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It's so strange how the problems that come with existing online have forced me to find words to explain concepts that I assumed were mostly universal. I thought knowledge, talent, expertise, hard work and persistence were skills that were valuable and should be encouraged in everyone. A.I. has taught me otherwise.

A.I. might as well stand for Anti-Intellectualism, because that's the spirit behind the excitement. It literally takes the skill and labor out of skilled labor. Learning is being treated like an inconvenience, a problem to be eliminated in the name of efficiency. Entire disciplines are being treated as grand sacrifices in the name of mass production and instant gratification.

Why does art need to be efficient? It's not food. It's not medicine. It's not shelter. How fast are people shoveling content into their gob that between social media, streaming, and physical media, it's still not enough? Technology has already pushed creators to pumping out content at an unhealthy and unnatural rate just to try to appease social media algorithms. Now that same output is being used to train new algorithms to pump it out even faster while cutting creators out entirely. It’s sick and cruel. And instead of this exploitation being treated like an injustice that needs to be corrected, I'm told "It's inevitable. Adapt or die. Don't put your work online if you don't want it taken", delivered either with condescending pity, callous apathy, or malicious glee.

If A.I. fans aren't taking the "hardened pragmatic realist" approach, then they are shallowly aping socialist ideas, blaming capitalism for exploitation, not the tech. A very "guns don't kill people, people kill people" take. Just because exploitation of creatives is not a new concept doesn't mean A.I. isn't responsible for making it INFINITELY WORSE. They’ve also decided that people shouldn't be pursuing art and knowledge for the sake of profit and that the skilled creators trying to protect their labor are greedy, elitist gatekeepers trying to keep art from "the common man" (because creatives aren't the common man, apparently). It's that same resentment and distrust of experts that's typical of anti-intellectualism, except creative fields are in this weird place where they aren't even respected the way STEM is, so there's an extra layer of belittling and disrespect to the othering. Consumers feel entitled to art, but they don't understand how it's made, and they definitely don't respect it as a discipline.

The glut of creative content available for "the common man" to consume has never been greater or more accessible, but it's still not enough. It's not enough to just consume art. They want ownership. They want the sense of accomplishment that comes from making something, without having actually *made* it. And despite their finger-wagging at creatives wanting to protect their careers, they also want to make some money. Etsy is flooded with A.I. prints, kindle is filled with A.I. books, spotify is loaded with A.I. songs. There’s even A.I. kickstarters. Along with replacing writers and animators, CEOs want to replace actors, voice actors, and models with simulacrums they can make do whatever they want, forever, and A.I. fans are hoping they'll be the ones hired to facilitate that process. Even without actively profiting, A.I. still devalues the work of skilled laborers. Why commission a skilled artist when for 15 dollars you can buy a machine that will give you infinite works of the same or better quality, instantly? Do you have faith in consumers to prioritize ethics over convenience? Do you think it's right and fair and good to make compensating skilled creators an act of charity rather than a necessity?

A.I. users overestimate their contribution to the final product, thinking their idea is so unique and their vision so strong, that of course they should claim ownership… conveniently ignoring all the infinite little decisions A.I. made for them based off the knowledge and fine motor skills of millions of artists. It's like they think fully realized Good Ideas are a natural resource waiting to be excavated, and traditional creators had the unfair advantage of pickaxes, physical strength and a knowledge of geology to find the rich veins. Now A.I. is providing scanners and and powerful machinery so "the common man" doesn't need strength or knowledge to quickly mine those same veins first.

But that's not what art is, and that's not how creation works. Art is communication. Imagination is fostered through life experience, observation and processing information with your human brain. It's something every living person could do, because every person is unique with unique life experiences. Creation is practice, study, experimentation, problem solving, and adapting to limitations. There is nothing stopping anyone from doing these things. Natural ability has been grossly overvalued: most people with "talent" were not making hyper-realistic paintings at 13 like Picasso. What happens is a child shows a slight aptitude, the adults in their life notice and give them positive reinforcement, and then they are motivated and encouraged to pursue that interest. So instead of treating the naturally talented as having an unfair advantage, why not blame the adults in your life for not encouraging your interests at a young age. Or if you want to be brutally honest, blame yourself for not pursuing your interests despite a lack of external validation. You have agency.

I try to imagine, what is an A.I. fan's idea of a perfect future? One where no one has any advantages that another person doesn't, where "everyone's special so no ones special"? Where all labor is automated and no one has to do anything they don't want to and everyone spends their infinite free time bettering themselves for it's own sake rather than for money? Every time they mention the evils of capitalism and how we need universal basic income and other ideas of a post-work society it makes me want to pull my hair out. We don't *have* those things. We aren't even close to those things. So it is functionally useless to factor that into your argument. Who is Tech to use A.I.'s elimination of thousands of jobs in non-Tech industries as a bargaining chip to try and incentivize the government to create safety nets for those displaced? Since when has your government prioritized it's citizens over corporations? Have proponents always been this naive, or only when trying to assuage concerns over the consequences of their new toy?

