WHY EITHER EVERYONE OR NO ONE NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT AI

SPARE US THE PRICE OF A CUP OF TEA MISSUS, UNEMPLOYED CEO WITH FAMILY AND SECOND HOME IN ST IVES TO SUPPORT

With the announcement that China-based NetDragon Websoft says it is the first company in the world to appoint an AI as its CEO only to see stocks soar, naturally it isn’t just struggling bloggers and graphic designers who are worried about the implication of AI

This is where I’d like to reassure you that climate change ravaging the planet and making the lives of those few who survive the catastrophic flooding, wild fires and raging hurricanes that are predicted absolute hell IS THE LEAST OF YOUR WORRIES LOL.

What could possibly go wrong, you might ask.

Worry ye not. Long before climate change forces us to live in a hole in the ground while tsunamis flood Whitehall AI will have created such a chasm of unemployment and human redundancy we will all be clubbing our children to death in the fight for the last tomato .

And that is, of course, only as long as we are able to control the monster we build. Sure there will always be at least one human being in charge. Then again, there was only one human being in charge in Germany in 1939… but let’s be optimistic and assume Dr Evil isn’t about to take over the world.

Now all we have to worry about is having nothing to do.

Of course when all the good jobs have gone you might get lucky. Fired from your six figure job helming the Nasdaq big-hitter Nooneneedsit.com you may still be able to find work as a bodyguard for 12-year-old billionaire influencer Natalie Bigfloppyhopsterhat. And certainly there will still be some work; nanny for Elon Musk’s kids or tongue-fur remover for Jeff Besos’ cat

I know. To quote Marco Polo, when faced with the prospect of crossing the vast steppes of Mongolia, it’s a bit bleak i it mate

But is it?

Machine learning may have already made a lot of human endeavour as redundant as an unemployed lamp-lighter waiting for gas to make a comeback but it’s as clear as the water you no longer find in England’s murky polluted rivers that AI will go one step further and make 90% of human skills worthless

Except one big one. Being human. Do we really want to only interact with a bot? Is the job of a CEO really only to make money?

Most of the CEOs I’ve met have brought something else to the table. Sure,sometimes that something else is private school nepotism and a bag of coke. Most other times it is adventure, imagination, innovation, originality and leadership

And is money really the only thing we yearn for?

Most people will say initially the only reason they work is for money, but how then to explain how bored and sad many retired people admit to being when the no longer need to hit the office?

We are alive when we engage with other humans. Even as we complain about crowded tubes and and gridlocked traffic and Martin in finance smelling of fried food and last nights lovely self-abuse

We flock to gigs and festivals and beaches packed with thousands of others, we are deterred by the empty restaurant , the quarter-full cinema

So - progress, schmogress. We may well chase short-term gain pursuing tech-made wealth at the cost of a lot of jobs lost

But at some point, everyone gets lonely and bored. At some point, and quite quickly I suspect, we will rediscover the true value of the one really great thing humans have, the one thing we may have been ignoring for some time now - their humanity

Just kidding, obviously we are all screwed

adam rowleyMarch 5, 2023Comment

Mar 21, 2023

HOW MUCH DOES A CORPORATE VIDEO COST?

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY AND HOW YOU WANT TO SAY IT, BUT WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?

How much will my film cost? Is inevitably our first question. The unhelpful answer is of course, how long is a piece of string? You may want a simple one-day, one-man shoot with a quick one-day edit, and you can probably get that for under a grand if you’re not too fussy and it really is just a one-day edit. Or you might want an ambitious creative concept, with lots of pre-production followed by a complex week-long shoot, filming on a RED camera, and lots of complicated compositing and animated graphics. And that could be £20 - £30 000. Or more.

Mar 20, 2023

WHY YOU HIRE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER

So here’s the cruel irony. Even though I know I possess the kind of staggering youthful good looks that make people catch their breath and drop their falafel when they meet me in real life, on camera I look like a laboratory experiment where the mad scientist has injected the DNA of Brendan Gleason and Charles Manson into a old potato

And being self-conscious - oh my crooked smile, oh my seventy-eight chins - means I forget that my delicious eyes are like limpid emerald pools you could drown in, and I project discomfort - In short, I don’t pose well. Maybe you do. Millions of others dont. And some of them work for you.

Mar 16, 2023

TESTIMONIAL VIDEOS, WHAT ARE THEY GOOD FOR?

WHY THE BEST WAY TO SELL YOUR PEOPLE IS TO USE YOUR PEOPLE

Back in the mists of time, every corporate video had an ambitious narrative, like a storyboarded long-form commercial, a piece of expensive, styled, authored creative in its own right. These films do still get made and they are great. I make them myself, though more usually I work in short form. Is this always how you want to disseminate your information, your brand, your company? Sometimes yes. Just as sometimes you want to Ronseal it, to say it like it is. But do you want to be that blunt? Again probably not.

WHY SPEND MONEY ON A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER?

WHAT VALUE DOES A PROFESSIONAL VIDEOGRAPHER ACTUALLY BRING TO THE PARTY?

Sure so this is where you get sold all the corporate and advertising cliches about brand identity and adding value to your message and blah blah blah. And you may not be thinking in those terms, but rather about just demonstrating something seemingly quite simple.

CAN ONE PERSON SHOOT PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY AT AN EVENT?

YOU NEED A PHOTOGRAPHER , AND YOU ALSO WANT A CORPORATE VIDEOGRAPHER, BUT YOUR BUDGET PAYS FOR ONLY ONE OF THEM - WHAT DO YOU DO?

The short answer is of course some people can do both. The challenge is finding someone who is genuinely good at both, which is not as easy as it sounds. There are plenty of great photographers out there who can’t really shoot video. There are some good videographers out there, though they are no nearly so easy to find, and some of them are competent photographers too.

Mar 5, 2023

WHY EITHER EVERYONE OR NO ONE NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT AI

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