A.I. , Social Media, and Intention

Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, and Intention

There’s been a thought brewing in my head since the inception of this new technology called Artificial Intelligence. That thought started in the mid 2000’s actually. I remember watching I, Robot (2004) with Will Smith as robots threaten to take over the world. I said to myself “Who would want to live in that world?”

It was 2005 and I was eating ramen noodles from the air mattress of a rented space in Chicago before starting my first photo internship at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. I had three months of being young and exploring the city I romanticized while working a summer job at Navy Pier. My evenings consisted of the cheapest food I could think of while getting free movies from the library. Shocker, the Navy Pier job didn’t pay much.

That was over 20 years ago and as the concept of A.I. has evolved, my stance has just grown stronger. A.I. was an abstraction that was very different from where we are now. It was a pipe dream. Something post-apocalyptic movies used as the plot line. Now we are in a sea of fake social media accounts that are spinning out products, music, lifestyles, and mind sucking content that is still only the beginning of what’s possible. It all reeks of something not real. People were already creating manufactured content before, but it’s off the rails now. And this is still the beginning.

We are just now seeing what is to come with this stuff in the hands of the wrong people. And from what I do and in my reality I’m choosing not to go further into the rabbit hole. As I get older I’m wanting more connections to people and places. Not manufactured ones. I want to find and foster relationships that make a community.

In the beginning I did dabble with it, helping me rewrite text. Some of these very blog posts in fact were reshaped with it. I found it helpful at first, but that help quickly turned into more sloth like tendencies. I also explored what adding motion to still images would do. It’s probably gotten a lot better, but it wasn’t doing much for me except making me wish I’d gotten the motion in the beginning. The way I wanted. 

Now, I’m going to be the creator of the content I produce. And with A.I. only being in our lives for a second, myself and others are already demanding more authenticity. More ways to check content. More real world experiences.

 “Nothing in this world worth having comes easy.” - Bob Kelso “Scrubs”

My work over the past 20 years has been mostly documentary. In the beginning it was photojournalism with strong ethical boundaries that I believed in and adhered to. Now my work is more brand narrative and portraiture work. It’s still story telling, but with less of the strict ethics that journalism has. And let me be clear, I do still contribute to the major newspapers around the country and still follow those strict ethical guidelines while working in that capacity, my commercial work doesn’t follow those same guidelines. 

I’ve worked hard to build a brand and a body of work I believe in and I stand by. I’m not changing it to use a “tool” that makes me listless or idle. I want to continue to push myself and pursue great content for me and my clients.

I’ve been on a kick about living a life with intention. Maybe it’s me working through my midlife crises. Maybe it’s having a child and wanting something specific for him. Maybe it’s because when I look back at a large chunk of the last decade and I see the time wasted on social media and the feelings of inadequacy it makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. 

That time was wasted not creating, not dreaming, not being present. Intention is hard. It’s a war of attrition. It’s a little victory every day that is compounded into a larger win. It’s also less regrets at the end.

I haven’t been on social media for about a month now. That feels like an eternity in this day in age. I have to admit that it’s been really nice. During this unplugged phase I heard about Meta using Instagram and Facebook to train its A.I. Models. Because of that people I know are opting out of it. Some colleagues are going as far as to delete images or take down their accounts entirely. I’m all in favor of that. I’m still weighing these options and seeing what’s the best thing for me, my family, my mental health, and my business. 

I believe that this thought of intention is powerful. It can harness the good in all of us. I also think that for me it’s only helping me grow as a person and a photographer. Intention will lead to better relationships from my friends, my clients, and the people I meet and photograph. That’s why I’m doubling down. I don’t want to look back on another decade and think of what was wasted or what I got lazy on and wonder what could have been.