Japchap's 10C Site

Been taking an advanced Illustrator course on Udemy, and noted that the first section of the course deals with Adobe's AI features in the software. There are a lot of powerful AI image creation tools built into the software now, which are easily accessible just by typing a few words into a prompt box and perhaps setting some optional parameters.

The thing I wonder is: how should designers who use these tools answer when someone asks, "did you design this" or "is this your idea"? It would seem hard to take full ownership of something that you really didn't create in the first place, something that you just left to the providence of artificial intelligence and server-side generative algorithms. I'm not discounting the value of these tools and their potential in helping to expand people's expressive possibilities, but I personally wouldn't feel comfortable taking ownership of something that I really didn't make myself, aside from supplying a few words.

Maybe it's kind of like when you outsource something to someone else. It may be your project and you were the one who gave the directions that influenced the outcome, but you didn't really do the work, so how can you say, "I did this" or "I came up with this" or "this was my idea" or even "Yeah, isn't this neat, I came up with this myself?" At some point in time you have to give credit to the people—or to the AI technology—that made the expression possible.

Anyway, it's something I would wrestle with, and it's one reason why I wouldn't want to rely on AI tools to design visual media for me whenever possible. I may suck at drawing things myself, but I just can't feel good about claiming ownership over AI-derived results.

@phoneboy It certainly is hard to imagine Rush without Peart. Not only was he the drumming powerhouse of the group, he gave the group a voice with his lyrics. It will be interesting to see how they approach this, as a tribute to him or more of a new thing.

www.phoneboy.info.

@matigo That's probably true. These things were never done before the advent of online applications—it was the onus of the company to input and manage their own information. Why they have to push the burden onto the prospective employee is beyond me—just corporate laziness, I think. Even if you go to the trouble of typing all that information in, there are still no guarantees.

matigo.ca.

@matigo Yeah, I don't like that either, the requirements for both filling out an online application and providing Word/PDF data. It's an inconvenience for the job seeker, and I can't imagine it really helps the companies much either to have both in hand. I've seen this a lot when applying for translation agencies for new work. They ask for a CV, and then they make you fill out all this information online, much of which is the very same thing. It's an indication that the company simply hasn't given much thought to the process and the labor it requires. Occasionally I have thought that they are being sadistic and just want to see if you are really serious about the job by wasting a lot of your time in applying for it 😣

matigo.ca.

@matigo Are you mostly applying for jobs with Japanese companies these days? Do you think it would be helpful to have a Japanese summary of your résumé, or a full-fledged Japanese rirekisho as it were?

matigo.ca.

@matigo Ah, there it is, the online résumé.

One thing I didn't understand is what you wrote about "being more aggressive and taking people's jobs". It wasn't clear what kind of scenario you were referring to. Are you in a position where you can actually "take" someone's job? If you had the opportunity to do a job and you think you could do a better job than someone else who may by vying for that job, wouldn't you take it? Maybe you were referring to something else entirely, but I didn't quite get your meaning there.

matigo.ca.

@matigo Your plight is certainly relatable.

One thing I'm unclear about is what kind of work you really want to do. For instance, if you were to create a one-page website, a simple landing page that clearly state, "Hi, I'm Jason, and here's what I do (or want to do)", what would it say?

matigo.ca.

@matigo It makes sense that programming languages are nothing much like spoken languages. After all, we don't speak in subroutines, variables, constants, arguments and so forth. It would be interesting if we did…

// @variablepulserate

matigo.ca.

@matigo It's interesting, because you'd think that JavaScript or Ruby or any other programming language would just be like another language to an LLM. Unfortunately, the thought processes that go into writing code are somewhat different than formulating ideas to make a coherent sentence. Writing code involves creating solutions to problems. The solution doesn't always have to be elegant, but it has to conform to the syntax of the language, and account for all of the system and project requirements.

I saw this promotional video on YouTube for some kind of all-in-one turnkey software solution that touts that you can create anything you imagine, presumably using its AI-based software solutions. As far as system development goes, I don't think we are there yet.

// @variablepulserate

matigo.ca.

@variablepulserate Thanks. That's my hope as well.

variablepulserate.10centuries.org.