On "AI"

[rowyn]

I have many friends who use chatbots or other plagiarism-engine apps, so I try not to be a dick about how much I dislike it. But I don't want to hide how much I dislike it, either. I call the stuff "plagiarism engines", as a shorthand, but if I am honest, it's not just the plagiarism that I hate. It's not just that it's setting fire to the planet, or that it's driving up electricity and electronics costs, or that it produces such bad-to-mediocre pap, or that it's making real artists and real authors have to defend their work as Not AI, either.

I hate the idea itself: the notion that you can strip away all human skill and effort from the act of creation. Just press a button, and voila, the thing you wanted now exists. I hate it. You can tell I've always hated the idea, because when I make a setting that has magic, it's never magic that makes art without effort. In Silver Scales, enchanters can make beautiful, interactive, three-dimensional illusions -- but they need skill and training and artistry to do so. A character with tons of magical power but no training in art can make copies and do simple/crude images, but nothing like what artists can do. It's similar in all my settings, because I do not write about dystopian hellscapes, and a world where artistry is meaningless is a dystopian hellscape to me.

You could train an LLM on only public-domain works, and make it run for years on a single AA battery, and have it generate stories that make the heart leap with joy and wonder, and I would hate it just as much. I do not want machines that make art.

I do not want machines that make human creativity irrelevant. There is no ethical way to do that because that is not an ethical thing to do.

Comments

[xyzzysqrl]

Unfortunately I have felt for several years now that artistic creation has no value to large swathes of the population. So many don't create for any purpose or for self-expression or pleasure, they don't read what others write, they don't want to have to think about TV or movies, games should functionally play themselves to avoid all that nasty learning or systemic mastery required...

AI seems to just be the natural conclusion of that. Art for no one that requires nothing and reflects no ideas. And golly, most people sure love it.
I've been very bitter.

[rowyn]

hughugs

It can get pretty bleak. I persevere and can't really explain why. :/