Source (Bluesky)
Transcript
recently my friend’s comics professor told her that it’s acceptable to use gen Al for script- writing but not for art, since a machine can’t generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister’s screenwriting professor said that they can use gen Al for concept art and visualization, but that it won’t be able to generate a script that’s any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that Al can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.
It’s only ever the jobs we’re unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen Al will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence relies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don’t.
In my experience everybody (myself included) is prone to the Dunning-Kruger Effect in domains outside their expertise.
It doesn’t mater if you’re a outstanding expert in any one domain: you just look at a different domain and go “yeah, that looks easy”.
I’m actually a lot more generalist than usual because of my personality and still have that same tendency to underestimate the complexity of different domains, but because of being a generalist I sometimes for one domain or another go down the route of genuinelly practicing it professionally, and one or two years later I’m invariably thinking “This shit ain’t anywhere as simple as I thought!”.
And, lo and behond, generative AI is just about good enough to handle the entry level stuff in a domain - the ultimate Junior Professional (not even a very good one) with just about enough “competence” to look capable for domain outsiders or even hobbyists whilst at the same time being obviously mediocre for domain experts.
As most people don’t really think about their own knowledge perception in these terms and thus don’t try to compensate for it, the reactions described in this post totally make sense.
The thing that most people here seem to ignore is the AI doesn’t have to be the de facto expert on a subject. There are lots of bad programmers and lots of designers and writers that do mediocre work at best and still charge for it. AI can clearly do at par or better work than those and that’s sufficient for a lot of clients.