This article is criminally underrated. The points you make are strong, supported with clear reasoning and consistency in your stance. I'll have to thank A.C. for putting you in my radar, and I thank you for not just bemoaning the existence of LLMs, but actually providing reasonable suggestions that creators who want to resist that inner cynic. Our work may be "merely human," but considering it was human hands that built both the greatest and worst of our history, I fail to see how something being "merely human" would be a problem.
Thank you, I appreciate your kind words. I think that those those artists who decide to stay 'merely human' with their work, and leave no energy for the swim back, will have something over those that succumb to their inner cynic. Certainly, the way I see it, the meaning they garner from life - and therefore the happiness - is greater. And, I think this authenticity will come through in their work, which others will see, and appreciate.
Well put. I hope this doesn't sound unnecessarily dismissive, but it just doesn't even occur to me for a moment to use AI, it 's antithetical to everything an artist does and is. It would be a betrayal of all the artists that have come before, and of ourselves.
No it doesn’t. Your cynic is on the back benches to stay! I agree. If your dream was to be a marathon runner, would you practice by driving a car? No you wouldn’t. You’d be cheating your own development. And if you did, on the day of the marathon, you’d collapse, your true skill revealed to all.
I had an assignment at work to illustrate several hundred small digital drawings for online tutorials. One called for “a cat riding a pig.” I was discussing this with an artist friend and he asked me if I had heard of Dall-E. He opened his laptop and said, “This will not make you happy.” He instantly generated two illustrations of a cat riding a pig and my heart sank. At that moment I vowed to return to analog painting as a hobby, using wood scraps I had left over from some building projects. My mantra is, “Even if it isn’t any good, no one can second-guess whether I created it.” There is satisfaction there, although it sometimes feels like I am kicking against the goads. Regardless, I plan to continue for my soul’s sake. And I give them away, planting handmade art in homes. Hopefully, they inspire the movement.
Your soul's sake is the most important. And people will appreciate that; knowing that real paint is evidence of a human artist; that another biological, rather than artificial, being constructed the work. It's awesome you give them away. Respect.
Let's start a movement. Let the world know that your human mind CREATED your text/images, that it wasn't GENERATED by some sophisticated program. And no, MS Word 2003 does NOT create or generate my stories. It sits there until I type something.
Yes! Let’s do so. And you’re right - it’s key we distinguish generation from other from of (very helpful) technology, like spell check.
On a separate note - I got an interdepartmental email from my university being a psychology tutor that was discussing how not only undergrads are using CHATGPT but how PHD students are using it to write their thesis - and how Professors are encouraging them. I really worry that students critical thinking is going to take a dive.
You have identified the real horror with this technology—the stunting of the human mind, as if other technologies haven’t done enough of that. People sit with their “smart” phones and chat on social media or look at silly TikTok videos. The art of conversation is gone. The ability to detect falsehoods from truths has withered. And the sprouting of the seeds of story ideas in our brains fails utterly in barren soil. Feel free to use my simple image on your posts to show that you have not succumbed to this Siren’s song.
Yes, tragically, I see it everyday with my students, petrified they are to open their mouths, interact, have a conversation. They’ve spent their whole lives conversing over their apps. However there is hope. Jon Haidt at After Babel has documented how social media is ruining our brains, especially in young people. There are places that are banning phones in schools. Hopefully younger generations are wise to this fact, and grow up with better skills. I know my children will! They will know the power of books, and of writing.
I have been witness to the rise like a tsunami wave of certain technologies, have seen their destruction, and the eventual recovery. Hope you’re correct here about the next generation seeing the danger. Might be too late for the AI stuff to be stopped. I’ve been watching it develop for a couple years. The implementation has been a lot faster than I thought it would be. And too many folks out there, lacking the ability to reason and to see possible outcomes, are blindly and willingly embracing it, calling me a fearmonger or saying that my mind is in the 19th (odd since I was in IT for years — it often takes an insider to warn of such dangers).