Even if we did achieve that techie utopia, what makes them think most people will use their free time productively, exercising their brain for it's own sake? Because speaking for myself, I can have every good intention of using my time to create and learn, but those things frequently lose out to short term, dopamine-driven feedback loops like social media and video games. Without any external incentives, I guarantee far less people will pursue learning for its own sake if the knowledge-based roles that keep society functioning are filled by machines. Think of how we've had to reintroduce exercise into are lives just for exercise's sake. Hows that going? Again, speaking for myself as an overweight person: Not Great. I might intellectually know physical fitness is important, but the difficulty and unenjoyable nature of exercise and the benefits not being immediate and obvious means it frequently loses out to activities I do enjoy. I know not everyone is like me, but many, many people are. Now replace physical fitness with cognitive abilities. Abilities that require work, who's benefits are totally abstract, and would be wholly unnecessary for living in an A.I dependent society. If that doesn't give you chills up your spine, then you must stand to benefit from a culture of stupidity that's hopelessly dependent on tech. And I hate you.

No ones going to read all this.

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Doomsday venting

They say “automation is coming for everything”, yet people still need to work to have money and money to live. So why does there seem to be a concentrated effort right now to automate creative jobs specifically? Are they trying to force creatives back into the underpaid, oft-disrespected service jobs nobody wants to do anymore? Are techies trying to create a future where society is so dependent on tech that they have guaranteed high-paying job security? Is this what technofacism is???

Art, music, literature, narration, translation, communication, fucking v-tubers: They’re automating *personalities* now. In this theoretical future where everything is automated: then what? What do techies think we will spend our bountiful free time doing? What would the brain of a person raised in an all AI world look like, will parts start to atrophy? Why foster an imagination when ai can conjure a unique image without you having to think harder than “what arbitrary words might make something new?” Why learn to communicate effectively when an ai can write a better apology/grant request/love letter/etc. than you ever could? Why even bother communicating with another human being when someone could create your perfect simulacrum of a person convincingly through code? Will the only people required and encouraged to use creative thinking be the same programmers who created the problem in the first place, therefore perpetuating their advantage over the masses? Hello????

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Old Woman Yells at Clouds

The current oldest known cave painting is of a wild pig found in the Leang Tedongnge cave in Indonesia. It's estimated to be around 45,000 years old. Its clear from the fine lines and details they used tools to make it. So how, exactly, is AI supposed to be "democratizing art"? What was stopping anyone, in the year 2022, from making art before?

A pencil and paper. Collage. Recycled art. People who feel compelled to communicate through a visual medium have found ways to do so, despite poverty, despite disabilities, despite lack of artistic training, despite lack of resources.

But that's not the art these people want to make. That's not the art they see as valuable. The only art they consume is anime, video games and porn, so that's what they want to make. Commercial art. But those things take skill, which takes time and knowledge and practice, and who wants to do that?

If you want to render your shitty little OC in the style of Van Gogh, AI can do that for you. In real life, if I wanted to make my big-titty purple haired completely unique fox-girl in the style of Van Gogh, I would have to study his work. I would have to understand his brushstrokes, his use of color, his sense of perspective and how he depicts representational images. After understanding it theoretically, I'd then have to then learn how to physically do it. Even tracing requires a certain amount of dexterity using fine motor skills. But who has time for that? The world needs to see my waifu sitting in the Cafe Terrace at Night NOW.

We already knew that "democratizing art" is a bullshit smokescreen to try to legitimize AI, a way for its users to take a sanctimonious tone while they try to profit off what is akin to a google image search. They know it, I know it, you know it. Don't let them forget that they aren't fooling anyone. Nobody is impressed with them, they are impressed with the program.

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Them: "AI is democratizing art!! I can finally share my vision with the world!!!"

Also Them: *makes the most generic big-tittied anime girl*

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Artificial Inspiration

One of the many things that bother me about the A.I. art phenomena happening right now is the downright glee some people are showing at the idea of artists becoming obsolete. I had no idea there was so much resentment towards us.

I saw someone call it "a big win for STEM over art". Considering people in STEM are already more valued and more hire-able, it's laughable they should act as if it's us who need to be taken down a peg. Artists, who often aren't even paid minimum wage for the labor they do, who feel they have to undercut each other just to get a sale (if they're able to make any money at all), who get offered payments in "exposure". I guess techies couldn't stand to see others have a specialized skill they didn't and couldn't profit off of. They tried to worm their way in with NFTs, and when that didn't work they figured out a way to cut out artists entirely.

I'm sure in several years when the consequences of such technology are more apparent, these programmers will express "regret" at what they've created- after they have profited off of it. I wish there were more ways to hold these programmers accountable who ask if they could, not if they should.

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