is AI gonna take our jobs?

D

DBP

Well-known member
I feel like I've read more doom and gloom about AI in the past 3 months than I can shake a stick at. Seriously, do we need to think about a new career?
 
lol...we've had this discussion on here over the last 2 years in about 20 different threads.

There are mainly 3 people chiming in - I say yes, someone else says no, and a third person is in-between.

I already changed careers 4x (with video always on the side).

Depending on what type of video you do, you could have about a 1% chance of still being employed as a human videographer or video editor in about 5 years or so.

What type of video do you do?
 
NorBro said:
lol...we've had this discussion on here over the last 2 years in about 20 different threads.

There are mainly 3 people chiming in - I say yes, someone else says no, and a third person is in-between.

I already changed careers 4x (with video always on the side).

Depending on what type of video you do, you could have about a 1% chance of still being employed as a human videographer or video editor in about 5 years or so.

What type of video do you do?
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I've dabbled in a lot about of everything on the production and post production side over the past 12 years. These past two years, I've settled into full time editing. Mostly for museums, universities, agencies, punlishers.

It's not the most creatively stimulating work, but it pays decently. My clients are great and there's minimal stress, so I'm quite content in my role. That said, it's hard not to feel like I'm on the chopping block, you know? I'm trying to think of ways to get ahead of it now while I have time, energy and savings. I'd love to stay exactly where I'm at but yeah.....unfortunately my gut is on the same side as yours.

.....annnnnd wouldn't you know, the presentation I'm working on this morning opens up with an art curator going on a rant, denouncing AI driven art. I feel like I'm watching Human Hubris prepare to bite itself in the butt once again.
 
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AI might take our jobs, but by then we'll all be hooked up to the Matrix, and won't be aware that our job was taken from us.
 
DBP said:
I've dabbled in a lot about of everything on the production and post production side over the past 12 years. These past two years, I've settled into full time editing. Mostly for museums, universities, agencies, punlishers.

It's not the most creatively stimulating work, but it pays decently. My clients are great and there's minimal stress, so I'm quite content in my role. That said, it's hard not to feel like I'm on the chopping block, you know? I'm trying to think of ways to get ahead of it now while I have time, energy and savings. I'd love to stay exactly where I'm at but yeah.....unfortunately my gut is on the same side as yours.

.....annnnnd wouldn't you know, the presentation I'm working on this morning opens up with an art curator going on a rant, denouncing AI driven art. I feel like I'm watching Human Hubris prepare to bite itself in the butt once again.
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If those museums, universities, agencies, publishers, etc. get briefed and trained on new future software and AI is basically just making a slideshow with random audio, the job will be replaced.

But someone still has to film everything. (Presumably this will take longer to change if the places don't have a bunch of cameras floating around.) And if the editing is more documentary-like which includes choosing very particular soundbites for particular pieces then you're buying even more time.

It's the non-complex, automated tasks that will go first. AI could make dozens/hundreds (thousands?) of these simple edits in seconds and they are going to work for some of these businesses.

Maybe not for everyone, but someone will say: "Yeah, this is definitely fine. Let's do this from now on."

Saving time, money, having more options for a human (like a museum director or someone) to look through and choose one, or having something new play each day on perhaps some screens...who doesn't want that, you know?
 
NorBro said:
If those museums, universities, agencies, publishers, etc. get briefed and trained on new future software and AI is basically just making a slideshow with random audio, the job will be replaced.

But someone still has to film everything. (Presumably this will take longer to change if the places don't have a bunch of cameras floating around.) And if the editing is more documentary-like which includes choosing very particular soundbites for particular pieces then you're buying even more time.

It's the non-complex, automated tasks that will go first. AI could make dozens/hundreds (thousands?) of these simple edits in seconds and they are going to work for some of these businesses.

Maybe not for everyone, but someone will say: "Yeah, this is definitely fine. Let's do this from now on."

Saving time, money, having more options for a human (like a museum director or someone) to look through and choose one, or having something new play each day on perhaps some screens...who doesn't want that, you know?
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Yeah that all makes sense. I figure the most mechanical stuff is going to be gobbled up first.

I do healthy mix of docu-style editing, thankfully. A lot of what I'm asked to do is live event polishing. Putting together multi-cam events and the like. It seems like that could also be ripe for the chopping block, or at the very least, significantly reduced in time and complexity (and thus paid less).

Ditto a lot of the explainer videos I've done.

I guess the sad part is I often enjoy the more technical aspects of editing and don't always want to sift through hours of interviews to craft a story. Perhaps I'm weird in that regard, but it would bum me out if those were my only edit avenues going forward.
 
