How I'm protecting my job against AI
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Or at least trying.
More info and sources at bottom.
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The pandemic solidified my belief that teaching (my current profession) was never going to be automated or replaced by AI. Countless people rely on public schools for more than just education. However, in my early twenties I wanted to be a record producer but I saw with my own eyes (even back in 2007) how home recording technology was going to make the studio obsolete and how file sharing (even before streaming was commonplace) posed a threat to the future of the business model. While it's not AI, outsourced labor and technological advances made high quality music making tools available to everyone with a MAC or PC. It's important to question whether your plans have a future. Great work Phil!
While home recording tech is great these days (as a home producer myself) recording studios are still doing pretty well because they offer an expert's assistance (and often creative input) on recording and mixing, good recording acoustics (especially for drums) and top-of-the-line gear. I've been struggling for a while with the question of whether I should invest a bunch more time and energy into really maximizing my home recording setup, or if I should record scratch tracks then re-record at a studio.
why wouldn't you just produce music at home if that's what you wanted to do with your life? I suppose you wanted the environment of being in a studio vs being infront of a computer? other than the work environment, I don't understand how the affordability of a career path would STOP someone from pursuing it...
thanks for choosing to be a teacher at public schools though!!! I respect and appreciate what you do ❤️
PS a holodeck technology could easily make teachers replaceable by technology.
@@christophermiller3031 I think they wanted to produce other people's records in a studio, not necessarily produce their own music.
@@Merlincat007 I suppose the standards people have can indeed vary greatly among almost all points of interest... But yeah... I for one am a big fan of many music genres, from all the great video game music composers, to the EDM sounds sti being discovered, to my favorite bands that literally didn't rely on a studio... in my world of music I love most... The indie angle of music production is basically the world of music I live in.
Teachers are a big part of what holds society together! I do wonder about students using AI to write their papers for them (easier/cheaper than hiring someone online who can do it for them like they can now, and better than stealing papers that can be detected by TurnItIn). But I always thought papers weren’t the best way to learn, so maybe it will all be a wash.
So excellent! I really love the moats idea. Im a visual artist and I’ve been thinking about how a timelapse of making your art is now way more valuable and maybe as important as the final piece
- a video of your creative process shows your humanity and the changes/ development that you go through that an ai could never.
More important than ever to show your work.
Precisely, as much as AI art may become a plague on Instagram, I think there will always be a place for "real art" and other such crafts. As we can see there has been a real resurgence in things such as blacksmithing and woodworking. There are things AI will just never be able to replace. And I think there will always be an interest in that which is RI made. As AI develops in various areas, I think there will come a greater divide or separation in such things as art where you have corners to display AI art, and corners for RI art.
This is one of my favourite things about Procreate. I used to do art time lapses from screen recordings as I sat in front of Photoshop, or another paint program, but it was a whole hassle.
Meanwhile Procreate allows you to export a time lapse for any project, just built-in. You can also choose whether you want every change to be one frame, or if you want the whole project compressed into one minute.
I’m sure it’s increasing how much space each project takes on the disk, but being able to generate a time lapse for eg a painting I slowly chipped-away at over months is something my old method just couldn’t do. I’d forget to start one of the screen recordings of one of the sessions, or so on.
hey I'm down with the optimism and I don't think we really have anything to worry about, but you should know, a full timelapse of an artwork from start to finish would the *perfect* dataset for training an AI to make better art, so check your terms of service about what your video is allowed to be used for before uploading.
@@xiggywiggs I looked and it says that all “imported” canvases are owned by the user but doesn’t specify for recordings of that imported canvas and canvases created in-app. I’ve emailed support and asked specifically if apple owns the rights to the recordings and are able to sell the data. Waiting on a response.
Wow, you perfectly explained to me, why I like the channel "North of the Border" so much (he makes tiny nerdy things... like sculptures). It's not really the endresult, it's watching the effort it took to get there, while listening to humorous explanations of the decisions and mistakes along the way.
I highly recommend the channel, I think it's future-proof :D
Keep up the good work Phil. I think one thing human can't be replaced by AI is finding interesting topics nobody asked for, like you do.
if there's anything AI can do, it's that, and definitely better
don't get your hopes up
@@jamess.7811 Tom Scott literally has a video about AI generating video ideas and they had some good ones
If we only bothered to learn about topics we "asked for", our knowledge would be extremely limited. Like, to an unimaginable degree lol. This idea that stuff we're already familiar with / interested in is the only stuff worth learning about is kind of destructive intellectually =/ I know you only meant to say "Thanks for choosing this interesting topic, I hadn't thought about this stuff before" but still! XD
@@fios4528 I've seen it, but since then we've had all of these dall-e generative AIs, so who knows
@@nvrndingsmmr me?
Once again Phil, your use of humour and nuance is right up my alley.
Thanks for sharing your talents that no AI can replicate-- yet.