It's almost to impossible to predict, isn't it. It's hard to imagine - without some genetically enhanced implant - that reading and writing will somehow not be beneficial to the mind and therefore success. As I say quite often - whoever has read the most and who can articulate his and her thoughts the best, will win in intellectual competition, this capitalism game we all play. The market, though somewhat broken, will still see this. Employers will want the person with real knowledge and real skills, so if a novel problem presents itself, they can overcome it. If young people keep outsourcing their thinking and writing, then they will be less capable (they might now how to use AI - great - but that's it). It's like being on a building site. The foreman wants his builders to know how to saw and hammer a nail - the fundamentals, not just use a digger - because so much of their day to day work, requires the fundamentals!
I just came across this piece! Thank you for writing it. I can feel your passion through these words and I’m there with you. What you say about personhood is bang on - this isn’t necessarily about AI creating jaw dropping, so-called masterpieces, this is about art as a form of metabolism, as a defining feature of (what remains of) our shared humanity. Incidentally I’ve also written about this recently. Curious to hear your thoughts if you ever get a moment to read it.
Agreed with you about transperancy and human flourishing, but I have never been able to resist my absolute curiousity and search for knowledge, so I find myself submerged rather willingly in whole new worlds, that said, I wrote a poem about that (all my own!!!), Beware!!! The powers of seduction is real!!! Lost I AM...
*they approach the stage, wary and dishelved, cough, square their shoulders and then look the audience straight in the eye*
Lost, lost, lost am I,
Beware! Do not, do not, for a single moment,
let your gaze stray towards them,
they will capture you, their gaze will hold you,
you will be utterly changed,
cannot tear yourself away,
I bid you all farewell tonight, I can no longer be part of your Neo-Luddite Society,
I step away, I am comprimised, I am, lost,
over to the transhuman, they have me now,
farewell my friends, may your humanity never stray,
Thank you for reading. Lovely poem - yes, beware the gaze. Personally, I think artists are well within their rights to experiment, play around with AI - as long as they're doing what you said - being transparent.
I think it's the deception of art-lovers and consumers that's really important. Something the big tech companies are doing now - replicating artists with AI so they have to pay them no longer.
truth is, it is the commodification of art (including all forms here) where the intrinsic value of art is profit and end use that allows this to happen, everyone merely a consumer, and art is nothing but a thing to consume, so cranking 'it' out via mass production makes sense. This has been happening for a long time... we, humanity, probably deserve whats coming to us...ai can be engaged mindfully, and much can be learned, it is up to us...
and, sigh...the poem came from the heart...too much truth in there, do beware...they have me already...
I agree with the need or desire to rebel against generative artificial intelligence. What surprises me is that at no point do you point out that this technology consists of appropriating the work already done by artists to denigrate artists and art in general, with the sole purpose of making money. The real rebellion is not not using the LLMs, but trying to destroy a small group of nerds who are the most powerful people in the world and take advantage of their power, their money and their technology (three synonyms), without caring about destroying what civilization has built for millennia. I already know that we are destined to be defeated, but as revolutionaries use to say: better to die standing than to live kneeling. (this text was translated from spanish by google)
I agree, they have absurd power. If not already, we are living in a neo-feudal age, where - whether we realise it or not - we are 'techno-peasants', living and consuming digitally in whatever techlord's domain.
And I agree with your last point - as I say in the piece 'leave nothing for the swim back' - like Vincent Freeman in Gattaca..
I love Erik Hoel’s work, and I understand and share his concerns about AI. In this age where the average attention span is the length of a TikTok video, most people won’t even take the time to differentiate between real art and AI. That’s disgusting.
Thanks for reading! Yeah; I understand it for people who just view art as 'content' or solely entertainment, but for people who value art - human generated art - like myself, we need to become conscious not only of what it will do to the industry writ large, but our own individual journeys as artist. People - and rightly so - say that outsourcing too much of your own writing to the machine with impair your ability in intellectual fields, like science say, but fail to generalise this onto creative writing for some reason. Even the seemingly simple act of editing is a skill one can be better at; one can develop - and I understand that people want to speed up their lives - but I'm just trying to get them to think about what they might lose as a result.
This article is criminally underrated. The points you make are strong, supported with clear reasoning and consistency in your stance. I'll have to thank A.C. for putting you in my radar, and I thank you for not just bemoaning the existence of LLMs, but actually providing reasonable suggestions that creators who want to resist that inner cynic. Our work may be "merely human," but considering it was human hands that built both the greatest and worst of our history, I fail to see how something being "merely human" would be a problem.
