I wasn't going to write this letter to you, but I really just can't avoid it or even get it out of my mind. So I'm sending you this letter as a voice note because I'm not upset and I'm not angry, but I'm just a little baffled and I want you to hear my voice. And I think this is a conversation we need to have.
It seems like everybody, and maybe I shouldn't say everybody… it seems like a lot of people are having this enormous debate online about “AI”. Now, don't get me wrong. I do think the debate and the conversation is necessary. But I think there is a healthy way to have it… because I feel like it's getting a little out of control now.
To me, it feels like everybody and their mama is on this bandwagon of being on the ethics committee. They say everything needs to be disclosed, and everything needs to be put out when AI is involved in anything. But I honestly want to have a larger conversation because I believe that AI within itself is not bad, just like anything else that humans can use.
I believe that humans have the ability to take something that was supposed to be a tool, something that was supposed to be an assistant. You and I cam take something that was supposed to be used to benefit us, protect us, or secure us… and humans can turn that ultimately to something that can be harmful. For example, I don't believe that a weapon within itself is bad. But how one uses that weapon is what makes it destructive.
For example, no one would say, oh my God, that rock is just so evil. No one says that… but when you put that rock in a human's hand. And a human decides to beat someone over the head with it until their brain splatters and their face is caved in, then which one is evil, the rock or the human? When you take food that is supposed to be used to nourish and supply your body with nutrients for its daily living and survival. But if you take that same food and you put it in the hands of a human that ultimately consumes it astronomically more than they should…now what was supposed to be a product to sustain you now causes obesity, and diseases. And let's not add a human injecting these foods with chemicals to line their pockets with more money for profits. Now you have a product that is no longer natural.
So which one is bad, the food or the human?
Which leads me to the AI conversation. I believe that within its initial concept and idea, it was supposed to be a tool. It was suppose to be something that could assist, something that could make our day-to-day activities and jobs easier, more productive, faster. And now it is not the AI within itself that is causing harm. But rather the tool in the hands of a human who has now taken people's intellectual properties and fed it into a machine that is trained on material without giving credit and without compensating the person for their creative work. AI didn’t train it self… let me say that again. AI didn’t train it self. A human did.
A human stoled other humans works…
A human didn’t compensate that human for their works…
A human…
But let's step back and ask the question, is it the tool that is bad or is it in the hands of the human that makes it bad?
You know, I have never seen so many people now have this double standard. They want you to not use AI, and they want you to disclose if you do use AI. They want to talk about how much they hate AI, and how they don’t want to support AI but then they turn around and use AI video in their podcast trailer promotions and edits. Double standard.
They have an issue when you use AI and your AI production succeeds, and now they want to shout about disclosure, disclosure.
But I want to challenge your thinking. I don't believe that what is taking place is truly a new form of deception.
And if I'm honest, people demanding disclosure from humans in one particular area of their life, to me, is not ethical. Because if we're going to make this about ethics, then we must use consistency. For years, people have published books with their names on it, traveled and did book tours, and never wrote one single part of that book… but yet they used ghostwriters who signed “NDAs” and was never given credit or even acknowledged for their work.
And the memoir went number one on the Yew York Times best sellers list. And the famous name on the front of the cover promoted it, as if they wrote it. No one yelled DISCLOSE. Or how about the artist who is so big and so famous that they have the ability to demand writer's credit from the real songwriter… for the song to be placed on their album, and that artist never contributed one lyric to the actual song. But yet they got credit for writing something that they never wrote. Where was the demand for DISCLOSURE?
Let's go further. What about the rapper who uses ghostwriters to write their lyrics, and they perform the raps as if they are the lyricists and the writer, and no one ever calls that unethical? No one is screaming, fake. No one is screaming, disclose, disclose, disclose.
What I'm honestly saying is to challenge you not to necessarily embrace AI, but to challenge that notion and the idea that everything needs to be disclosed. Because if everything needs to be disclosed, then let's go back and start disclosing ghostwriters who have written books. Let’s disclose the authors who really aren;’t authors technically. Let's give credit where credit is due.
Let's disclose when the caption is written by ChatGPT and not just a song that was sung by AI. Let's disclose the people who are standing in front of others giving a speech that was not written from their own minds, but was written by a handful of people that are on their speech writing team. Let's disclose all the writers that are sitting in writer's room and writing full productions and never given the ability to have their name placed on it because they signed an NDA and was given money in exchange for credit.
Let's disclose the affair that people are having in their personal lives as they lead people publicly. Let's disclose the areas that people are hiding behind and everyone else knows about that's close to them, but no one has talked about. If we're going to make this an ethical conversation, it can't just start with AI because assistance has always been present.
People have used writers and editors and performers for a very long time. There are people who sung on songs that was never credited from the studio session.
So I'm saying all this to say, the conversation doesn't start with AI. It starts with humans… because it is the human who decided that the ghost writer of the book was not unethical as long as they got paid. It was humans who decided that who was in the studio session singing backgrounds or ad libs or adding harmonies didn't need to be placed in the credits as long as they got compensated.
It was humans who decided what went left. And so this is the start of a conversation that I think needs to be explored because AI is not new. We've been using it forever.
Auto-correct is AI. Has been for decades. Siri is AI, has been for a very long time.
There are many things that have been controlled by computer systems, algorithms, but now that it has been made available to everyone, now this idea of ethics and disclosure has come to the forefront. And at the end of the day, I do not believe that someone should be villainized for their ability to utilize an assistant that has been made available. And I believe that is within that person's right to decide whether or not they want to disclose it. The same way you make people sign NDAs in your life.
And if you do not have to disclose the ghostwriter, then why should you have to disclose your assistant?
We all have hidden hands. Nobody made it alone. If we really want to have an ethics conversation, it cannot start with a machine. Because the real disclosure we actually OWE is the one we will never make publicly.
I’ll write you next Sunday,,
Gold,