SB-issue59_digital

conTrOvERSy
WhAt happeNs wheN AI makes
words: Mark chapMan
sUrfBoards?
illusTraTion: valEria covaTTa
NOT AI :)
# 59 // smorgasboarder //
34
The idea of artificial intelligence (AI) and the impact of it on
our world is simply too big to tackle in a short article, nor
do we have the brainpower or depth of wisdom to begin to
understand the ramifications of this new technology on us as
a species. Not only that, it seems we don’t all agree. All you
have to do is talk to ten people and you’ll have ten starkly
different options on AI: “It’s good.” “It’s bad.” “It’s simply a
tool to help efficiency.” “It’s the antichrist that will destroy us
all.” And the truth is in the weeds there somewhere.
So, getting to the matter at hand, who remembers the
continued heated arguments around machine-shaped
surfboards (which remains polarising today)? Well, AI is
the brand new horizon for the argument – soon you may
no longer even need a person to operate the system to
machine-shape the board. With ever-improving algorithms,
surely the guesswork gets removed, human error is irrelevant,
and the world’s most perfect surfboards should be popping
out quicker and more consistently than nuggets from a
sphincterless kangaroo*.
Allowing an AI to do your thinking is a bit like leaving a
stranger to raise your kids. You nurture your family with
good intentions that the learned behaviour they develop from
you, and the values you instil, along with your perspective
on the world, will help them as they grow into adulthood to
act responsibly and make informed decisions. This “good
household” is your brain, thinking for yourself. Conversely,
with information drawn from who knows what source, AI
may be learning bad behaviours and following in the wrong
footsteps. Long story short, what goes in is often a result of
what comes out.
While AI may have proposed advantages in some areas of
process, business, or production efficiency, surely it’s equally
dangerous in the areas of our lives that we’d prefer it not
to infiltrate. The problem is, how do you limit the intrusion?
Unfortunately, it seems you can’t. You also can’t directly
control the outputs, and you certainly can’t control the
information AI is fed to form them. Will those with the most
gold be able to pull more levers we can’t see and control
even more of what we experience? It seems so.
But back to the boards… Being a newer technology, many
of the emotional arguments around machine shaping can
be revisited here, such as “Does the final product have any
soul?” to which we know the answer is a flat no. You, as a
surfer, will simply never feel the same connection to an AI
board as to one that you have had made for you through
conversations and human interaction with a surfboard shaper,
and connection matters. However, more importantly, there’s a
genuine, rational argument for concern here: innovation.
If, based on what we know, AI is only rehashing what has
been done in the past and learning from what is there already,
then nothing new can happen. Worse yet, at some stage AI
will start rehashing its own creations, inevitably leading to
an ever more homogeneous, uninspired product. Innovation
comes from mistakes, accidental discoveries and challenging
conventional thinking – all the things AI is not in its current
form.
From a surfboard manufacturing industry perspective, AI
may be the next step in the removal of more hands and
more craftspeople from the production chain. ‘Savings’
for all will be touted as the reason to embrace AI with both
arms, yet name one time in history where this has been true.
Surfboards will cost the same, and any production savings
will simply line the pockets of an ever-shrinking group of
people controlling the purse strings. Will skills and jobs be
lost? Of course they will be. But hey, as U.S. President Joe
Biden told coal miners losing their livelihood back in 2019:
“Learn to code.”
It'll be fun to type in “make me a 19-finned surfboard with
five wings, a possum-tail and 37.3 channels” and see how
it comes out, but the reality is that this will be used to refine
existing shapes, chasing ‘maximised performance’ and the
elusive ‘perfect board.’ Yes, we yawn even thinking about
it. Perfection in itself is simply boring and contrary to human
nature.
We are fallible, flawed, complicated creatures, and all the
richer for it.
Persian carpet makers have intentionally woven in mistakes
for centuries to avoid perfection. The Japanese philosophy
of Wabi Sabi not only embraces the beauty of imperfection
but celebrates it by amplifying errors and drawing attention
to mistakes. Why has this been practiced for centuries?
Because our brains need imperfection and difference to
remain interested, just as our souls need connection with
something human to make an object worthwhile. When
there’s soul in it, it matters to you – it’s no longer disposable.
We may be bordering on neo-luddites here, and we note the
intense disagreement from those that love and embrace AI.
Good for you. We recognise the world is changing at a rapid
pace, and we’re certainly not sticking our heads in the sand
about it. However, recognising a change and being complicit
in the undoubtedly massive negative impact on many talented
individuals and our greater society are two very different
things.
We all have our own minds to use and our own decisions to
make, and it’s not a black-and-white position. However, in
a world with less and less connection daily, we – as rational,
thinking, imperfect, flawed human beings – need to choose
whether we want to go with the flow and be washed along
with the AI tide, or even in our own smallest swim against the
current and choose human over machine.
*Note: a line like “nuggets from a sphincterless
kangaroo” hopefully gives you confidence that this
article was penned by our imperfect hands as opposed
to ChatGPT (but yes, that’s another wombat hole to
explore).