It Looks Like AI

Several years ago I went on a hike with friends through a lush tropical forest. We turned the corner and saw a stunning lookout with dense green trees strewn across a wide valley as far as the eye could see. Then a friend of mine said one of the most ludicrous sentences I have ever heard in my life:

“Meh. The graphics are better on my PC.”

What in the world? That doesn’t make any sense. How would videogame graphics be better than real life? It doesn’t matter how many polygons your graphics card can render, there is no way that it can render the infinite polygons of actual reality. Nevertheless, what he said stuck with me.

Fast forward to this week, I went to the zoo and visited the orangutan exhibit and heard another ludicrous sentence, this time from a teenager:

“It looks like AI.”

What does that even mean? How could an orangutan look like AI? But then I remembered a phrase that I would often hear when I was a child: “It looks like CG.” In the 90s and 2000s it seemed everyone was saying this phrase regularly, myself included. We were all amazed by Toy Story, the first feature-length computer generated animated film. It was stunning to realize that computers could draw but the limitations were obvious. Computers could only really draw smooth shiny objects. But then we saw Sulley’s fur in Monster’s Inc, and Gollum’s stunning performance in The Two Towers and we knew that CG was quickly closing the gap on reality.

So what do we do when reality, actual reality, seems so unreal? When face to face with a strange creature like an orangutan, with long orange hair, far-reaching arms and strange face pouches, maybe it makes sense that one of us would say “It looks like AI.” When I was their age, I certainly would have said “It looks like CG.”

The Simulation Is Here

We are way past the point where computers can look more real than real life. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how The Social Network (2010) recreated the Winkelvoss Twins with actor Armie Hammer, who is not a twin. Most viewers didn’t even know that this was accomplished with CG.

What do we do in a world where we can no longer say I’ll believe it when I see it? We will always have the thought running through our minds Is this AI? At the moment, these images can only be produced on screens. For a few short years, we’ll console ourselves and say I’ll believe it when I see it not on a screen. But this too is fleeting. We already have screens that can simulate entire skylines convincingly and millions of fans who come to “live” concerts of virtual pop stars. The virtual is already stepping into the physical.

And so all these years later I think perhaps my friend on that hike wasn’t so crazy. Maybe the graphics on his PC are better than the real hike. When I first saw the mountain in The Witcher 3, my jaw dropped. It was in fact a view that was more stunning than the view I saw on the hike that day. It looked like an Ansel Adams photo, absolutely stunning. Except, I hate to burst your bubble, but Ansel Adams’ photos weren’t exactly reality either. He also artistically used film development techniques to accentuate shadows and highlights to produce a more stylized picture. For better or worse, fake often looks better and real often looks worse.

The really nice thing about my friend’s PC… it didn’t require an hour long hike. It didn’t include mosquito bites, and dirt and sweat and rain. That PC was able to bottle up the beautiful stunning imagery of creation and leave out all the fussy bits. Simulation empowers curated beauty. And I’m not sure that’s such a great thing.

On another hike, I woke up early and climbed with friends up to the top of Crouching Lion trail. It was stunning and I had worked up an appetite. We remembered then that Five Guys burgers was opening that day, the first location in Hawaii. We drove nearly an hour to get there and waited in line, another hour behind 200 other eager customers. The burger was massively over priced, nearly $20 for a combo, but I’ll tell you it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Why? The tiredness from waking up early, the muscle fatigue from the hike, the long drawn out anticipation of the line. The burger itself was not that amazing. It certainly wasn’t $20 amazing, and yet I’d gladly pay more than $20 today to relive that meal. Any simulation would have left out all those fussy bits, and yet, so often, those are the very best parts.