Great points; I just hope the bots aren't taking notes and strategizing a work around. I'm still positively shook by that recent AI theft of your *immediately recognizable* work. And the audacity of that brand to leave it UP after so many of us posted nasty-grams in the comments(!) . . . Crazy times.
Playing devil’s advocate here: AI systems trained on AI-generated outputs degrade. Each generation loses fidelity to the distribution of human-created content. The technical literature calls this “model autophagy disorder” or just collapse. Synthetic content as training data produces progressively worse synthetic content. Which means human creation isn’t just optional fuel, it’s the substrate preventing recursive degradation. It’s not in their best interest to alienate the teachers that trained their student.
Mimicry is the best form of flattery. Mimicry with a paycheck should be institutional.
Solution: Why not create multimodal art? Make art that exists in dimensions. One that requires physical human visitation, another that transcends platforms, another the machine can eat. There’s a certain beauty watching a machine attempt to regurgitate and choke on the philosophy that drove human ingenuity as both it's cure and poison that births the answer to its own problem it can't compute.
I like that idea. I think transparency would really help. Maybe it could save things. I’m cynical to a fault sometimes. To compare to another realm… the search results now have a summary so you don’t need to visit the website. So traffic drops. So why would anybody make a website? But now the AI has less to train on. It’s not in the best interest of either party, it just collapses. Potentially.
My devil’s argument assumes the beast stops getting fed. It won't stop being fed. I see your article as an appeal to other artists stop mindlessly feeding it.
It’s appetite is voracious however and true art is rare because of the human cost few are willing to accept. I dont think we will ever have to worry that particular rarity will become commonplace because the absurd paradox that affords us freedom to choose self-destructuon toward revelation… which is uniquely human. That’s not something a machine could ever optimize. Slop is slop because it lacks risk and rigor. There are businesses and craftsmen devoted to populating suberbia with trite design garbage and then there’s Saul Bass or Milton Glaser, both living inside the same industrial monster. I think algorithmic art, without rigorous intention, will choke on its own appetite eating the fast-food-risk-averse philosophy of the masses, but maybe I’m optimistic.
AI music has gotten real good as you noted. In that video, he makes the argument that AI is here and it's weeding out people who actually are not artists -- they only wanted the validation of being an artists. The question he poses is if all your gear (to make music in this case) was destroyed tonight, would you get it back? If no, then well, maybe you aren't in it for the right reasons.
I see where he is coming from but I'm not totally sure. In any case, it's the same conclusion. Stay weird :)
There are already artists paid to wear Go-Pro’s throughout their process and messy studio life to attempt to train AI’s in the idiosyncratic thought process of creatives. The simulation will get better—-but they can’t scrape our imagination. But will our audience care? We can’t assume they will and all of us who are focused on human-led art need to share and support each other. This is not about anti-technology, it is about demanding that tech tools lead to human flourishing and not the destruction of cultural production for the benefit of the few.
It’s again trying to instrumentalize what we do. It’s like assembling creativity from a kit. The problem with the AI recipe is the missing ingredient can’t be scraped—-our imagination. I’m an optimist as well, but a realist in how humans make terrible choices and decisions—-this battle for human led art is worth fighting.
This is so true that it makes me feel quite sick. But equally hopeful and excited for more of us that share our authenticity and flaws, something that has needed to come for a long time even before AI.
I love this. I've recently finished my first novel and when I started it 3 years ago(!) none of this AI craziness was on anyone's radar. Now I'm competing with everybody and their grandmother who just also wrote a novel but in 3 weeks (days?) with AI. Your post here has me considering publishing it but with like a screen shot of the 475 different drafts of it since I started. Haha! I laugh so I don't cry.
Congrats on your novel! I thought I was done writing, too, because of AI. Amazingly, my resistance to outsourcing my words to a bot hasn’t hurt me. People still want the real stuff.
Thank you! Agreed. I think people can tell ultimately. But even if they can’t, I'm of the mind that writing is more for myself - at first at least - and then if anyone else is interested all the better. But if not, that’s okay too.
Great points; I just hope the bots aren't taking notes and strategizing a work around. I'm still positively shook by that recent AI theft of your *immediately recognizable* work. And the audacity of that brand to leave it UP after so many of us posted nasty-grams in the comments(!) . . . Crazy times.
