TL:DR – AI is neither “the best thing ever” nor the worst abomination. It’s a tool used for good and ill, depending on the choices of people. The problem and solution stem from the human heart. From the most powerful movers and shakers to the regular folks like you and me.

LLM Use and Perspective

I’m a neutral LLM user.  I share critics’ concerns of AI abuses and misuses in creative work and against creative professionals in general.

Personally, I am a novice AI user for research and technical support.  I used AI for one artwork-related reconstruction of our old production company logo, for which we lost the source file.  My brother, who created the original decades ago, was fine with me doing so.  He used to be a graphic designer and audio & video editor.  His eyesight no longer allows him to do that work.  He can still see, just not well enough to do computer work anymore.

I am not opposed to using LLM technology.  I believe that it should be used ethically and without stealing other people’s hard work and regurgitating it for free or tokens or any such nonsense.

AI Uses

I do use Grammarly on most of my written pieces, mainly for grammar and to spot glaring errors in my punctuation and spelling. The tool is helpful for me since math and grammar are my Achilles heel.  At this time, I only use the free account.  I also use LanguageTool in my LibreOffice Writer program.  Both together help catch most of my mistakes.

Currently, I don’t use AI for any creative creation or work on my podcasts.

I do use TurboScribe, which was written upon the Whisper AI to transcribe my episodes for the hard of hearing, and so I have a written record of each episode I produce.  I did some research, and YouTube even uses AI for auto-generating closed captioning.  I prefer TurboScribe’s transcripts because I believe they are more accurate than YouTube’s in creating closed captioning.  My mother, brother, and I all have a hearing loss, so this is very important to me to have as close to an accurate transcript for my audience members.  I do not have the budget, skill, or time to invest in doing it the manual way.  Hence, I use the TurboScribe account that was gifted to me for this purpose.

There is a possibility that I may use an AI service in the future to help me create rough drafts of show notes and/or show summaries to post on blog posts, newsletters &/or as references for myself on what each episode was about.  Or to reference for future book projects. It would be very helpful to have a notebook and a computer folder with summaries of each interview and its contents.

Currently, I don’t use the AI clip generator that comes with Streamyard, the recording software like Zoom.  I may want to use the AI clip generator in the future.

I lack the technical capability of enforcing no AI use on any podcast hosting service, distribution channels (such as Spotify, Apple Podcast, etc.), on their platform.  Granted, some of them might give me the option to opt out of AI messing with my podcasts if I wanted to do so. But, they may make it hard to do so if I opt to sign up for a podcast hosting service that automatically distributes to podcast distributors.

I can’t stop people from downloading the video episode from my YouTube channel and any possible future audio podcast host and alternating them themselves with AI.

I know of some YouTubers and other well-known people who have a large body of videos online that have been assimilated into YouTube videos impersonating them, scamming their actual followers.  So I acknowledge that people’s concerns are valid, and any online video and voice samples could totally be misused by unscrupulous people using AI.

YouTube is owned by Google, and they are training Gemini on YouTube videos on their platform.  They do train Gemini on Public and Unlisted videos, but not on Private videos.

So that might be a concern for podcast guests since I publish Nara Fellowship on YouTube.

Technology Ups & Downs

The invention of the printing press had radical ramifications throughout history and multiple cultures. Many technologies, from the automobile to the very endeavor of putting men on the moon, rippled throughout our world. It is naive to assume technology won’t have negative as well as positive consequences. Likewise, it is myopic to only see the negatives of AI. I, for one, will not submit to the fear-mongering or doomer perspective that AI and LLM technologies will be an arms race to our enslavement to a brain-dead future. Nor do I think AI is the answer to make everything right with the world. It’s a tool, the same as money, a helpful servant but a terrible master.

I get the impression that AI companies are unethical in how they assimilate and gather data and human voices for their LLMs. I don’t lump them all as evil robber barons. But I try to take a step back and reflect on how greed and exploitative tenancies have repeated over and over again from the industrial age, the treatment of coal workers, railroad workers, and any new technical leap forward.

Technology and progressive advocates tend to forget the broken human nature that repeats the errors and injustices of past technological advances inflicted on innocent people. I do not accept the internet, blockchain, and now AI in wide-eyed adoration nor in angry rejecting rants.

Just as the fledgling Screen Actors Guild stood up to the giant studios for fair treatment of their fellow actors, so will the AI vanguards rise up to rein in the unbridled, unethical exploitation of regular people and employees, independent contractors that service the industry. Good-hearted people will figure out alternate solutions to the looming extinction of jobs, trades, and careers that are in the path of destruction of AI.

The true enemy is not the technologies themselves, but the vices and foibles of the power players, as well as you and me. Reality is that it has been and always will come down to the choices of the human heart.