Did you ever wonder if the art on a beer can might have been generated by AI? Increasingly, the answer is likely to be yes. Let’s look examples from two breweries to see where this is all headed. 

On Monday night, Cascade Brewing announced it was closing, effective immediately. It was one of the most indelible of the golden-age sour breweries, and its beers were truly unlike any others on the market. A remembrance. 

Books have been the main way we collected and stored knowledge for hundreds of years. In the past decade, while no one noticed, that changed, and books are quickly becoming obsolete. 

People typically talk about “American” or “Pacific Northwest” hops as if they’re a monolith. Yet Oregon’s Willamette Valley, on the wet side of the Cascades, is vastly different than the arid Yakima Valley. The hops grown there are different, too. 

Nothing in our living memory could prepare us for what was to come, and human brains aren’t wired to understand events as huge and transformational as what we confronted.

Two years ago, I was so impressed with an obscure technology called GPT-3 that I thought it merited mention on a beer blog. Last year, AI had become such a big deal I wrote a three-post series. We may have come to the final chapter: mundanity. In my possibly final post, I review the situation.

It’s only looking back that we realize lives hinge on the smallest decisions.

I distinctly remember saying the words “people like what they like” and feeling something click. At the time, it was more in resignation: “People like what they like, so what can you do?” But having said it out loud, it became a challenge and then an affirmation. “People like what they like, and isn’t that fascinating?”

This week, the UK-based Wine & Spirit Education Trust (WSET) announced they were creating a professional certification for beer. But with the preexisting Cicerone Program, is there enough interest in beer education to support it?

I have a hot alternate take for you on this fine Wednesday before the GABF. Yes, it’s a decades-old competition, but its value isn’t static—and now it may be as valuable as it’s ever been. 

An off-brand website recently posted the latest in the series of supposedly quantified “best beer cities” lists. The problem with these lists—any best cities list, really—is that they haven’t decided what a good beer city looks like. Here’s a run at some better standards. 

Humans, at base, are no more independent than an individual tuna in its shoal. But good luck trying to figure out which direction the school will turn. I think there’s a lesson in there for sellers of malt beverages.

Today I wrap up AI week with a consideration of the nightmare scenarios—as well as the lesser examples that might be just as bad. What happens, for example, when a distributor replaces its sales team with AI?

Users can plug the name of living artists into AI generators to get art that looks like Banksy or Jeff Koons or Em Sauter. But should they?