How AI’s Trajectory Mirrors the CGI Revolution

Film Industry and CGI

Before CGI, filmmakers were limited to awkward animatronics, stiff facial prosthetics, and models that looked just realistic enough to break the illusion.

Enter the '90s and CGI emerged as a groundbreaking tool poised to transform the film industry. Studio executives and industry leaders eagerly embraced it, claiming it would revolutionize filmmaking by reducing costs, simplifying production, and unlocking creative possibilities that traditional filming methods couldn't achieve.

CGI entered the mainstream and movies were produced left right and center, with massive cost, upwards of a million per minute of CGI. Businesses were sure it was going to shake up the market.

And they weren’t wrong. They were just wrong by how they should tastefully use CGI in their productions.

Viewers started to share how bad some CGI was, and how disconnected it was from the stories they were trying to tell. Some were amazing, and others were just plain awful.

For instance, Avatar (2009) showed how CGI could elevate storytelling. It was visually immersive, had a halfway decent storyline, but was carried by how unique the movie visuals expanded and introduced a world that would never have been able to be designed on a traditional movie set.

Contrast that with Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008). It was panned for stiff animation and lifeless characters, proving that CGI alone can’t carry a film without strong execution.

Technology Industry and AI

AI is in the 2008’s of CGI. We don’t quite understand how best to implement it in our workflow. We have great implementations of AI and terrible implementations of AI.

We have companies saying they won’t hire new employees to take advantage of the "HUGE" growths AI will provide, and companies that are restricting use of AI because its a huge risk to their business data.

Businesses are still trying to figure out the balance of where AI can be used and how it can tastefully improve customer relations, improve productivity and provide employees with better tools to get work done.

Some implementations are Avatar level quality, with great visuals albeit halfway decent storyline, while others are Star Wars: The Clone Wars level quality. Leaving much to be desired and have stodgy and poorly implemented toolset bringing down how people view the technology.

The Future of AI

No, I don’t think AI will fail. No, I don’t think it is quite yet able to replace humans. Even Google CEO Pichai said they have seen only a 10% improvement in productivity due to AI implementation. Cognizant said that improvements for their bottom 50% of developers had productivity improvements of close to 40% while only 17% for the top half of developers.

These are the type of aims we want to have for AI. Not replacing entry level positions. Not removing experienced developers. But having a balanced impact, bringing up the lowest at a greater clip than those that bring up the highest.

CGI helped expand the story telling process, expanding what stories could be told and what environments creatives could imagine in CGI. It did replace some industries, but those industries pivoted, just like film to digital, and animatronics to CGI.

We can’t blame innovation for “moving the cheese” and we can’t be scared it will ruin industries that were created to solve a problem technology created. We need to take the wins we can get and pivot when the cheese moves.