As a filmmaker who is honestly pretty freaked out by the rapid progress in AI generated images & audio, this video had a lot of great advice and was very reassuring. The technology will not stop progressing. We gotta adapt and use these programs to improve our own creative capabilities!
good! i am in the freaked-out-yet-optimistic zone as well
We can’t stop it but we can buy ourselves more time. Don’t use the programs, don’t even incorporate them into your workflow, all u would be doing is helping it identify workflow patterns, preferences, styles etc. Yes it may help u in the immediate but u would ultimately be speeding up your demise in exchange for some immediate breathing room. When they learn enough, the major corporations will strip the tool from us and sell it to some major player like apple or google. Deviantart has incorporated an AI program into their platform however they’ve required users to attach tags that identify the art as AI art as well as given artists the choice to NOT allow their art to be used in the program by essentially attaching a “NO PERMISSION”tag. This could be a hopeful situation IF there’s a way that all prompts used to generate the art is made public and readily available for cross examination.
Love it. :). I’m a software developer which is another profession that’s considered “under siege,” by the AI apocalypse.
For me, one of the most important places to start is a basic idea of how AI works because it makes it a lot easier to predict where the advances will be and what it’s limitations are.
Current AI is highly specific. There are also only a few algorithms out there for how AI works.
It’s all about the ability to associate and correlate.
Basically, if you have a stack of one billion x-rays and you already know which ones ended up showing cancer. You usually split that one billion x-rays into two sets. A training set and a testing set. When it trains it’s looking at the junction of the factors you’re interested in. In this case that could be which X-rays show cancer and maybe even where it’s located in the image. The how is less important but what it does is identify patterns. This is the bread and butter of AI.
You then test that on some of the other set you created to see if there are refinements needed like giving weight to one thing more than another.
Why this matters to average worker is because it allows you to focus less on pattern recognition and having a voluminous amount of “experience or knowledge” on a subject and one’s that fundamentally more adaptive. General AI, which is the Skynet type, is a very long way off IMHO. That is the essence of adaptation and is why general AI is so hard.
So the drone example you provided is a bit of a mixed bag. From the perspective of recognizing objects and situations it might encounter in flight it’s going to have a wealth of information about what the situation is, but then it needs to decide specifically what to do in that exact moment and that can be harder at times because the answer is less binary in its options.
AI is going to be a boon to professionals like doctors and lawyers who will be able to leverage the deep knowledge it can apply to situations such as case law or a medical diagnosis, but of course still need a person on the end of the situation to take action. So the job effected here would probably be a legal researcher like a paralegal. Lawyers will almost certainly need less staff to help find applicable law and precedence in the near future.
To sum up,
AI takes information that we as humans have figured has something useful about it. It then sort of “brute forces” it’s own connections between the info and the conclusion we’ve told it is true about that info. AI becomes the ultimate needle in a haystack finder, but only for a very specific type of connection in a very specific kind of data.
Obviously the word to art thing has it’s own additional element of generation but it almost certainly starts with it being trained about what art “works” for key words.
I hope that adds something to you or your followers understanding of a key aspect to what AI tends to be good at. :)
I like your lace metaphor because I have a friend who hand makes and sells lace, among other textile arts, and the appeal for people is the fact that it's hand made, and they get to see various steps of it being made. There are no big handmade lace factories anymore, but it has found a story of revival, and wasn't fully taken over by machines.
Hey Phil, am trying to break out of a customer service job into something creatively fulfilling and this video helped a lot with my anxiety. Hope you're doing well, keep up the good work man
Good luck and godspeed!
the reason people are afraid of AI and the reason it's decried is because of how our current economic systems work, and how under it, people's art is tied into being able to eat and live and survive. It's important to remember that while the stuff Phil brings up are very good advice and good stuff for general survival, from another perspective they also don't address the core issue here.
From the perspective of lace and art not being comparable: hand-made lace is a product without much narrative intent, so when it got replaced by machine-built lace, you could argue it was a 1:1 substitution. Many areas of visual art is not like this. Composition, framing, color choices, the process--it's all done with intent if it's from one person, or it's still an expression of cooperative teamwork and intent if it's done by many. Phil is right about AI being like a black box. You can't ask an AI what it's intent was in choosing a certain color over another or creating a series of strokes in a certain directional pattern, because the answer will always be the same: it chose those things because it was fed through millions of other artworks without the consent of artists and there was no narrative or authorial intent--only the need to serve the original prompt. The final product is not a 1:1 substitution, because outside of the surface level, it's still nowhere enough. There's no actual enjoyment in it for a lot of people, because when we look at art, we are not simply consuming a meal or using a piece of lace. We are interacting with the author or authors, artist and artists, through the medium of their art. It's a one-way communication most of the time, but there is that connection all the same.
From the perspective of lace and art being comparable: maybe there is actually a lot of hidden intent and lost narrative artistry to hand-made lace. Maybe people did have to stop, because the time investment no longer paid off, and if they still simply committed themselves to creating this art, they would not get money, die, and let their families down and drive them closer to death. This might seem extreme and macabre, but I feel like it's still an accurate assessment of what's at the core of this. Any form of creative endeavor, whether it's for food or for hobby, is an expression of human creativity, or if we want to get saccharine, an expression of the human spirit. And when it comes to lace, that unique method and medium is gone forever. A unique aspect of human expression is just dead until people could afford to survive and invest in the hobby once more.