DBP said:
I feel like I've read more doom and gloom about AI in the past 3 months than I can shake a stick at. Seriously, do we need to think about a new career?
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You're looking at it the wrong way. Ask yourself how AI can improve your work.

I'm using AI more and more in my various workflows. I see that increasing. I don't see AI getting up at 4:00am, packing kit and driving to the airport, climbing up mountains, crawling on the floor etc, etc, etc.
 
Liam Hall said:
You're looking at it the wrong way. Ask yourself how AI can improve your work.

I'm using AI more and more in my various workflows. I see that increasing. I don't see AI getting up at 4:00am, packing kit and driving to the airport, climbing up mountains, crawling on the floor etc, etc, etc.
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Which workflows?
 
I've been using the Topaz Labs photo products for past couple years, and while the results range from amazing to meh (I still can't predict which images will work better than others!), it's overall pretty great. On the video side, I made a short film in a restaurant earlier this year and we weren't allowed to turn off the various coolers behind the bar which resulted in very noisy tracks. In my research I came across audostudio.com and was pretty astonished with the results (see test below). My post sound mixer just told me that since this introduction to Audo, it's changed how he goes about location shoots now, not being nearly as concerned with background noise.

So, making the best of AI even as I'm uncomfortable with what it represents for the future!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c22hdd03aq6zkt2/bar none audio test 2.mov?dl=0
 
Ever since the iPhone, we have seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of similar software with those iPhone-like touch this, drag that templates in every single industry possible (web designers loathe them the most, lol). The one above is nothing special in terms of its ease of use and attractive navigation GUI (like many others), but combining it with the AI is the next step forward.

That was supposed to happen with newscasts first but it's already rolling for those explainer-like videos and soon enough there will be talking head interviews with AI versions of executives where that note is made in the lower-third and/or in the beginning of videos.

"Hey guys, Elon here. No, that's not actually me and it's not my real voice, but I provided permission for everything you're about to see and hear in this video. Looks pretty good though, right?"

No production crews, no expenses for equipment, flights, locations, releases, fees...just good ole computer work churning in the middle of the night.

How could this be stopped?
 
CharlesPapert said:
I've been using the Topaz Labs photo products for past couple years, and while the results range from amazing to meh (I still can't predict which images will work better than others!), it's overall pretty great. On the video side, I made a short film in a restaurant earlier this year and we weren't allowed to turn off the various coolers behind the bar which resulted in very noisy tracks. In my research I came across audostudio.com and was pretty astonished with the results (see test below). My post sound mixer just told me that since this introduction to Audo, it's changed how he goes about location shoots now, not being nearly as concerned with background noise.

So, making the best of AI even as I'm uncomfortable with what it represents for the future!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c22hdd03aq6zkt2/bar none audio test 2.mov?dl=0
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Wow, those results are great. There certainly are welcome benefits to AI, and not having to wrestle as much with noise on set is a huge, huge plus. I've been experiment with Resolve 18's voice isolation setting, and it provides impressive results as well.
 
CharlesPapert said:
In my research I came across audostudio.com and was pretty astonished with the results (see test below).
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I tested this on a noisy clip I was working with today and thought the results were really impressive. It's definitely bookmark-bar worthy.

I wonder how far out we are from a new service that will use AI to generate photorealistic images and video clips to spec with a future version of the Unreal engine, kind of like Synthesia mentioned above but for anything. No camera would be necessary and digital video would be in danger of becoming a niche market.

Today's episode of The Daily is about ChatGPT, which is basically an omnipotent AI capable of formulating its own "thoughts" and "creative ideas" that may be indistinguishable from those of actual humans. It can write a story, a school paper, or a prescription. It's fascinating and terrifying all at once.
 
The idea of Unreal engine generating realistic visuals is pretty much what all gamers and nerds alike always envisioned.

So for videography if you're looking for generic b-roll like one does on Pond5/etc, you'd search for something the same way in the AI application but it would create various results for you. Then you'd be able to change colors, patterns, objects, weather, people, skintones, features, whatever (not to mention the lighting, focal lengths, angles, production parameters).

To take it a step further, you might be able to import a sample clip of b-roll you've shot and the AI maybe could create additional similar b-roll for you.

Eventually this could be built into FCP, Premiere, Resolve, and you'd have a custom b-roll generator inside the software.

So you'd have AI writing, AI talent, AI photos and videos and AI editing with only a sapien gatekeeper to check in from time to time. This all wouldn't be anything out of the ordinary because, say, in 2100 the world is moving so fast yet again that automation is oxygen.
 
QuickHitRecord said:
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I wonder how far out we are from a new service that will use AI to generate photorealistic images and video clips to spec with a future version of the Unreal engine, kind of like Synthesia mentioned above but for anything. No camera would be necessary and digital video would be in danger of becoming a niche market.

