Maybe it’s just me… but I think about this often. I wonder if others do as well.

With the rise of the internet, we’ve entered some form of a digital renaissance. Everyone just seems so talented. I find that most people can either sing, draw, act, be comedic or have some other talent that makes them so interesting and inspiring, even when they think they don’t have anything special to contribute.

However, when everyone is talented, those who are average or only slightly talented get lost in the shadows of the more accomplished. Sprinkle in some conventional attractiveness and the slightly less attractive are almost invisible.

Consider the person creating amazingly beautiful art on cardboard with a couple of spray cans don’t even get a second look if they don’t meet a certain threshold of what society deems “instagram-worthy”.

Before the interent, and social media (and going viral), only the talented people in the right place, at the right time, and with the right connections made it. Beautiful or not.

I now hop on to youtube and every other channel has someone who society would consider “an average looking person” with amazing musical, or artistic skills and they may never be recognized for their hard work and accomplishments. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I read an article once that some researchers found that billions (with a B) of videos on youtube have less than 3 views. Sure many videos may not meet “quality standards” from a technical view but even editing and putting a video together requires some form of technical ability and talent. Yet, that hard work goes unnoticed for the most part.

Does it matter? Maybe not. But when ever everyone is talented, is anyone talented? It seems now only the outliers make it.

Maybe soon with AI, people will be able to supercharge and supplement some of their talents.

I fear it will be this generation’s repeat of the skill I lost when I first got a smart-phone…

At one point in time, I could memorize 40 phone numbers (maybe more) for my best friends, girlfriends, immediate and distant family, along with my favorite pizza joint. Now I’m lucky if I can remember my wife’s and daughter’s phone numbers without briefly mixing them up or being off by a number or two. I learned to rely on my smartphone’s phonebook making me the dummy.

If AI will help make me a better artist, or musician, or photographer… will it be me making the art or will it be delegated to the robots and therefore I won’t be the creator of anything? Will it count?

If the software architect designs a system, but isn’t the one implementing it… was that person still the architect? Would that system be attributed to them? Is it their accomplishment?

How does that differ when the architect is a user that is designing their system by laying out the parameters, boundraies and rules, but it’s the AI that is implementing the design? Does that count? How is it different or the same?

Only time will tell.

I just wish they’d stop training AI on copyrighted materials. Let the artists make a living on their unique work. If the AI can replicate it then we are destroying the only opportunity for them to make a living.