This week was one of my favourite weeks yet. I not only learnt a lot in class, but found that through this learning I actually had a lot of fun which I do not usually say. In Wednesday’s class, each table was given the assignment of finding some way that AI impacts our lives, and then researching for evidence and stories to support our claims. My table argued that despite AI releasing carbon emissions, AI can actually be very beneficial to the survival of our planet against climate change. We found reports and articles that discuss how AI can track and record weather patterns, track deforestation, and I even found a story that talks about how AI is being utilised to speak or communicate with endangered birds that can hopefully distinguish bird calls that might lead us to understand why this breed is endangered. It was a very interesting article which I really enjoyed reading and sharing my findings with the class.

Another group’s topic was how Canva has bought the AI generative image company Leonardo.Ai which I thought was a very interesting topic which discussed how this has split or divided the industry. They explained as one of their points that Canva is a straightforward platform that most people know how or can easily learn how to use quite efficiently. They said that this may benefit people such as students who may not have the experience with AI softwares or are just beginning. But they also said this might be challenged due to certain people wanting authentic creativity which they may not feel like they can do with an AI model in Canva, which means people may stop using Canva. I found these points interesting as I sided with both. I am not a terribly tech savvy person so I can understand how it may be simpler on Canva, but I also understand that it might limit the creativity people feel they can provide.

In Bender’s ‘Generative AI, the media industries, and the disappearance of human creative labour’, he speak about how the development of AI into the creative industries specifically film has caused terrible outrage from the artists who believe that AI is “soulless” and can not replace the raw human emotions that actors can. They say that “it is a snub to audiences to use an image generator to create an animated film in which a character is portrayed with the human emotion of grieving”. Instead, these creative industries think that AI should remain only for the “simple, mundane and repetitive tasks, presuming that this will save creative human individuals from being replaced themselves.” This argument is difficult to side with as I wholeheartedly do agree that acting is an art form very specific to human emotions and I struggle to imagine an AI film that can accurately portray these emotions. But I do also know that AI is developing and ‘learning’ about human behaviour and emotion and feeling at an alarming rate, so who knows what accuracy it will have in resembling human emotion.