Those Olympic AI ads feel bad for a reason

An over-dependence on artificial intelligence is often just lethargy disguised as efficiency, and the “outsource everything to AI” crowd ignores the fact that the work is often more valuable than the output.

I have two predictions regarding the broader use of AI as a crutch:

First, folks who are willing to go out of their way to add a human touch to... See more

The illusion persists because there’s so much money in it. Back in 2016, Ben Thompson wrote that Google’s AI efforts were at odds with its business model: “If a user doesn’t have to choose from search results, said user also doesn’t have the opportunity to click an ad, thus choosing the winner of the competition Google created between its advertise... See more

That's an entirely plausible path by which people might use AI to excel in the visual arts, but there is an alternative scenario where the AI ends up being more like an iPad that you just use it to keep busy.