"AI is like plastic" — Aras Bilgen I just attended the Rosenfeld Media Designing with AI 2025 conference. Among the many excellent speakers was Aras. His quote struck me. Here's the full text of what he said: "AI is like Plastics. On the surface, it grants us amazing powers and helps us create things that we haven’t before. It creates replicas of things that were previously artisanal without thinking about future implications. In doing that, it usually ingests copyrighted material and takes away people’s livelihoods. Like plastics, it helps people crank out questionable, fake, and dangerous objects. Like plastics, it boosts the manufacturing [development] volume tremendously, and in doing that, replaces quality with mediocrity. Like early plastics, AI companies do all of this with very little concern for the environment." Unlike plastic, we understand the environmental impact. Aras pointed out that if I'd used AI to create this post, it would have cost one bottle of water. We're rushing ahead, blindingly fast, due to a systemic pressure that seems unavoidable. #ai #design #redesigneverything — Src