When I first encountered artificial intelligence, I approached it as an adversary.
I wondered if it might make my photography irrelevant. Then, when I began using it, it often felt imprecise yet confident in ways that didn’t always align with what I knew to be true.
Over time, my thinking evolved.
I approach AI with caution. I see AI as a tool, useful in some contexts, unreliable in others, but always something to be handled with intention and care.
More recently, I’ve realized my role with AI is to be the adult in the room. I need to resist flattery and demand facts.
I’ve also realized that working with AI is less about evaluating the machine, and more about how well I evaluate what it produces.
Let’s face it, AI does not know when it is right. It does not know when it is wrong. That responsibility remains with me.
In that sense, AI is most useful when it receives something very specific: clarity, discernment, and attention.
Photography prepared me for that. I’ve learned to see what belongs. Recognize what distracts. Realize when something holds together, and when it only appears to.
That same habit applies to AI.
Not everything AI produces needs to be accepted, and not every answer needs to be acted on.
I am not and never have been interested in using AI to make pictures. What interested me, eventually, was whether it could help me think more clearly, provide insights or identify gaps between my skills and goals.
So I began to think about how to work with it deliberately, with intention, much like I approach photography. Not as something to trust, and not as something to reject, but as something to engage with carefully.
That led me to develop a simple framework for interacting with AI and auditing its responses. I don’t trust any camera to make good photographs on its own. I know that’s my job.
AI is no different. I needed a thought process, a guide for directing its attention, testing its clarity, and evaluating its output.
So I built a robust framework that keeps me focused and AI reliable.
I’ve learned that just as a camera needs a photographer, AI needs someone paying attention. This led to the development of my ROCSTO+A™ AI Auditing Framework.
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