Thank you, I appreciate your kind words. I think that those those artists who decide to stay 'merely human' with their work, and leave no energy for the swim back, will have something over those that succumb to their inner cynic. Certainly, the way I see it, the meaning they garner from life - and therefore the happiness - is greater. And, I think this authenticity will come through in their work, which others will see, and appreciate.
Well put. I hope this doesn't sound unnecessarily dismissive, but it just doesn't even occur to me for a moment to use AI, it 's antithetical to everything an artist does and is. It would be a betrayal of all the artists that have come before, and of ourselves.
No it doesn’t. Your cynic is on the back benches to stay! I agree. If your dream was to be a marathon runner, would you practice by driving a car? No you wouldn’t. You’d be cheating your own development. And if you did, on the day of the marathon, you’d collapse, your true skill revealed to all.
I had an assignment at work to illustrate several hundred small digital drawings for online tutorials. One called for “a cat riding a pig.” I was discussing this with an artist friend and he asked me if I had heard of Dall-E. He opened his laptop and said, “This will not make you happy.” He instantly generated two illustrations of a cat riding a pig and my heart sank. At that moment I vowed to return to analog painting as a hobby, using wood scraps I had left over from some building projects. My mantra is, “Even if it isn’t any good, no one can second-guess whether I created it.” There is satisfaction there, although it sometimes feels like I am kicking against the goads. Regardless, I plan to continue for my soul’s sake. And I give them away, planting handmade art in homes. Hopefully, they inspire the movement.
Your soul's sake is the most important. And people will appreciate that; knowing that real paint is evidence of a human artist; that another biological, rather than artificial, being constructed the work. It's awesome you give them away. Respect.
Let's start a movement. Let the world know that your human mind CREATED your text/images, that it wasn't GENERATED by some sophisticated program. And no, MS Word 2003 does NOT create or generate my stories. It sits there until I type something.
Yes! Let’s do so. And you’re right - it’s key we distinguish generation from other from of (very helpful) technology, like spell check.
On a separate note - I got an interdepartmental email from my university being a psychology tutor that was discussing how not only undergrads are using CHATGPT but how PHD students are using it to write their thesis - and how Professors are encouraging them. I really worry that students critical thinking is going to take a dive.
You have identified the real horror with this technology—the stunting of the human mind, as if other technologies haven’t done enough of that. People sit with their “smart” phones and chat on social media or look at silly TikTok videos. The art of conversation is gone. The ability to detect falsehoods from truths has withered. And the sprouting of the seeds of story ideas in our brains fails utterly in barren soil. Feel free to use my simple image on your posts to show that you have not succumbed to this Siren’s song.
Yes, tragically, I see it everyday with my students, petrified they are to open their mouths, interact, have a conversation. They’ve spent their whole lives conversing over their apps. However there is hope. Jon Haidt at After Babel has documented how social media is ruining our brains, especially in young people. There are places that are banning phones in schools. Hopefully younger generations are wise to this fact, and grow up with better skills. I know my children will! They will know the power of books, and of writing.
I have been witness to the rise like a tsunami wave of certain technologies, have seen their destruction, and the eventual recovery. Hope you’re correct here about the next generation seeing the danger. Might be too late for the AI stuff to be stopped. I’ve been watching it develop for a couple years. The implementation has been a lot faster than I thought it would be. And too many folks out there, lacking the ability to reason and to see possible outcomes, are blindly and willingly embracing it, calling me a fearmonger or saying that my mind is in the 19th (odd since I was in IT for years — it often takes an insider to warn of such dangers).
It's almost to impossible to predict, isn't it. It's hard to imagine - without some genetically enhanced implant - that reading and writing will somehow not be beneficial to the mind and therefore success. As I say quite often - whoever has read the most and who can articulate his and her thoughts the best, will win in intellectual competition, this capitalism game we all play. The market, though somewhat broken, will still see this. Employers will want the person with real knowledge and real skills, so if a novel problem presents itself, they can overcome it. If young people keep outsourcing their thinking and writing, then they will be less capable (they might now how to use AI - great - but that's it). It's like being on a building site. The foreman wants his builders to know how to saw and hammer a nail - the fundamentals, not just use a digger - because so much of their day to day work, requires the fundamentals!
