Weekly Website Wednesday – Week #11
Last week I posted an article, written entirely by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), about how it could help you manage your kennel website. I figured I’d ruffle some feathers by letting A.I. create the whole post for me … but, sadly, I didn’t get any hate mail. I was on vacation last week, and since I’m pretty much my only employee, I had to outsource the job to someone, or in this case, something … plus, it served as a nice segue for this article where I talk more about the downsides of A.I. and the ethical use of it for your kennel.
Artificial Intelligence is going to have its detractors, but it’s just a tool, like photo editing software, a word processor, a training collar, or even a gun … it’s how we use it that’s going to determine its ultimate impact on our lives. A gun can be used to protect people, but in the wrong hands, can also be used to hurt people; the same is true for Artificial Intelligence. Unfortunately, Artificial Intelligence is already blurring the lines of reality, and it’s getting hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t. Check out this deep fake video of Morgan Freeman: See Video.
Artificial Intelligence is going to profoundly change the way that we work and search the internet. It’s definitely going to take some of our jobs. In fact, Microsoft recently posted a study listing the 40 jobs most likely to be replaced by AI. The good news is dog breeders weren’t on the list; the bad news is my day job is! If you’re interested in seeing the list, you can find it here (Read Article). I believe in the article that they also detail the 40 jobs least likely to be taken over by A.I. … if you want to start that search for a new career path now.
With the current versions of A.I. it’s turning lazy people into artists. People who’ve spent their whole lives perfecting their craft are seeing competition from people who’ve mastered the craft of asking A.I. to create something they otherwise couldn’t. Need an image, a logo, a video, an article, a book, a website … Artificial Intelligence can create it for you; all you have to do is ask. This is only going to get worse as A.I. propagates. To make matters worse, A.I. knowledge is built on all the artists, writers, and creators that came before it, robbing them of valuable income.
People are already switching how they search for information on the internet. Even Google has started giving responses to search requests with A.I.-generated ‘Instant Answers’, robbing the website where they harvested the information from valuable user traffic. Does this mean you shouldn’t bother with creating your kennel website? Absolutely not. ‘Instant Answers’ are answers to questions people ask, like “how did my dog get heartworms” or “what’s false pregnancy in dogs”. Unless these are things you’re answering on your kennel website, then you’re plenty safe for now.
As a kennel owner, you can employ A.I. in some positive ways, like writing search engine-optimized descriptions for your dogs and your kennel. You can also use it to edit your dog photos by automatically changing the color balance, removing noise, and adding sharpness, making your dog photos shine. A.I. would also have little trouble removing artifacts from your dog photos, like someone’s hand, a training collar, a check cord, or even a trainer. That’s innocent enough, but you can also use it for more nefarious reasons like changing a photo’s background, removing a dog from a kennel setting, and placing it in the field or changing the physical appearance of your dog, giving it more desirable traits, like a straighter tail. Of course, I would caution any kennel owner from doing anything unethical with A.I., while it might be getting hard to tell with the naked eye what images are real and which are faked, A.I. images are often watermarked in some form or fashion. As a kennel owner, you’ll find that your most valuable asset is your name; once you tarnish it, you might as well start looking for a new career path like me.
