The problem with AI, algorithms, and robots trying to sell us clothes

This computer-automated crap is proliferating. We’ve all seen this stuff. Clunky “this would go with” recommendations. WEIRD outfit amalgamations shoe-horned under production descriptions. Wardobe in a box companies that depend far too much on spreadsheets instead of the human eye.

It all sticks out. Badly. It’s the style-equivalent of calling customer service, and instead of getting a real person, you get stuck in phone-tree hell. All because some over-paid executive who’s never answered (let alone made) a call to customer service thought this automated way would be more “efficient.”

These are actual screenshots.
Love ya J. Crew, but whatever you’re paying for your “how to wear it” software, it’s too much.

It’s a waste of everyone’s time and resources. And now ChatGPT wants to write the next great American novel, by ripping off all the previous great American novels.

Those who are spending millions billions of dollars trying to make human-creativity-replicating artificial intelligence fail to understand something very important. Efficiency and efficacy are not always one and the same. Or to put it another way…

it’s both easier and BETTER for us, if we humans just did the creative, communicative work.

They’re called “intangibles” for a reason.

“Sorry I’m late, I was writing my algorithm that would automate our military tactics.”

When did we become so allergic to verbs? When did “do the things” become some radical concept?

I’m not arguing that automation can’t be innovation. Of course it can be (see abacus –> calculator). The persistent desire by true innovators to build a better mouse trap has driven much of our species’ progress.

But at some point it goes too far, and the obsessive pursuit of efficiency through automation (*greed*) becomes an excuse to not get things done.

What the cult of the “hyper efficient” can’t grasp, is that by the time most of them are done obsessively building their rodent-trapping Rube Goldberg machine, all of the mice have already been caught by those willing to get their hands dirty. And worse yet, their damned cluster-mess of a contraption hasn’t caught a single mouse. Instead, all it keeps doing is collecting underpants.

Less shake weights. More pushups.
Especially when inventing shake weights is being used as a way to avoid pushups.

“But I wrote this music software and it can auto-magically write a crappy pop song!” 

(*gently slaps hand*) BAD. NO. Do not want.

“Why not?”

You need to write the crappy pop song. Because if you don’t, you’ll never learn to write a better pop song. And if you don’t write those better pop songs, what the hell is ChatGPT gonna rip off in 2056?? All kidding aside, if we become dependent on AI for producing creative and communicative works, at some point we’ll run so low on original material that the copies of the copies will become nothing but noise. Society will become one big music festival… of cover bands.

“What’s the big deal? You’re freaking out about robots eventually taking your order at the drive-thru.”

FFS. Don’t you know how many success stories started at the drive-thru?? THAT’S THE POINT.

Good leads to great. Even if the great you end up with isn’t what you were foreseeing.

It may be silly. It may take time. But until if/when the singularity happens (and robots harvest our faces), us knuckleheads here at this tiny (well dressed?) internet-lemonade-stand will:

• keep looking at stuff
• consider the price charged to acquire said stuff
• we will then subsequently use our brains (BRAAAINNNS) to decide whether that stuff would look good with some other stuff and whether or not it’s worth the money to most of you.

How quaint, right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S…. ChatGPT wrote this piece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.P.S. No it didn’t.