I was sceptical about learning AI for a long time until a chance email made me wonder.
I read widely from Team Human by Doug Rushkoff, The Internet Con by Cory Doctorow through Laws of Form by G Spencer-Brown and the Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics by John Von Neumann to get a basic understanding and form my own opinion.
But, apart from a few experiments with Midjourney to create images for client projects and signing up for accounts with ChatGPT and Google Gemini about a year ago, I pretty much avoided the practical experience of going deep down the AI rabbit hole.
But, I kept hearing all these amazing things about the benefits of AI, how it was going to change the world, enable medical problems to be diagnosed much more quickly and accurately, save money in running the government and free up people to become more creative and free…
On the contrary, I found information that AI would take over lots of creative jobs, eliminate the roles of uncountable graphic designers and copywriters, junior coders in web design and software development…
And then I started to wonder who it’s for, and saw some of the people behind AI, like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Larry Ellison providing the data centres…
And heard that running 10-50 inferences through Chat GPT uses up half a litre of water and lots of energy…
I became more and more sceptical.
Until an email from Creative Process, who I knew because they had provided the classroom based training for Reuben and Zac, two digital marketing apprentices who have passed through our office…
brought my attention to an AI Bootcamp in Brighton, every Monday (excluding Bank Holidays) from 10.00 until 17.00, £4,500 worth of training for free.
Would I or wouldn’t I?
I Ummmmed and Ahhhhed for a bit, and then, basically for fear of being left behind, and in a fit of desperation, I eventually signed up for the AI Bootcamp – with a profound sense of doubt – like being dragged along by a coach and horses…
And I committed to a day each week for 12 weeks to learn AI.
But, even though I love learning, I really didn’t want to learn AI…
I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I disrupted the whole class on the first day by pushing my way to the front and plonking myself down noisily in one of the lines of desks when I turned up 15 minutes late!
So unlike me, I’m normally the first one there.
I’m now 4 weeks in and have experienced one third of the Bootcamp, what’s the verdict so far?
Well…
I realised last night as I went to bed, that I needed to separate the technology out from who it’s for and who benefits.
As for the technology…
I learned slowly but surely to write prompts, design processes, and reverse engineer images, I realised that the technology is ok. It’s kind of a development from working on IBM mainframes at Westland Helicopters in 1981, my first job after I graduated. I was sent on a 3 month secondment to the data centre and learned to programme in APL (A programming language) a notoriously difficult and unforgiving language.
With AI, the instructions are written in natural language, so it’s also a lot like Neuro Linguistic Programming, which I started to learn in 1997 when I kind of got into marketing by accident at Ericsson. At it’s heart it’s a communication challenge, which I love. The technology of AI is much easier to use and programme than writing in computer code, and it’s satisfying to see the results and to sense check to see that they kind of make sense, with a bit of tweaking.
“Act as a digital marketing expert” for example to ask the AI to draw upon a particular part of it’s knowledge base to analyse a marketing campaign. I can definitely see how it’s useful in running marketing campaigns. And we are now using AI in our latest LinkedIn marketing campaigns to analyse results and see patterns, enabling us to deliver better results for our clients.
What about who it’s for and who benefits…
Unfortunately I’m not one bit convinced that such immense computing power and the resulting economic and potentially political advantage should be so concentrated in the hands of the tech bro oligarchy. And, as for the damage to the environment caused by all the power consumed and the water used to cool the huge data centres…
I think there should be some limitations on the race to develop AI.
And that’s leaving aside the prospect of Artificial General Intelligence in which AI develops “human-like”. That’s for another day. But, I’ll make sure I’m there before 10.00am for the future sessions. Might miss something important!
Feel free to drop into our office at 71, St James’s Street if you want to ponder how AI might work for you or drop me an email graham@digitalfreelance.co.uk.
