“AI art” being soulless, depthless, and uncritical is a feature… not a bug
The vibes-based conclusion of someone who has never been near AI research and is ignoring business interests on top of it. It absolutely is a “bug” how much of it has become associated with “slop”. You think people who put billions of dollars into AI research want it to have a reputation for being “soulless”? That makes it harder for them to make money off of it. You think people who put their career into doing AI research want it to have that reputation either? Who would intentionally spend their life’s work trying to work on something “soulless” that is normally thought of as having meaning to it?
Fascists aren’t villains in saturday morning cartoons who talk about how much they love being evil. With the exception of the rare sadistic psychopath, or the opportunistic grifters who gravitate to any power structure they can feed off of, they’re mostly going to be people who sincerely believe in what they’re doing, in spite of how fucked it is.
Furthermore, not every entity in AI is fascist just because it funds it or wants to profit off of it. If that was the meaning of fascism, it would be watered down as to be meaningless. Nor do actual fascists have control over all of the R&D of AI.
It’s the closest that oligarchs can get to artists’ power to create universes out of thin air
George Bush took up painting after he did his part for the empire in helping to ravage another foreign country alongside Dick Cheney and others. And no, it wasn’t “AI” painting. Oligarchs, capitalists, imperialists, colonizers, fascists… none of them are incapable inherently of working on an artistic craft. And, in fact, art is used heavily to reinforce the status quo. There’s nothing that makes the craft immune to such.
Artists also don’t “create universes”. What artists do is tap into the imaginations that people have. When you look at a cutely drawn electrical outlet and are able to see a face, it’s not because electrical outlets are anything resembling human in actual characteristics. It’s because the human mind can do associating, anthropomorphizing pattern recognition quickly and easily. When an artist draws a flat image that somehow looks three dimensional, that’s also tapping into the human imagination and the way it perceives shapes and colors in space.
Artists work with the human mind’s existing functionality in order to get it to temporarily perceive something that isn’t real as plausibly close enough to real that a reaction can be evoked, for better or worse. If you see it this way, it’s not far off from that to see how it can be used for deceptive propaganda at times; yes, even fascist propaganda.
They see art as a threat because it questions and deciphers the myths, dogmas, lies, and illusions that fascism is built upon.
*Only in the hands of anti-fascists is art used this way.
Don’t underestimate fascism and related awful isms. Not all of their “art” is rightist chuds oozing grotesque racism in a meme format.
Propaganda can be more subtle. Like The Hunt for Red October movie and its anti-communist, “pro US side of the cold war” undertones.
Colonialism hasn’t ravaged the world for hundreds of years by being as obvious as Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Take what we’re up against seriously.
It’s the closest that oligarchs can get to artists’ power to create universes out of thin air
I didn’t catch onto that when I made my comment but this is exactly what Artisanal Intelligence was saying lol. Ever since AI came out artists are trying to find ways to explain how art is not actually something anyone is capable of.
Actually let me detail this a bit more. The essay makes the inverse point: that before AI artists tried to convey how skilled their craft is (to be on an equal basis as specialized workers such as engineers, doctors, etc and demand same compensation, the essay says), and since AI they say anyone can actually do art. But I think since 2023 (when the essay was written) we notice a reversal happening, where more-or-less established artists such as the comic artist here are arguing that to be an artist is something not everyone is capable of, which imo is a way to differentiate themselves from AI image gen that is becoming always better at doing photography and artistic styles. YMMV of course.
Like at face value it comes off as incredibly elitist to say that artists have a power to create universes out of thin air, and non-artists don’t. And I couldn’t even say that they’re saying “everyone can be an artist and create universes out of thin air” because they’re clearly drawing a line between artists and non-artists (in which they consider, at the very least, oligarchs to be).
That’s a good article. I think I had seen it before but not read through it in full.
Like at face value it comes off as incredibly elitist to say that artists have a power to create universes out of thin air, and non-artists don’t. And I couldn’t even say that they’re saying “everyone can be an artist and create universes out of thin air” because they’re clearly drawing a line between artists and non-artists (in which they consider, at the very least, oligarchs to be).
