A recent episode of Design Matters with Debbie Millman was a conversation with Seth Godin. Conversations with him are always enjoyable and I often take many brilliant insights away that help me in my creative life. His books and his talks are often all encompassing and the conversation turned to Ai and its effects on the creative industry.

computers really didn’t start making an impact in the design community until the late 80s, which at the time, a lot of the OG designers of that era were vehemently, vehemently opposed to using the computer.

They were certain that we’re going to lose jobs, it was going to take all the creativity out of the process, out of the way in which we created. It was going to create soulless work. Sound familiar?”

This is often the case with people trying to justify things or persuade others to embrace their thought process. Picking an analogy that has some crossover elements, AI needs computers, right, and then conflating the things together. Because X happened and that was fine, that means Y will also be fine.

If you have even a remote interest in tech, you’ve heard this a million times. Defenders of Apple usually point to people that thought the iPod would fail. As if this is proof that everything Apple does will succeed. When, of course, you only hear about the successes. You don’t hear about all the products that were predicted to fail and then did (apart from Humane). Because one thing happens once, doesn’t mean it ever will again.

Computers turned out fine for the creative industries. It allowed them to be much more accessible and even opened other areas. That doesn’t mean that AI will work out the same because the same noises are being made. I mean it might, but it also might not. There’s less to be learnt from the past, but it doesn’t always repeat itself.