Steve.