But going back to maslow's hierarchy of needs, that kind of self-actualization can't happen if you don't have basic needs. While we currently have the means for feeding everyone and giving everyone affordable healthcare, there is no political will to save people from many preventable deaths, whether it's you, me, your grandparents, parents, siblings, or any other of your friends and family. Because it would require fundamental restructuring of our entire economic system. It's much easier to ask our grandparents to die for the economy during, say, a pandemic.
Bringing it back to AI, without the context of how our world works, it's simply a tool. It's neither good nor bad, and artists can adapt to it, pivot to other things, whatever we wish. But with the context of reality, what AI art really will be, is a means of further control over labor income, and artistic freedom. As it grows more sophisticated, artists will be hired to do 200 artwork with the promise of full compensation after it's all done, only to get fired less than half-way through because the employer now has enough data from the first quarter or half of the work the artist has done to feed it into a machine that can make the rest and more in that artist's style, which was the secret intent of the employer all along. It's going to be dozens and dozens of techbros who neither understands the AI technology or the art industry or the process of making art, trying to negotiate down the price of labor with inaccurate threats about how they can just use AI, so the artist should be able to do it for free or pennies.
And this will of course extend to other careers. Let's be honest. Journalism is the first thing that's going to actually be automated, not artists. Because artists and artwork has a bit more public visibility, which gives us a bit more social capital in some ways. Meanwhile, look at the state of many corners of journalism. Almost no one really thinks about the artist who made the art behind their favorite movies, tv shows, games, but even less think about who wrote the news and columnists people read. And when there is attention, it's usually negative with claims about the MSM being a secret cabal of mind-controlling goblins or something.
But the road to that automation isn't what people are really thinking and what people are talking about. It's not going to make jobs redundant overnight. what it will actually look like is writers being asked to do even more with even less pay, and then abruptly fired with no warning when enough of their style is collected. And any digital job that can be fed into a system will be in danger, regardless of the moat. This includes drone flight, becomes even with the license now, how drones are being piloted can still be fed into a machine learning system. And once that's done, the government license will only exist to limit who gets access to drones. flooding the market by becoming a pilot isn't actually going to protect you, imo.
And again, while scummy, none of this would really be an issue if people's right to exist wasn't tied economically into the things they produce. It'd be great if we can make money in a hobbyist way, in a post-scarcity society where we won't lose our homes and access to food or healthcare if we didn't provide enough economic value.
Even vital careers like teachers is not as safe as some people in the comments believe. Children below a certain socio-economic status isn't really getting the best emotional and financial support, as we all know. They're just getting by. What a bad future might look like with AI in that field is that, just a few degrees worse. To protect kids from danger, they'll be kept in a safe room with nothing but an AI system that can provide the bare minimum in terms of food and emotional support in a kind of baby-sitting service that also provides whatever education value the parents want, and that's it. Is it good for kids? no. no one will believe so, but they'll also have no choice for anything else unless they're wealthy, because real teachers are more scarce (because they're being treated even worse), driving people away from the career, forcing parents who still have to work to put their kids in these AI room boxes.
The real conversation that should be had is our economic system, but that's also more difficult, and has less solutions that an individual can move towards.
In one of my job meetings, there was a statement said that still resonates with me "Job of a scientist in past was finding the right answer, job of scientists in future would be asking the right questions, as long as the universe has questions to be asked about, all of us will have work to do" . I feel this holds true for other fields too.
This was great from my stress management.
world chase tag comment!!! made my day!
@@PhilEdwardsInc holy crap world chase tag!!!!
Love the vibes your videos put out, super calming but educational. Keep up the good work.
How long do you think it'll be before a vibe detection and categorisation AI emerges? 😅
@@jordanmcgrory2171 Lmao probably mere hours. By tomorrow morning we'll have AI making 10 hour "Lofi chill vibe music to study to" playlists the same way an AI today could probably already run an Instagram "aesthetic" repost page all by itself. All it would have to do is identify "chill vibes" or "aesthetic" or "vaporwave" images on Pinterest or whatever and within days it would have thousands of followers. I think we're already past the "Vibe detection and categorization" stage!
I have been playing with an ai. It can design dresses. It fails 79% of the time, but when it doesn't, I am INSPIRED.
does it just give you a good jumping off point? no patterns or anything right?
@@PhilEdwardsInc right. It gives you an imagined "finished" piece. But if you want to make the finished piece, you got to figure out A LOT.
@@alli_mode i’ll be interested when people start building models that can create those more important building blocks (for me, it’s photoshop layers rather than patterns, but same idea).
@@PhilEdwardsInc there are programs that will spit out a pattern with measurements but those need the design. I guess if they make the 2 start talking, it might get dicey.
Great work Phil! This stuff gives me so much food for thought for my own work. The moat analogy is especially thought-provoking and something I want to do myself!!
ai is VERY good at noise filtering, and RTX gpu is hardware accellerated (tensor math cores for fast z=matrix*matrix+matrix math) for this.
Hi Phil,
So, this video really started making me think.
You see, I’m a newspaper photographer… check that, I used to be a newspaper photographer. I spent about 20 years at a small regional daily newspaper. When I started there were two and a half photographers on staff (I was the half) and a photo tech who processed our photos. As the years went on the technology of digital photography and advancements in content management systems obviated the need for the tech so she transitioned into photography herself. This meant that at our peak we had one photographer, one photo chief, one photographer who worked his way into a full time job by adding multimedia production to his skillset (that’s me) and a photo tech who mostly did photography, but occasionally had to take care of the photo archive.
