Flawed Intelligence
One of the most iconic pieces of advice in the wizarding world was famously spoken by Arthur Weasley to his daughter, Ginny, in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
“Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”
While Mr. Weasley was warning against dark, magical artefacts, Arthur C. Clarke famously reminds us that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” With that in mind, the wizard’s advice might as well be referring to artificial intelligence.
AI is like a magical black box, where you enter a prompt on one end, and as if by magic, it completes the task.. An article by The Mad Blogger draws back the veil for a brief peek into whats marketed as AI, probability, pattern recognition system with an enormous appetite for data.
I would liken AI to a fire.
When the world is going up in flames, it’s too late to be asking if we should be left to run around with matches; instead, we make like the proverb where,
“when you see your neighbour’s beard on fire, you fetch water for yours…“
Ghanaian Proverb
The world is on fire and AI is amongst us, it’s no longer just an intriguing plot in a Terminator movie, it’s a possibility in our lived reality..
Not long ago, AI content used to be easy to spot, but its been learning, adapting and improving. I like to think I can still tell the difference without asking whether something is “Real or Madrid,” but if I’m honest, that certainty is slipping.
I experiment with AI, asking it to bring to life my sketches and without any special prompts the results are mind-blowing. Now, imagine how a dedicated person with time and a premium subscription could do…
And that’s where the tension lies.
If anyone with access to AI can produce as well or better, what does that mean for the creative? It is easy to say “AI will replace us,” but that’s not quite accurate. The more immediate threat is not AI itself, it is another person using AI better, faster, cheaper and with less scruples than you..
We are already seeing this play out
When Winky D’s Fake Love won Outstanding Video of the Year at the National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA), its AI-generated visuals parked debate among creators and fans.
As someone who has spent an embarrassing number of hours doing video editing, which can take an hour to make footage of 10 seconds. I will admit I felt something complicated about that award. AI feels like an unfair advantage.
Perhaps the creative industry needs more honesty. Transparency about AI usage. New categories for AI-assisted work. Because pretending this is the same as “the good old-fashioned way” feels disingenuous.
Then again, history has seen this before.
Think back to the Industrial Revolution, how when automated assembly lines first emerged, the market was filled with mass-produced goods, perfect, affordable and oh so regular. With time, the hand-crafted ones became rare, unique and collectable.
Maybe that is where we are headed again.
For the creatives, the flaws, the rough edges, the inconsistencies, those might be the last undeniable proof that a human was here.
At least until AI learns to fake imperfection too.
And let’s be honest… it probably will.
WinterABC26 – Creating in the Age of AI
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