It Could be Worse. 10/09/26

Isn’t AI fun? First we worried about how it would kill creativity. For instance, it could take a bunch of Aaron Sorkin scripts, figure out he likes fast, punchy dialogue and one-take traveling shots and write a new Aaron Sorkin-like movie. But it could never BE him. We worried it would put writers and actors and directors and art directors out of business. It could take John’s illustrations, my blog-writing, our comic sensibilities and make future New 60 comics for us. Killing our jobs is one thing. Killing us is quite another.

I once almost walked out on a dinner with friends when one of them insisted AI could do anything better than anyone. Not just better than me, better than anyone. It might be able to do things without emotion better than anyone. It might come up with a cure for a once seemingly incurable disease. It might figure out how to save Social Security. It might be able to copy someone’s writing style, but it couldn’t get to their emotional core. A comic book compadre, Sarah Andersen (of Sarah’ Scribbles) was once hacked, she has an easily recognizable style, and AI copied her illustration style and came up with material that was both racist and anti-semitic or politically alt-right. She isn’t any of those things. Could AI come up with a grandchild wondering how the scarecrow would sing if it didn’t have a brain. Nope. A fully formed 5 1/2 year old human (who happens to be my granddaughter) came up with that.

But when it comes to mass human extinction? Kind of makes the copy-cat stuff seem less important. So how can AI do us in? There’s a funny topic for next week’s comics and blog. Unless we let AI handle it.

Have a great weekend and watch out for bots, they’re hiding everywhere,

Andy and John