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The Editor’s Desk: What could go wrong?

From public shaming to AI to the death of creativity, we truly live in a wonderful world
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Apple has withdrawn an ad showing a huge press crushing musical instruments, paints, camera lenses, books, record players, and other items associated with creativity. (Photo credit: Apple)

A few random thoughts:

What could go wrong? Someone commenting on a Kamloops Facebook page had a bad run-in with a local business, and asked if it was worth taking them to small claims court for $125. The general consensus was no, but one person (seemingly seriously) advocated slashing their tires or smashing a window in their house. “Choose catharsis. Make $125 worth of damage, even double that, and walk away knowing he’ll have to eat the cost somewhere in his life too.”

Another person said that they “totally support shaming on social media,” which of course has never gone wrong and inflicted hideous damage on a person or business that was unable to defend themselves, or was disbelieved when they tried to tell their side of the story. I say we go one step further, and bring back the stocks, since so many people aren’t on social media and thus would not be able to enjoy the public humiliation of someone who might (or might not!) have done something to justify it.

(That last bit was sarcasm, in case anyone is in doubt. If you found yourself nodding and going “Good idea, sounds reasonable!” you might want to go for a walk and have a long, hard think about a few things.)

It’s the thought that counts: American author Chuck Wendig recently had a few thoughts about AI (artificial intelligence) as it pertains to writing. “The allure of AI entices those people who fetishize ideas but dismiss the work … For them, the vision is everything, and the work is just an annoying obstacle. But the WORK is everything. The work is how a thing happens, where it’s made, where skill is put to work. AI in creativity is for the people who have no skill, no work, no effort, no ethic. They just want to push a button.”

Countless people are “writing” stories and articles using AI, by entering a few keywords and phrases, then sitting back and seeing what gets coughed up. What they don’t seem to care about is that the end result is only possible because AI is scraping countless works that have gone before, all of which were written by people who had the idea and then put in the work to make it a living, breathing reality. Using AI to “write” something is plagiarism, pure and simple, dressed up in shiny clothes and doing a fancy dance to district everyone from the tawdry, threadbare reality.

All you need is tech: In a not-unrelated note, Apple recently faced widespread backlash against an ad promoting its new megathin iPad Pro, which Apple CEO Tim Cook touted as “the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.”

Viewers of the ad didn’t need to imagine anything, as the ad featured a stack of objects associated with creativity — a trumpet and piano, camera lenses, paints, a metronome, a clay bust, an artist’s mannikin, books, TVs, record players, and more — crushed in a giant press. The ad then revealed the iPad Pro, as if to say “Who needs those other things, when you have this?”

It’s hard not to see a gauntlet being thrown down to artists, with the implicit message being “We will use our massive technology not just to replace your creative tools, but to crush them.” Why put in the thousands of hours necessary to master a musical instrument, or painting or photography, or the written word? the ad seems to say. It’s so much easier and faster to just download a program and — armed only with the incredible power of the M4 chip and the ability to type in the right words — “create” to your heart’s content. Training? Practice? Making mistakes, learning from them, and trying again? That’s for suckers.

Such was the opprobrium heaped on Apple that the company has pulled the ad and apologised. Hmmm. Perhaps public shaming does have its place after all …