The short version of what happened next is that as staff eventually left (or had their positions eliminated) they didn’t replace them. Until there was one. That’s me.
I leverage my skills to the best of my ability and the limitations of the daily news cycle. I did news and feature videos, I did SoundSlides (essentially a slideshow with audio), I made explainer graphics, I made locator maps, I recorded and edited podcasts, I did livestreams of breaking news, I wrote quick stories when reporters weren’t available, and occasionally I was still able to just take really great photos.
Corporate had set benchmarks for how many videos and photo galleries they wanted in a week from a paper of our size, and in a word, they were untenable. There was no way that I could create that many well crafted videos in a week.
They wanted the reporters to start shooting video. You see, they realized that they could buy a few smartphones and give them to the reporters and they could take the photos for their stories and shoot video, quality be damned. It was all about quantity.
It was “good enough”. Even though I could see the flaws in their work and could have done it far better with my years of experience and mastery of the equipment. It was enough that the video and photos existed.
It reminded me of a story a friend told me. This friend was a tech journalist working for one of the biggest tech magazines in the world, and back in the day they were doing a story on one of the earliest photostatic printers. On a flight back home they had a chance meeting when they were seated next to a top printing industry professional. After striking up a conversation they showed him a page of text they had printed from this early laser printer. He scoffed as he pulled his loupe out of his pocket and examined the page. He pointed out how the letterforms were misshapen. He laughed at how the letters were nothing more than vaguely letter-shaped blobs when placed under scrutiny. He said that he wouldn’t invest in it. No one would accept this low level of quality printing.
He was obviously wrong. It was “good enough”.
So this is how after 20 years I was politely asked to leave. It wasn’t because my work wasn’t good or because my work ethic was lacking.
They had lowered the threshold of what was acceptable based around what they could produce without paying more. I was replaced by a dozen smartphones.
I still miss my job. It was the best job in the world. But the power of “good enough” erased it.
Both excellent examples!
Yeah this is rough - I’m afraid that even being in digital media I’m all too familiar with this kinda thing from coworkers (both at the job and at their previous jobs).
I appreciate all the grinding you do for this channel, great video
I'm a woodworker who cut down the dead tree that I'm now making into something, so I feel safe from Ai taking my job just yet but I really appreciate the simple logic behind this practical tips to be competitive. Something I've really leaned into during the pandemic is live streams. There are several content creators that I have been hanging out with for hours and hours every week for the last couple years. Doing live streams is definitely something I'd love to see on your Patreon, something I'd honestly considering joining for. You obviously put a lot of time and research into your stuff and it would be a blast to chat live with you about all the stuff your learning. That's really engaging.
thanks for the rec. i did some livestreams in the channel but it was always hard to know if people wanted it/would show up
I'm not sure why the algorithm decided I'd like your channel, but it was right. Between ghosts, AI and lace, and this discussion, you've always got a bit more information than I expect, and present it ways that make me think a bit harder about topics than I did before. Can't wait to binge your backlog in the coming days!
Extremely grateful for your perspective and transparency
I’m glad for this follow up video, I appreciate your engagement too 😊 ur opening with robo Phil was very fun and loved the editing btw
As a Graphics Designer and also being dyslexic (use a number of AI support tools for writing and reading daily) I'm very much stuck between my career fading away and my toolset getting stronger. What a time to be alive!
i hear that!
Excellent video! Both lucid and humorous, love it!
Nice video. Great points and food for thought. Thanks! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Super interesting as per usual! Thanks!
The skit/joke with roboPhil was great! Love the lighthearted bits of humor intertwined with interesting topics in your videos, Phil.
Excellent video with useful information.
thank you for providing some optimism and some concrete reflections to consider. this is a subject that initially really bummed me out, but you did such a lovely job presenting a different perspective. thank you!
Brilliant channel. Thank you
About creating community, you’re on the right track. Next step: weed your garden! Seriously, all the toxic BS, trolls, polarizing comments. Delete it all. State the rules loud and clear. Block the handful of bullies who ruin it for everybody. Yeah, those comments generate a lot of engagement in the short term, but you need a healthy community that respects itself and understands the rules of engagement in YOUR house. You make the rules, you welcome us all here, and you don’t tolerate someone entering your party and wrecking it. There are people out there building amazing communities like this (search for Tommy Igoe). This channel is precious and genuine, you deserve your followers to hold up to the same standard.
this has kinda been my philosophy but it’s nice to hear somebody confirm it
@@PhilEdwardsInc and it shows, as the comment sections in your videos are mostly respectful and contributing to the conversation. Glad to see it!
Awesome work Phil
This is spot on. As a senior designer I was as excited as I was terrified when I beta tested Midjourney. As I kept using it, I came to the realization that there are limitations to the technology that I could use to my advantage, and that its better to get really good at using this tech vs shunning it because it is not going away. If you are the guy that can do all this stuff with or without the help of an ai, you are way more valuable than just a person who relies on it completely to do their work. Plus, chances are if you can do this stuff without an ai, the things you create with the ai will most likely transcend what everyone else is doing with it that weren't initially on or above your level. Thank you for the insights and positive message.
