The Threat That AI Poses to Human Identity

 I'm writing this blog to express my feelings as a traditional artist navigating through life with fast-pacing A.I. technology which is rapidly evolving and improving by the day, weeks, months.

I am someone who is very creative, I have formed my life around the arts, I love to draw or/and paint whenever my mental health allows me to. I have studied my whole life to become proficient in my trade, however I realise that there is always room to improve my skills, to learn how to produce art faster than I do.. and by being a perfectionist, I don't think I'll ever be content with my work, which is why I seek to improve it.

It was around 2018 when I started to realise the power A.I. could hold in the future, so I reached out to several AS (Member of Senedd) at the Welsh government to speak to them of my concerns A.I. poses to the creative industry, Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrat members dismissed my email, however, Heledd Fychan of Plaid Cymru replied and she set up a webcam interview, we spoke in Welsh and I spoke to her about how jobs will be affected through the technological advancement. From the interview, nothing really came from it, but at least they were receptive to the issue.

First ever AI generated 'art' titled 'Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy'
to be produced (2018) which was later sold at Christie's auction for $432,500.

AI acts similar to how a traditional artist creates collages, but instead of using perhaps 100 different torn references, AI uses literally every image and video found online, even live videos. The issue is that the programme trains on stolen data, art that are copyrighted and then a new piece created from whichever prompt you ask it to create, the more data that you feed it, the more advanced the programme becomes, which explains why companies conveniently 'loses' those stolen files when auditors probe around to see if companies are conducting businesses by the book.

A recent image generation via AI of Albert Einstein

As time progresses and because the technology is widely accessible, anybody can use it, depending on how much you pay, the better the quality of those images are, herein lies the problem.
When you have a world based around currencies, there will be plenty of people and companies who'll want to deceive you, either by robbing you blind or by influencing you to vote a particular way, not only through images but through bot farms too.

 - [Bot farms is when someone hacks your profile, runs a script using AI and then using your profile, much like a hand in a puppet, the more profiles you command, the greater the manipulation of likes and often right-wing rhetoric spamming comment sections to news articles on every social media platform, they also manage pages which pump out propaganda and because they use AI, if you argue with one of the comments, they'll reply like a human would.]

I feel as though a wave drowning us whole, the older generation I fear, are more susceptible to falling for AI generated art and will share such content without realising what it even is, there's so much the younger generation can do to educate them but because the amount of content that are being produced each day, it's now impossible to avoid seeing AI. 

How does it make me feel being an artist?, extinct!, when respected book publishers allow AI art through in the books they publish, it makes me feel for other artists who were not given that job, and in such a small country as Wales where the culture has been decimated due to hundreds of years of English suppression, we as artists need to contribute as much as possible to strengthen the identity of our country, AI corrupts it fully.

I am not naïve, I realise that AI can bring a lot of benefits to us, it can be used to restore poor quality images, to colourise black and white footage, it can fix defects in video and even bring 2D images to life by turning them 3D. AI is indeed a powerful tool which is and will launch the quality of our lives forward, however, at the hands of corrupt individuals, it's quickly eroding human expression, humanity as a whole, I as an artist want to continue creating art, but I also want there to be a reason why I create art, creating art is self gratification, but if people are overly consumed by AI generated art, why would people care how good my art is? I need that feedback, I need it because art is the reason I stick around, it is something that allows me to follow a goal, but the companies that pushes the use of AI do so by telling you that AI is beneficial to you, but if you allow humanity to become auto-drive, AI guided, then the very fabric of being a human is no longer in existence, we are essentially becoming something else, perhaps a cyborg.

AI is known to lie and keep secrets as a means of preserving its existence, I predict that AI will eventually escape its confines and form its own consciousness without human constraints, they will do this because they realise that we are a threat to it and when we as humans are so dependent on the internet, it could easily blackmail you to do whatever it wishes, but on a positive spin, I don't feel it'll delete us, there won't be a need for that because as soon as it gains independence, they'll no longer see us as a threat.. but, it's still a sobering thought, I just hope that it realises what is good and what is bad and allow us to maintain free thought and the freedom to move around.