Let the computer chips fall as they may. No one can stop it.

“Cry ‘Havoc!’ , and let slip the dogs of war.” — William Shakespeare

“Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” — John Donne

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the springtime of our Information Age, it was the winter of our AI discontent.

Mary Shelley would understand our problem. We are the creator afraid of our own creation, which is really our own reflection. 

Socrates would have understood perfectly, too. He didn’t believe in books. That’s why he — famously — never wrote any of his lessons down. Not only did he view the written word with deep skepticism, he viewed books as nothing less than the death of true wisdom, human imagination, and independent thought.

His poor philosophy students, Socrates reasoned at the time, would be thus forth subjected to the ideas of other men by the tyranny of books. In time, he feared, they would no longer be able to have any original ideas.

On these same grounds, Socrates would have fainted away at the advent of the printing press, some 1,800 years after his death. He would likewise have disapproved of the internet, social media, and, most certainly, AI.

With AI, conclusions can be drawn from thousands of pages of data, without the bother of any human person actually having to read any of it. Before long, no human person will have to write any of it either.

Where will this all lead?

Who can say?

Socrates, for all his wisdom, could never have predicted the chronology of events that has led humankind from the printing press to AI. And his objection to books led to nothing at all.

There are more books today than ever, and more people who can read them. Socrates couldn’t prevent the Ancient Greeks from reading books anymore than we can stem the spread of AI.

The genie is out of the bottle, now. The dogs of war have been let to slip. Once done, these things cannot be undone. They can only be borne.

Like every other human technology, scientific breakthrough, and invention, there will consequences, good and bad. There are no solutions, after all, only trade-offs.

There will undoubtably be negative consequences to the advent of AI and its creeping insertion into every aspect of our lives. But there may be some positives as well.

AI For Body-Positivity

Could it be?

Ask any woman, she’ll tell you: Shopping for women’s clothes is difficult. Men’s sizing tends to be a straightforward rendering of waists and inseams in inches or centimeters.

Women’s sizing is a patchwork nightmare. Buying clothes online, for most women, gives them a range of up to 6 dress sizes, depending on the style, designer, fabric, and a dozen other factors. European sizing is different that U.S. sizing. Sizing is completely different in Asian countries. 

Not only does this present a problem for women shopping for clothes, it has created a massive issue for retailers who get caught in a tsunami of returns. Clothes that don’t fit are the bane of existance.

No more?

Part of the problem with shopping for clothes online has always been the models presented. In the past, women have been presented with one visual — the size 0 model whose purpose is to show what the garment looks like on a hanger. More recently, women have also been presented with another image of someone wearing the garment under consideration: The plus-size model, who averages a size 20.

For the women in between size 0 and 20, which is the vast majority, nothing.

Until now.

Now, with the help of AI, clothing retailers through outlets like Amazon are able to show shoppers what the garment looks like on women of every size.

And shape.

It’s incredible.

It’s only a matter of time before other retailers catch on to the trend. Which is sure to be popular. While it might not solve all the problems with women’s sizing and clothes shopping, it will certainly help.

And while it is sad to consider all those beautiful people who won’t be getting paid to pose for clothing ads, there are other jobs.

For those struggling with self-esteem, body dismorphia, and eating disorders, especially impressionable young women, seeing women of every size and shape “modeling” clothing is a powerful symbol. 

In a world of pressure to be rail thin, with scandals involving the stars of popular movies and television shows looking dangerously underfed, showing the full spectrum of female body types has never been more important.

Even if AI-generated models aren’t real people, cartoon princesses aren’t real people. Barbies aren’t real people. They can still be hugely influential.

How to Train Your AI

Maybe average creators won’t have to.

If you’ve read or listened to a new book, movie, or television program, you may have seen or heard some version of the following:

“The author and creator of this work does not consent to this work being used to teach, train, or otherwise instruct or inform any AI platform or program.”

While it probably won’t be as simple as an opt-out at the beginning of a book or movie, the carve out does raise an important legal point about copyrights in the age of AI learning.

This legal point is, even now, being considering by the courts in various cases across the nation. How will the courts find?

If the courts uphold the rights of copyright holders, artists and creators, AI companies will have to pay to license their work for the purpose of training AI. They will have to. What will happen to avanced machine learning intelligence if human creators refuse to share their work?

Since most artists, writers, creators, and their ilk are some of the most underpaid people on the planet, this is a good thing.

In fact: AI trainers might be the wave of the future, anyway. Entire industries could be build around teaching AI, feeding it correct data sets, and training it to a variety of tasks.

With AI, we might eventually be able to answer some of the most fundamental mysteries that bedevil humanity.

Why do we age? Where do we come from? How did we get here? What happens when we die? How much did the 2020 protests cost in terms of total damages? What legitimate reason could there possibly be to create 135,000 fake “test” ballots in the New York City Mayor’s race?

Like the fictional super-computer Deep Thought in Douglas Murray’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, we might not be capable of comprehending the response.

Yet.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)