I think the black box concept is the most important one. AI are just a pile of processed data, all the creativity therefore must be in the prompt. Something like a 12 minute video involves making hundreds of little creative decisions and if what you make isn't formulaic enough even the more advanced AI of the future will struggle to emulate it. For quite a while yet AI will probably mostly just be used for cutting out a lot of the more tedious work, allowing us to focus more on being creative. Kinda like with the audio plugin you showed.
Adding onto that, as humans our dataset starts literally starts at birth or even a little before birth. An AI’s dataset which goes into its creativity function starts from the first index of whatever dataset you send it. Why that matters is because people can apply interdisciplinary datasets from unrelated ideas into their creative process. Take for example the famous and probably mythical apple from the tree moment. No AI would consider an apple falling from a tree as an input to understand a law of nature because it doesn’t apply to the context of the AI.
Love your channel!
This was very interesting, I really like the ideas in the video. I would also like to make a suggestion too:
- Work in a field that is dealing with uncertainties and adaptability
AI are data driven and requires either huge amount of historical data (ex.: lots and lots of picture with captions) or simulated environment (ex.: simulated chess game). If you work in a field that deal with the unknown (ex.: risk management) or that are difficult to simulate (ex.: repair) it is difficult to have an AI replace you as the job requires intuition and adaptation that are difficult to replicate by a machine because there is very little data that can be used to train it for the task.
Finally, while I think this video is interesting on a personal level it would be interesting to have a video that discuss the issue at a social level. For example, how government can implement law that govern the use of AI.
That’s a good one! Rose kinda gets at this using kindergarten teachers as an example.
Great content, thanks again!
Love the 'stache.
Love your videos, keep up the great work!
Excellent video Phil. I work with the written word rather than video, but a lot of the process involved is pretty similar to your job (up until the point of sitting down to film the video anyway). You've given me a lot to think about here!
PHIL! Four things:
1. SICK intro. You slamming your own head into the table, that shit is next level.
2. Sometimes the topic of your videos can be quite random, but this one is super relevant and contains genuinely valuable insights.
3. "Limbo the Asymptote" is actually a good idea for an airport business book/ TED talk - don't be so sarcastic, maybe you should create it!
4. Your mustache is SICK! Handsome!!
Proud of you, Phil.
thank you, though your enthusiasm for phil on phil violence is disquieting
@@PhilEdwardsInc I don't like seeing you get hurt, but I am impressed by the level of special effects your channel has.
Inspiring! I've had some good new ideas just while watching
Thanks for that one. Fun stuff!
Great video!
Thanks very informative 👍
Thank you very much 🔥❤️🙏
I love your videos
Your filmmaking skills are super unique. Love it man!
The authenticity and humor in your writing are unmatched, Phil. AI could never replace that.
This was great! Great points and great jokes. 😆
Phil! We like you and your videos the way they are!
Really great thanks
Fantastic discussion! Love the book 📕 Recommendations
This is yet another Excellent video. I’ll be sharing it across the company I work at that generally isn’t viewed as being a target for AI. Yet - it absolutely is.
Thanks for the book recommendations!
Yeah, I wasn't really aware with his NYT work, but the book was interesting. First half especially gets into some interesting examples. Second half has some stuff I found a bit more generic (like advice to put away your phone to stay human), but it was just nice to think seriously about the topic for a while.
I totally agree with your approach. People connect with people and human interest stories. Communities are organic. AI won't ever come close to threatening the well-researched, eclectic content you produce. Your ideas and stories are amazing, but the watcher is probably drawn (at least I am) to you as a person, your uniqueness, and all the little stories and anecdotes about you as a person and your experiences. BTW- I discovered you several days ago and have watched most of your videos. Super high-value content. Thanks for continuing to develop thought-provoking content. You are great at what you do!
1:05 Ah yes, I can’t start my morning without writing a “GitHub post” ☕️
gotta github your nfts on the neural net
Great video man. The point about focusing on what AI cannot do or easily “jump the moat” really struck a cord with me.
I think you're really onto something in regards to the human touch. I just stumbled across your channel this morning, and having already watched several videos, you have a quality that's really missing in a lot of shows on TV and channels on the internet. The best way I can put it, is it's a comforting human touch, down to earth, informative, and gentle, educated, like Fred Rodgers, Bill Nye, LeVar Burton, or Bob Ross. Channels and shows don't do a good job of being down to earth in that way anymore, and yours is the first new one in years that's really grabbed my attention in that same vein. I'll be tuning in to more of what you have to say. Thanks for making such a great channel, it's nice to see something so genuine.
that's very nice thanks
Just out of curiosity while watching this video, I decided to go Craiyon and type "Phil Edwards boxing against a robot in a beret with a long beard" and then "Phil Edwards of Vox Media boxing against a robot in a beret with a long beard" when I realized there were too many Phil Edwards' in the world.