Playing devil’s advocate here: AI systems trained on AI-generated outputs degrade. Each generation loses fidelity to the distribution of human-created content. The technical literature calls this “model autophagy disorder” or just collapse. Synthetic content as training data produces progressively worse synthetic content. Which means human creation isn’t just optional fuel, it’s the substrate preventing recursive degradation. It’s not in their best interest to alienate the teachers that trained their student.
Mimicry is the best form of flattery. Mimicry with a paycheck should be institutional.
Solution: Why not create multimodal art? Make art that exists in dimensions. One that requires physical human visitation, another that transcends platforms, another the machine can eat. There’s a certain beauty watching a machine attempt to regurgitate and choke on the philosophy that drove human ingenuity as both it's cure and poison that births the answer to its own problem it can't compute.
I like that idea. I think transparency would really help. Maybe it could save things. I’m cynical to a fault sometimes. To compare to another realm… the search results now have a summary so you don’t need to visit the website. So traffic drops. So why would anybody make a website? But now the AI has less to train on. It’s not in the best interest of either party, it just collapses. Potentially.
My devil’s argument assumes the beast stops getting fed. It won't stop being fed. I see your article as an appeal to other artists stop mindlessly feeding it.
It’s appetite is voracious however and true art is rare because of the human cost few are willing to accept. I dont think we will ever have to worry that particular rarity will become commonplace because the absurd paradox that affords us freedom to choose self-destructuon toward revelation… which is uniquely human. That’s not something a machine could ever optimize. Slop is slop because it lacks risk and rigor. There are businesses and craftsmen devoted to populating suberbia with trite design garbage and then there’s Saul Bass or Milton Glaser, both living inside the same industrial monster. I think algorithmic art, without rigorous intention, will choke on its own appetite eating the fast-food-risk-averse philosophy of the masses, but maybe I’m optimistic.
There was a YouTube video by a music producer just released today. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkNdnPYtXRw).
AI music has gotten real good as you noted. In that video, he makes the argument that AI is here and it's weeding out people who actually are not artists -- they only wanted the validation of being an artists. The question he poses is if all your gear (to make music in this case) was destroyed tonight, would you get it back? If no, then well, maybe you aren't in it for the right reasons.
I see where he is coming from but I'm not totally sure. In any case, it's the same conclusion. Stay weird :)
Thanks for that video. The “would you replace it” test is a good frame.
Long live creative weirdos!
AI is a copycat, not an artistic creator. We need to make sure that humanity never loses that.
The mistakes and happy accidents are the signature of individuality.
There are already artists paid to wear Go-Pro’s throughout their process and messy studio life to attempt to train AI’s in the idiosyncratic thought process of creatives. The simulation will get better—-but they can’t scrape our imagination. But will our audience care? We can’t assume they will and all of us who are focused on human-led art need to share and support each other. This is not about anti-technology, it is about demanding that tech tools lead to human flourishing and not the destruction of cultural production for the benefit of the few.
I did not know about the GoPro AI training. That is nuts.
It’s again trying to instrumentalize what we do. It’s like assembling creativity from a kit. The problem with the AI recipe is the missing ingredient can’t be scraped—-our imagination. I’m an optimist as well, but a realist in how humans make terrible choices and decisions—-this battle for human led art is worth fighting.
This is so true that it makes me feel quite sick. But equally hopeful and excited for more of us that share our authenticity and flaws, something that has needed to come for a long time even before AI.
So you’re saying I should double down on the monkeys? Got it
I love this. I've recently finished my first novel and when I started it 3 years ago(!) none of this AI craziness was on anyone's radar. Now I'm competing with everybody and their grandmother who just also wrote a novel but in 3 weeks (days?) with AI. Your post here has me considering publishing it but with like a screen shot of the 475 different drafts of it since I started. Haha! I laugh so I don't cry.
Congrats on your novel! I thought I was done writing, too, because of AI. Amazingly, my resistance to outsourcing my words to a bot hasn’t hurt me. People still want the real stuff.
Thank you! Agreed. I think people can tell ultimately. But even if they can’t, I'm of the mind that writing is more for myself - at first at least - and then if anyone else is interested all the better. But if not, that’s okay too.