I am just not one to be influenced by all the naysayers when it comes to artificial intelligence. As usual, I will think for myself, question everything, and never stop learning. To that end, I have been fiddling with AI for a couple of months now. Here is what I have found so far.

Let’s start off with the artsy side of AI. Initially I was somewhat impressed with the images that AI produced from my verbal descriptions. Within 30 seconds it produced an image. It wasn’t quite right, so I told it to change this and that. A new revised image quickly popped up. I won’t tell you which of AI’s outputs I have used on my posts, but there have been a couple of them.

After a few attempts I began to notice that all of the images that AI produced for were very much the same. But observations didn’t stop there. I saw the same type of images in various places across the internet. The more I found, the easier it was to readily spot them. They became like vanilla ice cream, they just had no unique flavor. Being an IT guy who wrote lots of code in my corporate life, I shouldn’t have been surprised at how AI performs. That is one thing about software, it does the same thing over and over again with no difference. That is what makes robots so good at replacing humans on things like assembly lines. The robots are not thinking about what they are going to do the coming weekend and therefore they don’t make mistakes. They simply do what they are told/programmed to do.

As far as answering basic questions for me, it seems to do a good job. When I ask “When was Einstein born?”, it quickly provides that info along with other similar details. The more I used AI to answer questions and the more it got to know me. That was kinda scary. When I ask it for something now, it frequently brings up my past questions and it asks me if this request is associated with those previous questions. I tend to give it “Joe Friday – Just the facts” answers.

So, what is my final grade that I would give AI with its interactions with me. It I limit my grade with just the questions I have given it, I would give it a “B”. In producing images, I would give it a “C+” .