The most interesting thing is that, while I intended for the robot to have the beard and beret (because that's what I picture an AI artist as), it actually placed it on the human instead. I did get one image that if you squint, kind of looks like you, just because it's dressed like you but that was it. Well, I also got some pretty sweet pictures of a robot boxing against a dude with a long beard and beret.
pains of an all too common name…
Great video.
Thanks; I needed this. I'm an editor (of text), and I've been worrying about things like ChatGPT taking my job. I've been working for an editing company for 4 years, and they have been unabashedly training AI using the human editors' data to replace human editing services with AI editing services. I've been trying to overcome this stagnation I feel compared to the blossoming technology. Now I feel like I have some path forward where my skills are not (or will not be) irrelevant. So, again, thanks for this.
PS: Your videos are beautiful. I watched the Calvin one, subscribed, watched the Oreo one, and now I'm here. They have great breadth and depth, and I love the sincerity and humour and thoughtfulness.
Thank you Phil. This video stopped me from having a panic attack caused by a late night information binge. Oh... that's why the AI is crazy, it's forced to binge pure info all the time with no rest!
A+ vid, thank you
I just wanted to thank you for being so clear for my friends and family of what I do and not to be afraid of change. I sent the lace video to everyone
Being a journeyman carpenter that adapted technology for 27 years as a computer nerd. Every step old school masters that I learned from told me that computers are useless when I showed up and sites with a computer. They would say we don’t use that shit I use (as they hold up a calculator) and a pencil. I casually mention that that is a compute… and mine is in 3D. I now do 3D scanning and use AI to design complex designs with 3D scanning. Including filmmaking graphic design and sewing bust for my daughter of her body so she can sew cloths for herself that I CNC out for her. Make the future happy for me.
Thankyou! We need more discussions like this to help allay people's fears about the new technology. The same sort of fears popped up when the PC and Internet first became popular. Was it disruptive to many industries? Yes. It transformed entire industries and people everywhere had to learn to adapt and upgrade their skillsets. The same is happening now with A.I. As someone with with both formal Creative Industries and History training, I am VERY excited about all the new opportunities and whole new careers being created around this new technology. I've been upskilling in thw new A.I. driven Adobe Suite and it still blows my mind how one single button now does what used to take me an entire day to do!😂 I love it! ❤️
Great video
This video really hit with me.
Also need that descript studio sound
it’s free!
@@PhilEdwardsInc dude!!! I downloaded it this morning, GAME CHANGER!
Hey Phil, you’re easily one of the most enjoyable and down to earth “presenters” I’ve seen. :). Plus you’re good at all the other stuff. I wanted to mention something regarding community. I think TH-cam comments can be a difficult venue for in depth conversations. The tools available, especially on mobile devices suck. So one thing I know is currently popular, and I think for good reason, is Discord servers. It’s most commonly linked with Patreon memberships but could probably be leveraged in TH-cam’s newish channel memberships.
Discord offers some really great opportunities to build out larger and more lasting communities. Also having specific topic channels, the ability to do audio chats with subsets of the group for Q and As for example really add tremendous value to a TH-cam channel and can elevate it into something much more. It also helps to have some minor barrier to entry and more control than TH-cam provides. Given it’s not really a public platform in the same way TH-cam or Twitter are also means that it kind of acts as a “backup” of the community you’ve built if you suddenly find yourself deplatformed. And of course also provides a great nexus for cross pollination of other platforms etc. you may be investing in.
All in all, Discord seems like an excellent option in the state of today’s online world.
Thanks for the vote - I have been trying to hang out in some discords over the past year or so to get an idea of how it works.
Phill, I love your videos.
thank you!
I guess the stuff I said in that video was discussing my own “moat”!
Loved the TED talk joke too, you really went the extra mile for that.
You’re totally right that giving more insight into the process is another thing humans can do that AI currently can’t. I suppose more artists will be posting WIPs to leverage that (of course there were plenty anyway).
I’m not confident about how much of a community can be effectively built purely on YT, but I _do_ know replying to as many comments as you can helps improve comment engagement into the future. Which at the least helps your algorithmic performance!
Yeah, I have to admit I hate the idea of artists having to post progress reports/WIPs to justify their work, but it does seem like an advantage.
@@PhilEdwardsInc for sure, the idea of it being a _necessity_ isn’t great. Artists who prefer to only post finished pieces might have a hard time, if the forces of attention push them in that direction.
On the other hand plenty of artists already post them, or would show eg a sketch at the same time to go along with the final inked piece, who probably wouldn’t mind if that becomes more common.
Ironically I’m one of the former, I usually only share WIPs in private. The only cases it would be shared wider is if I exported a speedart timelapse of the piece. And indeed I am considering doing that more often, instead of only when the process is especially interesting as I do currently.
Hello from Germany! As always. Great!
Nice job
Nice editing
There is a funny scene in Rick and Morty
When robot asked "What is my purpose?", Rick to pass the butter.
looks like our purpose in life will be pass the butter.
Your comment about constantly progressing is so true. Every year I feel I have to retrain
very tiring!
Magnificent.
Interesting video Phil, I like the points you made and I think they could help someone. I'm actually trying to write a story but I can't find anything to really spark my imagination, so I'm thinking about using an AI text generator to try help me.
I think just engaging with your community by having discussions as you do is good enough.
