Ask Paul: December 12 ⭐

Happy Friday! We can enjoy a predictably AI-centric installment of Ask Paul before kicking off the weekend a bit early.
? AI is having a moment, the wrong kind of moment
ianceicys asks:

Hey Paul - curious to get your take on something I didn’t expect this holiday season.

This year, over a dozen Christmas cards we got from friends and family included handwritten notes like “AI wasn’t used in these photos” or an actual handwritten note saying : "this was NOT written by AI!”

The most surprising thing so far is that you already have over a dozen Christmas cards. :) We tape the Christmas cards we get on a door each year, and for a long time, we got so many that they would overflow to a wall. But in recent years, it’s gone down a lot, and I’ve heard from several friends and family members that they’re not even bothering to send cards anymore.

This isn’t the question, I know, but there is a fine line on these things between reaching out and bragging, sort of like a one-time social media-type experience, that I always worry about. But I made our card last weekend (using Paint with some Affinity) and I don’t see stopping. My usual complaint is that many people just send pictures of their kids (or, God help me, a pet) and it’s always like, guys, you need to be in there, too. The people I actually know, not just the kids I maybe never met or the dog I absolutely do not care about.

Anyway, that’s a natural evolution, of course. We went from handwritten notes to a card with a signature to cards with no writing to no cards. I guess it makes sense. We can keep up with others so much more easily these days.

Sorry for the side track there. :/

The younger Gen Z relatives are the ones handwriting “not from AI” on their cards, almost like a badge of authenticity.

So I see that as a byproduct of a generation thing where these younger people are for whatever reason embracing old technology like record players, faux film or instant cameras, and so, at least to some degree. I jokingly refer to this as being a hipster, with the definition of that term being “one who is nostalgic for a time they did not experience.” This is the plot of the movie Midnight in Paris and probably countless other books and movies, when you think about it.

And to be fair, this is nice in some ways. One of my observations about younger people, to overgeneralize, is that because they grew up in a world in which there are literally a million different ways to get news, consumer TV shows and movies, and so on, they have fewer connective experiences. When I was young, we all had three or four main TV channels on VHF and even fewer on UHF, and so the next day at work or school we would all discuss the same thing. Likewise, growing up as a fan of music, I listened to music from previous eras, back to the 1950s, and not just that from my own era. My kids and other younger people don’t seem to do that, and I feel like they’re missing something.

So in this case...