A Faustian bargin ...

When thinking about AI, enticement as inducement to go all the way in all things related to digital brings up Faust and his insatiable sense of need ...

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540).The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures.

Dr. Fausto by Jean-Paul Laurens

Channeling Faust and his endless quest to attain knowledge without working for it relates to how AI, the open-ended tech, enables virtually everyone, with or without talent, to become "artists" without the need to become competent in said discipline. This is not a diatribe against AI as talented artists are collaborating with tech with amazing results but rather as cautionary tale as AI is not only evolving at speeds beyond the kin of man but also is no longer controlled by us rubes given the fact real-time analysis of incoming data requires software able to update itself in real-time, something that cannot be done by humans in any way, shape or fashion.

In essence, we know not how this tech works, this is why the implications of AI expanding into virtually every aspect of civilization is disquieting as the skill sets needed to run society are slowly being taken over by code. 

To whit ...

This is John. He doesn't exist. But AI can easily put a photo of him in any situation we want. And the same process can apply to real people with just a few real photos pulled from social media.

Think about this, I have.