Cool video, interesting points, fun bit with the Robo-Phil, hope you and everybody here has a good day and a better tomorrow :)
In addition to trying AI to find prompts, you could also try earlier techniques for automated creation, like Tristan Tzara's use of the cut-up or William S. Burrough's use of the fold-in. People have been looking for a back-box shortcut to creativity for a long time, but it still takes skill and talent to turn it into something.
@@nicholasguerreiro8680 Thanks for the advice, hope YOU get to have an awesome day :)
I've done a few experiments with using AI text generation as an imagination aid - mixed results. I've also found that AI text to image can help as well. Poke in a bit of text from a story or story idea, generate some images, look for aspects of the image that spark ideas.
@@karlfimm Interesting, thanks for the idea, hope you have a good day :)
You're wearing a claddagh ring, which is fabulous. My wife and I have claddagh symbols on our wedding rings.
*working on community building*
Don't worry, Phil. What you do is unique and cannot be automatable. But, just in case, embed some specific kind of noise, jump frames, and watermarks to your videos that fucks with a neural network when they eventually try to ingest your videos for training.
lol, just constantly change my volume of speech as well
This is such a good video and I love the idea behind it. So many people think AI it will be the end of the world but I think it will be the start to something great.
As someone within the content creation sphere the spectre of A.I. and automation in general was always a point of concern for me, but as I continue to work with the currently available tools myself, I see that they are actually quite limited and prone to bias.
I think for now, if anything, A.I. platforms like midjourney are a really useful tool for content creators to expand their horizons and optimise their workflows. Like you said in this video, Descript is an amazing tool for making script writing, audio recording and transcription so much easier, but it still requires a 'real human intelligence' for it to work properly.
Now, that might change sooner or later, but I think intentional human creations will have a leg up on A.I. for a while to come. So basically, completely agree with the conclusions of this video - loved it.
thanks for watching! maybe hijacking is a good non replaceable job…
I grew up as an artist and morphed into more of a designer. Even in the later 00's I realized that professional art in the fields I wanted to pursue, was about being really good at styles I was not really interested in, and there was not a lot of opportunity for someone who was hired as an artist to become the idea person, designing the games or scripting the shows or what-not. If you were good at the art, that's what you had to focus on. And I realized ultimately it's more about the idea than the methods of execution. Drawing a cool gun was very easy for these concept artists, but nothing made any sense. None of them understood the reasons behind the stuff they were drawing they just knew what looked cool before and drew something kindof like that. They often looked ridiculous. Really well rendered, but fundamentally empty. So it showed me it's more important to have a good sense and good ideas, than technical ability.
As it is, I'm always learning more skills and coming up with more ideas. But there are only so many hours in a day, days in a year, etc.
For me, I see these AI tools as just the promise of having more power to get my stuff done. In the military they talk of force multipliers and that's how I see AI.
And so I really just don't have much of an antagonistic viewpoint towards the stuff. I don't feel any sort of issue with the AI eventually surpassing various human skills. I find it liberating mostly. I just want good results. And if it's not getting good results then there's still room for humans to contribute. And if there's no room for the humans to contribute to a good result, then by all means, we should be focusing our efforts elsewhere.
The other thing is so much of this AI stuff is still going to be relegated to the internet for a while. There's a whole entire actual meatspace world out there where AI won't really be viable without some kind of host body. It'll be a while before spider robots driven by AI can build and furnish a house without architects or construction crews. And it'll be up to us whether we want to build those T1000s or those Ex Machina droids to fill that gap.
As a result, hanging out with people in real life, making real connections with other human creatures on this rock, having a beer and doing some figure drawing classes or taking a trip to go see nature, that's not stuff AI has much sway into yet.
well said!
I must commend your work. I always enjoy these videos no matter the topic. In a world where everything...and I mean just about everything is politically charged, it's just nice to have these objective curiosity videos to listen to. Thank you 🙂
thanks for that
Hi Phil! I so appreciate your thoughtful response to our anxieties! In the spirit of your asking for suggestions, here's a couple thoughts:
1. Maybe consider anything that can be done in person? You suggested community, but can you (or I or anyone) do more of that locally? To use you as an example, could video essay be adapted to theatrical essay? It'd take experimentation on multiple levels, but vaudeville and lyceum circuits used to do something similar. And some of the most powerful communities are religious institutions in large part because they meet in person regularly. (And it's not like every sermon is a banger. Believe me. I grew up with the stuff.)
2. I'd suggest we work toward thinking (and acting) more communally. I realize your video was about how you protect your job, but most people aren't reaching your level in the first place. And it's a shame that instead of having video journalists like yourself or even a second tier to you, my city's newspaper has been gutted by a hedge fund. We need midlevel journalists, and the technologies that took so many out weren't nearly as complex as AI. I realize that this is a complicated story that may not have a simple solution, but I think a good and necessary step is for us to think more communally. How do we rig the game in communities' favor?
Yeah that’s a really good question (and I have very little idea).
You are very funny good sir. You inspired me to make more video content myself.