Yeah, it’s interesting how the motives and narrative shift in response to the changing conditions. And I think it is aligned with communist goals and views to insist that art does not arise from “special talent only reserved for a select group” but from a mixture of predispositions and applied process like any other capability (an example of predispositions and their impact being how most people can learn to sing, but a limited number have perfect pitch… this doesn’t mean only those with perfect pitch are “real musicians”, it just means they will have an easier time becoming a skilled musician, all other things being equal, than those who don’t). It reminds me of the idea of bridging the developed gap between “intellectual” and “worker”. The gap between “artist” and “worker” appears to have a similar kind of line drawing going on that will need to be overcome. But artists who are stuck seeing themselves as transcendent beings tapping into something mystical will have a harder time relating to the factory worker whose labor is also being exploited in various ways.
Oooh, that’s neat, bookmarking to look at later. I remember hearing in passing about his interest in cinema on one of the Blowback Podcast episodes on Korea, but I didn’t know that much detail about it.
The soulless would. Everyone who works on “ai”, for instance.
Look, I don’t take “no investigation, no right to speak” as some kind of literal doctrine to follow, but Mao did have a point about the value of investigating rather than pure “brain cudgeling”. And it’s evident because I have investigated that anyone making a statement like this has not done shit to investigate the situation with generative AI.
At face value this is just a dehumanizing comment. You’re basically saying some people have no soul, and the soul is understood to be a wholly human thing. As materialists we don’t believe in the soul (a. it’s a metaphysical concept and b. where is it located? It’s clearly not an organ) but that’s why @amemorablename and I used it between quotes.
And so what, everyone who works on AI, even the engineers who are finding medical applications to save lives, are soulless just on virtue of the stuff they work on? Even the workers who were shuffled into AI research instead of idk Youtube UX, because that’s where their boss wants them to be now?
I’ll be honest “my guy” I truly don’t care for your trolling. You would probably fit better on 8chan or similar image boards because you both share hate for the working class and think dehumanizing people is a valid strategy. Ironically it’s the anti-ai crowd that is closer to the “soulless” fascists than the pro-AI crowd judging from this type of language.
I’m just gonna put this here as a warning, it’s not okay to dehumanize people just because you don’t like or agree with them and we will start to moderate on this. If you can’t have conversations without pulling these types of arguments then just don’t say anything.
So you are also dehumanizing people like Cao Jun, a visually impaired developer, that is working with AI to make screens “speak,” thereby enabling people with visual impairments to navigate phones and computers more effectively.
In other words, you are dehumanizing someone that is actively working with the AI to make a software that is now serving over 400,000 visually impaired users.
The vibes-based conclusion of someone who has never been near AI research and is ignoring business interests on top of it. It absolutely is a “bug” how much of it has become associated with “slop”. You think people who put billions of dollars into AI research want it to have a reputation for being “soulless”? That makes it harder for them to make money off of it. You think people who put their career into doing AI research want it to have that reputation either? Who would intentionally spend their life’s work trying to work on something “soulless” that is normally thought of as having meaning to it?
Fascists aren’t villains in saturday morning cartoons who talk about how much they love being evil. With the exception of the rare sadistic psychopath, or the opportunistic grifters who gravitate to any power structure they can feed off of, they’re mostly going to be people who sincerely believe in what they’re doing, in spite of how fucked it is.
Furthermore, not every entity in AI is fascist just because it funds it or wants to profit off of it. If that was the meaning of fascism, it would be watered down as to be meaningless. Nor do actual fascists have control over all of the R&D of AI.
George Bush took up painting after he did his part for the empire in helping to ravage another foreign country alongside Dick Cheney and others. And no, it wasn’t “AI” painting. Oligarchs, capitalists, imperialists, colonizers, fascists… none of them are incapable inherently of working on an artistic craft. And, in fact, art is used heavily to reinforce the status quo. There’s nothing that makes the craft immune to such.
Artists also don’t “create universes”. What artists do is tap into the imaginations that people have. When you look at a cutely drawn electrical outlet and are able to see a face, it’s not because electrical outlets are anything resembling human in actual characteristics. It’s because the human mind can do associating, anthropomorphizing pattern recognition quickly and easily. When an artist draws a flat image that somehow looks three dimensional, that’s also tapping into the human imagination and the way it perceives shapes and colors in space.
Artists work with the human mind’s existing functionality in order to get it to temporarily perceive something that isn’t real as plausibly close enough to real that a reaction can be evoked, for better or worse. If you see it this way, it’s not far off from that to see how it can be used for deceptive propaganda at times; yes, even fascist propaganda.
*Only in the hands of anti-fascists is art used this way.