Today's episode of The Daily is about ChatGPT, which is basically an omnipotent AI capable of formulating its own "thoughts" and "creative ideas" that may be indistinguishable from those of actual humans. It can write a story, a school paper, or a prescription. It's fascinating and terrifying all at once.
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The future is uncertain. In my opinion, two safe roles in our industry are documentary cameramen and producers/directors. There's no point in generating a fake of something you want to document in actuality. (Of course, reenactments are fair game.)

And the producers/directors will end up directing the AI instead of directing the technicians it has replaced. Creative direction is just as important when dealing with AI. It can't think for you or decide your taste. It takes a lot of work to shape an AI project if you care about the particulars.

I'm not completely convinced that video game-esque video will replace actual footage. It might be regarded more like animation. But maybe not.

But I'm confident that in every film where human emotion/expression is important, you're going to want to record an actual human. Maybe the actor can do it in their kitchen with their iPhone and somehow it gets mapped onto the footage.

There will still be the need for experienced technicians to take the final product the last mile. Maybe they're just good at working with the AI itself, or maybe they'll know how to integrate its output into the tools we're familiar with to tweak the final results. On the low/medium end, such technicians might not be in demand. But on the high end where you really want to tailor the result, there will be a place for editors of this sort.

ChatGPT is amazing, but what amazes me most about it is how you can converse with it naturally and it will understand you. Soon enough, we won't want to communicate with a computer in any other way. It reminds me of the scene in Star Trek: The Voyage Home where Scotty is talking to the 1980s computer and the engineer instructs him to use the mouse and keyboard. "How quaint," he says.
 
This is a popular opinion I'm seeing from visual artists on Twitter because of how AI trained itself to copy their styles by looking at all their work. Given the way our politics/economy work, I doubt they will get any traction.

AI "artists" want free access to your ideas, innovation, perspective, imagination, time, & dedication. Your lifetime investment. Your sacrifice. They want to take that from you, for free, & use it to make money for them. Every argument I've seen is justification for their theft.
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https://twitter.com/ToyGalaxyDan/status/1604190212690743296?s=20&t=PIjx4ogVvBt_2OKtXjtHPw
 
maybe AI will do something about the complaining, too :violin:

P.S. this emoji is so violent...I never saw anyone use it, lol --> :kali:
 
NorBro said:
maybe AI will do something about the complaining, too :violin:
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Try to fake some empathy, NorBro. I know you're hoping everyone else will crash out of the creative industries like you did, but nobody likes a troll
 
ahalpert said:
Try to fake some empathy, NorBro. I know you're hoping everyone else will crash out of the creative industries like you did, but nobody likes a troll
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Can't be too emphatic here, sorry.

There are other jobs, more important jobs which AI has already replaced or will replace, yet the creative community who per usual overvalue themselves make the loudest amount of noise.

We get it; art is special and beautiful, an amazing skill. And the brains who can do what they do are very special. But you're drawing shapes and lines and coloring and you're not expecting a computer to be able to do the same?

I don't know what has gotten into you lately but every day you also keep trolling (or maybe spamming) with random quotes about AI. Discussing it is fine, but they are mostly random one-liners from people who clearly have their feelings hurt.

Do you ever come across any comments from people in other professions? (Would be interested what surgeons or scientists or mathematicians are tweeting about it.)
 
NorBro said:
Can't be too emphatic here, sorry.

There are other jobs, more important jobs which AI has already replaced or will replace, yet the creative community who per usual overvalue themselves make the loudest amount of noise.

We get it; art is special and beautiful, an amazing skill. And the brains who can do what they do are very special. But you're drawing shapes and lines and coloring and you're not expecting a computer to be able to do the same?

I don't know what has gotten into you lately but every day you also keep trolling (or maybe spamming) with random quotes about AI. Discussing it is fine, but they are mostly random one-liners from people who clearly have their feelings hurt.

Do you ever come across any comments from people in other professions? (Would be interested what surgeons or scientists or mathematicians are tweeting about it.)
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I can't tell if you're being purposefully obtuse, so I'm not going to keep debating you after this. Yes, the academic community is concerned about how their practices and employment will be affected by AI like ChatGPT. I sympathize with anyone whose investments or skills are devalued by the changing economy, including the cabbie who set himself ablaze in front of city hall after Uber mooted his medallion.

Nobody's saying what we do is magical. We just like doing it. Threads like this and the research I'm conducting are geared towards developing action plans for people in our profession to adapt to evolving technology and, hopefully, stay gainfully employed in the field. Because we like it and we don't want to do something else. Duh.
 
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