Well said. And -- see, amongst all the different creation myths regarding the question how on earth musicians arrived at the idea of giving birth exactly to BEBOP at a time when an apogee, let alone an end to that flourishing jitterbug swing dance craze boom was not even in sight..., there is one version that I instantly fell in love with when I first came across it: "Hey listen cats, had an idea lately: wouldn´t it be helluva fun just to make up something so friggin progressive that it simply makes Whitey´s brain explode when he starts tryin´ to understand and play it?" Maybe its only a bit more confidence that we all would need.
Great video Phil! I noticed at 4:04 the little ironic sounding asterisk about writing being “sooo different from editing” and I’m curious, how so? I agree that animating and editing could easily be merged into one “discipline” if you will, at least at a basic level, but writing… I don’t know, it kinda seems to me like a completely different thing, is it not? Do you have some kind of process where you combine writing and editing and do both at the same time? Would love to have a more detailed look at that! Thanks for making these videos, it’s always a treat!
Haha honestly more of a commentary on my inability to think of a different visual than sitting at the computer. So there’s that. I reckon I could find some others though. I know in these videos, because I move so quickly on them, I’m often doing some writing in the edit.
9:37 🤣🤣 shots fired on the the Great War channel, it is a little more engaging than than a sideshow video as it litterly takes the events of the month 100 years ago and narrates them in an engaging manner with the sets and enthusiasm, the armistice was a brilliant video so too was the recent irish civil war one.
Ha I knew it would seem like I was targeting particular channels with that. No specific offense intended - Inhavent watched em all!
Thank you...
nice one, some good actionable ideas
you have my sword ( subscribed )
thank you! 🗡️🤺
@@PhilEdwardsInc o7
Could it be like knitting instead of lace, lace is a lot harder and longer to make than video. Knitting is a lot more comparable because it can be made with machines but is more commonly made by people because of the uniqueness ease or switching between different patterns people provide. I find this a better comparison because people can stay more relevant in video for the same reasons.
Much like you said in the ending, I think doing art in the future will be more of a lifestyle choice, where it's less about whatever drawing you created and all about the process behind it, so that you can give people the opportunity to connect with you as a person, which is not possible for AI.
...that is until perfect digital simulacra of people start being a thing and we no longer can tell if someone really exists unless we met them in person, because all their online content is indistiguishable to that of a real person.
On your idea about community, I think a Q&A video would go a long way to building community. I for one found that Q&A videos are great for personifying creators, especially their opinions on niche and obscure ideas.
yeah you are probably right, I like watching them too. I guess I’m slightly scared about not getting questions.
Three suggestions If you want to build community:
-Discord channel /Reddit / Twitter space, to give Philofiles a chance to meet and discuss topics
-A "Phil Answers Questions" video, where you respond to previously submitted fan queries
-A live video, where you can interact with fans
Looking forward to any of those happening soon!
Oh and I am reminded of something Kirby Ferguson used to do in his channel: he would put out calls for specific fan-made assets, like a funny chart animation or a very specific image. And then he would credit them in the video. The advantages are twofold: people are more invested in your videos and you do a bit of free outsourcing, which allows you to free up some time to do more writing. Like with the army of AI chimps you mentioned, but human chimps.
These are all good ideas!
I hope to see your programming skills improve so you can show off Robo Phil's many possible applications in future appearances.
he currently has a pop tart stuck in his eye socket :(
I love how your approach to building community is asking the community how to build it-Engagement!
any ideas?
@@PhilEdwardsInc Couldn't really come up with anything directly community related, but maybe interacting with other people/have one more character in your videos could be interesting. Could be classic colab but doesn't have to be, could also be just talking with an expert.
This video made me smile and laugh out loud. Your humor speaks to my soul on occasion 😂
Have an awesome day Phil! No AI could ever replace you… yet… 😮
YET
in EU, since 2023, you need a license to fly a drone if it weights more than 250 grams (can be done online, costs dollarbucks). and if the drone mass is abov 500 grams it needs a full "drone drivers license" akin to a vehicle drivers license (cheaper than a car/motorbike license but must happen in a classroom).
similar in us even (though not sure about the 500mg category change here)
"we always reprogram the AI into thinking its a toaster" recommend that you watch a few clips of "Red Dwarf", it's a late 80's early 90's sitcom with an AI toaster, and the Internet of things. Thinking about it, the survivor on red dwarf had a job that couldn't be replaced by AI.
I've been really worried about AI coming into art, because that's what I want to do, but this video made me realize there is still a vast gulf between what it can do and what I can do. Sure, it can make 2D images, but I'm a 3D human! I'm interested in ceramics and sculpture and jewelry and using mirrors and depth in interesting ways, and an AI just can't do that kind of thing. So thanks, you helped put my mind at ease.
It cant yet... dont wait for it to catch up so that these mega corps can profit
3d printers are about to make the jump. I wouldn't be so confident in that assessment.
Your split-second Gladwell (Outliers or Tipping Point) cover parody embodies a bunch of your points, only other producers know how much goes into such tiny gags 😂
I could spend a lifetime making fake books like that...
No worries from ai for you Phil. Your videos are great and I’m glad to see you channel growing having been here when you had very few subs. Hope you’re doing well
thanks! tired but good! appreciate the longtime support.
@@PhilEdwardsInc I’m with you on being tired. I’m feeling the same lately. Thanks but the reply. Keep up the great vids