Thoughts on AI Art

     There’s a lot of discussion about AI art lately. There’s a lot to discuss; can Artificial Intelligence make real art; is the way AI gathers data stealing (it is); is it immoral to use it for fun, for profit, or as a replacement for traditional art; etc.? I’m neither a programmer nor an artist, but I am a blogger and I have seen some ads for programs that offer to write up blog posts for you (my posts are so low effort anyways that I don’t see the point), so I say I have some skin in the game even if I don’t see it impacting my life that much. 

     I have no issues with AI in theory, in fact I actually think it’s kind of interesting. It’s not trying to make masterpieces, it’s just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what will stick. This leads to a lot of bad art, but it also leads to a lot of art that’s interesting because no human would want to try it. Although, I do think that it won’t be long before the people making AI art programs try and focus on programs designed to see what types of art humans prefer and push their focus on to making “better” art, rather than art that’s interesting. If that happens, then AI will promptly stop being a threat to artists, because art isn’t supposed to be “good”, it’s supposed to resonate with people on some level. It’s why I don’t use it personally, because I don’t think it’s possible for AI to make something deliberately meaningful, just something that resonates with us entirely by accident. 

     Let’s say that the programmers are smart/stupid enough to never try to refine the AI, and it remains in it’s current form, where anyone can use it and it learns art by looking at elements of free online art. I’m not going to try to answer any legal questions, because I’m not a lawyer and I expect that lawyers will answer those questions soon enough anyway. My issue is a bit more philosophical. 

    Art, of all sorts, is deeply important to us, but nobody gives much of a thought to the artists who make it. It’s not just an art problem either, it’s a problem with work of all sorts. We live in a world where getting the best stuff for the lowest prices is a sign that you’re smart and determined, always scouting for great deals, and pushing for better value, a sound philosophy on an individual level, deadly when it’s applied to a societal level. This is the environment AI art, and AI in general, was created in, and it’s why people are so scared of AI taking over the world. The tools themselves are stupid, but the people using them know that as long as the price is low enough most people don’t care where it comes from. It’s why we still buy clothes from overseas despite having seen the conditions the workers are trapped in. In this world, advocating for the advancement of AI could be seen as good and moral because this way no humans have to suffer. But that’s not really the point, isn’t it? The point is that lots of people are going to lose not just their jobs but their entire career, and have no reliable way to make a living. It’s not just artists either, a lot of jobs are at risk of being turned obsolete because of AI. 

    Like I said before, I don’t think AI is the problem, and I don’t think using it makes you evil, exactly. I think it’s the system that surrounds AI that’s the problem. It’s not just capitalism, because if capitalism were the issue the solution would be to make it so that businesses couldn’t pool capital, but when we tried to get rid of them, we found that didn’t always work well either. 

    I think the problem is that we, as people, want society to be simple. We want to know who’s in charge, who takes out our trash and cleans the public parks, and what our role is, and we want those to have the shortest descriptions possible. So the fact that power pools in the hands of a few, all maintenance jobs are nameless, and all of us aim for the same jobs isn’t just the effect of capitalism, it’s the effect society being very hard to understand. This is compounded by the problem that we try not to think about society at all if we can help it, because society isn’t real. We have to pretend that it’s real, or else it all falls apart. 

     But I think it’s now time we stop pretending the system is at all sustainable. I think that, with the advancement of tools that are taking away all our old jobs and an environment that allows us to thrive using social and well as physical capital, it’s time we talk about moving to a new system, one where our primary job is keeping our world together.