Don’t underestimate fascism and related awful isms. Not all of their “art” is rightist chuds oozing grotesque racism in a meme format.
Propaganda can be more subtle. Like The Hunt for Red October movie and its anti-communist, “pro US side of the cold war” undertones.
Colonialism hasn’t ravaged the world for hundreds of years by being as obvious as Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Take what we’re up against seriously.
I didn’t catch onto that when I made my comment but this is exactly what Artisanal Intelligence was saying lol. Ever since AI came out artists are trying to find ways to explain how art is not actually something anyone is capable of.
Actually let me detail this a bit more. The essay makes the inverse point: that before AI artists tried to convey how skilled their craft is (to be on an equal basis as specialized workers such as engineers, doctors, etc and demand same compensation, the essay says), and since AI they say anyone can actually do art. But I think since 2023 (when the essay was written) we notice a reversal happening, where more-or-less established artists such as the comic artist here are arguing that to be an artist is something not everyone is capable of, which imo is a way to differentiate themselves from AI image gen that is becoming always better at doing photography and artistic styles. YMMV of course.
Like at face value it comes off as incredibly elitist to say that artists have a power to create universes out of thin air, and non-artists don’t. And I couldn’t even say that they’re saying “everyone can be an artist and create universes out of thin air” because they’re clearly drawing a line between artists and non-artists (in which they consider, at the very least, oligarchs to be).
That’s a good article. I think I had seen it before but not read through it in full.
Yeah, it’s interesting how the motives and narrative shift in response to the changing conditions. And I think it is aligned with communist goals and views to insist that art does not arise from “special talent only reserved for a select group” but from a mixture of predispositions and applied process like any other capability (an example of predispositions and their impact being how most people can learn to sing, but a limited number have perfect pitch… this doesn’t mean only those with perfect pitch are “real musicians”, it just means they will have an easier time becoming a skilled musician, all other things being equal, than those who don’t). It reminds me of the idea of bridging the developed gap between “intellectual” and “worker”. The gap between “artist” and “worker” appears to have a similar kind of line drawing going on that will need to be overcome. But artists who are stuck seeing themselves as transcendent beings tapping into something mystical will have a harder time relating to the factory worker whose labor is also being exploited in various ways.
Honestly I can understand now why Juche includes the paintbrush lol. Kim Jong Il wrote a book on Cinema – and by book I mean a 500 pages monster. I uploaded it to ProleWiki actually: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/File:On-The-Art-Of-The-Cinema.pdf.
There’s bourgeois art and there’s proletarian art, much like there is bourgeois philosophy and proletarian philosophy.
Oooh, that’s neat, bookmarking to look at later. I remember hearing in passing about his interest in cinema on one of the Blowback Podcast episodes on Korea, but I didn’t know that much detail about it.
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Look, I don’t take “no investigation, no right to speak” as some kind of literal doctrine to follow, but Mao did have a point about the value of investigating rather than pure “brain cudgeling”. And it’s evident because I have investigated that anyone making a statement like this has not done shit to investigate the situation with generative AI.
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At face value this is just a dehumanizing comment. You’re basically saying some people have no soul, and the soul is understood to be a wholly human thing. As materialists we don’t believe in the soul (a. it’s a metaphysical concept and b. where is it located? It’s clearly not an organ) but that’s why @amemorablename and I used it between quotes.
And so what, everyone who works on AI, even the engineers who are finding medical applications to save lives, are soulless just on virtue of the stuff they work on? Even the workers who were shuffled into AI research instead of idk Youtube UX, because that’s where their boss wants them to be now?
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So you admit to just dehumanizing people?
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I’ll be honest “my guy” I truly don’t care for your trolling. You would probably fit better on 8chan or similar image boards because you both share hate for the working class and think dehumanizing people is a valid strategy. Ironically it’s the anti-ai crowd that is closer to the “soulless” fascists than the pro-AI crowd judging from this type of language.
I’m just gonna put this here as a warning, it’s not okay to dehumanize people just because you don’t like or agree with them and we will start to moderate on this. If you can’t have conversations without pulling these types of arguments then just don’t say anything.
So you are also dehumanizing people like Cao Jun, a visually impaired developer, that is working with AI to make screens “speak,” thereby enabling people with visual impairments to navigate phones and computers more effectively.
In other words, you are dehumanizing someone that is actively working with the AI to make a software that is now serving over 400,000 visually impaired users.
Removed by mod