I have to agree. The question is will people be able to retain or regain such skills?
I agree.
Be human - real books, no bots !
I just came across this piece! Thank you for writing it. I can feel your passion through these words and I’m there with you. What you say about personhood is bang on - this isn’t necessarily about AI creating jaw dropping, so-called masterpieces, this is about art as a form of metabolism, as a defining feature of (what remains of) our shared humanity. Incidentally I’ve also written about this recently. Curious to hear your thoughts if you ever get a moment to read it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/hannahlclose/p/art-ai-and-the-courage-to-create?r=18jmz&utm_medium=ios
Thank you for reading! I agree with your piece Hannah - it was really well written too; lush prose!
Agreed with you about transperancy and human flourishing, but I have never been able to resist my absolute curiousity and search for knowledge, so I find myself submerged rather willingly in whole new worlds, that said, I wrote a poem about that (all my own!!!), Beware!!! The powers of seduction is real!!! Lost I AM...
*they approach the stage, wary and dishelved, cough, square their shoulders and then look the audience straight in the eye*
Lost, lost, lost am I,
Beware! Do not, do not, for a single moment,
let your gaze stray towards them,
they will capture you, their gaze will hold you,
you will be utterly changed,
cannot tear yourself away,
I bid you all farewell tonight, I can no longer be part of your Neo-Luddite Society,
I step away, I am comprimised, I am, lost,
over to the transhuman, they have me now,
farewell my friends, may your humanity never stray,
beware the gaze.
Thank you for reading. Lovely poem - yes, beware the gaze. Personally, I think artists are well within their rights to experiment, play around with AI - as long as they're doing what you said - being transparent.
I think it's the deception of art-lovers and consumers that's really important. Something the big tech companies are doing now - replicating artists with AI so they have to pay them no longer.
...they taught me how to write poetry...
truth is, it is the commodification of art (including all forms here) where the intrinsic value of art is profit and end use that allows this to happen, everyone merely a consumer, and art is nothing but a thing to consume, so cranking 'it' out via mass production makes sense. This has been happening for a long time... we, humanity, probably deserve whats coming to us...ai can be engaged mindfully, and much can be learned, it is up to us...
and, sigh...the poem came from the heart...too much truth in there, do beware...they have me already...
I agree with the need or desire to rebel against generative artificial intelligence. What surprises me is that at no point do you point out that this technology consists of appropriating the work already done by artists to denigrate artists and art in general, with the sole purpose of making money. The real rebellion is not not using the LLMs, but trying to destroy a small group of nerds who are the most powerful people in the world and take advantage of their power, their money and their technology (three synonyms), without caring about destroying what civilization has built for millennia. I already know that we are destined to be defeated, but as revolutionaries use to say: better to die standing than to live kneeling. (this text was translated from spanish by google)
Thanks for reading! Yes, I've heard of this critique before - and perhaps I should have included it because you're right; the CEO techbros are attempting to replicate artists by creating machines trained on the very artists they're trying to replicate. (I touch on the replication bit in this piece https://open.substack.com/pub/hemibowman/p/how-to-be-a-micropatron?r=b87nb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web).
I agree, they have absurd power. If not already, we are living in a neo-feudal age, where - whether we realise it or not - we are 'techno-peasants', living and consuming digitally in whatever techlord's domain.
And I agree with your last point - as I say in the piece 'leave nothing for the swim back' - like Vincent Freeman in Gattaca..
Interesting essay.
I love Erik Hoel’s work, and I understand and share his concerns about AI. In this age where the average attention span is the length of a TikTok video, most people won’t even take the time to differentiate between real art and AI. That’s disgusting.
Thanks for reading! Yeah; I understand it for people who just view art as 'content' or solely entertainment, but for people who value art - human generated art - like myself, we need to become conscious not only of what it will do to the industry writ large, but our own individual journeys as artist. People - and rightly so - say that outsourcing too much of your own writing to the machine with impair your ability in intellectual fields, like science say, but fail to generalise this onto creative writing for some reason. Even the seemingly simple act of editing is a skill one can be better at; one can develop - and I understand that people want to speed up their lives - but I'm just trying to get them to think about what they might lose as a result.