I could talk about this all day, but I think the struggle, as you say, is so important to how we make art. I've heard a lot of people suggest that this will democratize art (everyone can make it now!) but I think that sorely misses the point about what art is and what artists do. The difficulty isn't coming up with the ideas or concepts to feed into a prompt machine, it's in finding the right language to communicate with another person, to share in the common experience and struggle about what it means to be alive. The books you read, the art you study--consuming and thinking about existing art takes hours, and this too is part of the creative process. Prompting a machine to write a novel in the style of Hemingway does not mean you can write like Hemingway. I'm reading Mario Vargas Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture, and you could say I have some FEELINGS.
I love this comment and it gets to the heart of some of the disconnect in conversations. People saying "this can write/do art FOR you" leave me baffled. Why would I want that?! Do they not understand why people write? It's not for the pay! It's like saying that the only purpose of walking would ever be to get somewhere. I like walking because I like being alive.
Process is it's own reward - and I think those of us who have chosen, and have been talking about, the slow lane for years now (slow food, slow art, slow writing, slow sewing in my case), will just have to hunker down in our eddies until this wave of capitalism washes over. Or at least that's my plan.
"We are inviting this tool to do our things for us" is the part I ask people to pause at. Who's the "we" here? Some people are playing around with seeing what art it can generate, yes, but for the most part the "we" are the already highly paid people who want to see even more enormous profits and think they can do that by replacing people (and their pesky sick days and health insurance policies and wages) with AI.
Naomi Klein had probably the best piece on the actual risks in this regard (including environmental; the energy this stuff needs to function is mind-boggling) in The Guardian, but I really love science fiction writer Catherynne Valente's essay about it. It's fierce and ragey and on fire and well worth reading if only for passages like this: "ChatGPT doesn’t need to feel alive. It will go as long as we put things into it to make it go. Not us though! We aren’t going to face the emptiness life without the buffer of art and distraction, are you kidding me? Take away the cashier position and no one is going to ring up groceries to fulfill their own needs and longings. It’s not a thing. Take away art and we’re going to art harder just to spite you."
(Also, for anyone who wants a detailed breakdown of why self-driving cars are unlikely to ever be much of our future, there's an infrequent newsletter written by someone who used to run an autonomous vehicle company and does a great job explaining why they don't work: https://apperceptive.substack.com/p/driving-is-a-social-process)
One of the things I've written about frequently over the years is technology and choice. There's an accepted myth that American's wanted a car-centric world, for example, but the industry in fact spent decades and enormous amounts of money forcing that world on us and then persuading us it was the one we wanted. Car dominance was fought really hard in the early 1900s after World War I. The big questions for me are always: are "we" choosing this technology, and even if we do, do we have any say in what its impact on our lives will be?
hmm, well, some of us are definitely choosing it (I could name names), and some of us are rejecting it (me, at minimum). Also, gaslit by the auto industry? I'm sure that has never happened before re opioids or capitalism or the insurance companies or carbon emissions or I don't know, now I'm just ranting because none of it is surprising, after all.
Oh! And yes, people are and will choose to use it. It's the "we" I always get stuck on, but that's true of everything for me. "Who is the 'we' we're talking about" is something I'm always wondering.
(Also, a friend of mine's sister teaches public health and said she just redesigned her curriculum so exclude essays because she has no way of knowing if students use AI to write them. That brought me up short, but then I wondered if in-class discussion might become more important.)
😂 Yeah, there's a technology historian at the University of Virginia, Peter Norton, who has all the receipts on the auto industry, including eventual creation of think tanks that then led into decisive government positions and pushing for a highway system. It's a long story, and businesses who profited by denying climate change (and smoking's harms before that) definitely learned from it.
Good stuff Anna. I think AI is a great tool for those of us who have already gone through the perseverance of learning, but what will it do for the next generation? What will they learn instead, that we would have if we weren't busy bumping our heads against our own mistakes time and again?
So true! We're always learning. My sister does trauma-informed management trainings, and I'd never even heard of trauma-informed management until a few years ago. Talk about learning to communicate differently.
I appreciate that. I liked your other comment too, and was replying to it when the screen refreshed with this one. I guess I view it like I look at a good calculator, as a time saving tool. I write code as part of my job, and I can tell ChatGBT to write a routine that does A, B, and C. That's mundane stuff that it does well. Then I can go edit it to add any tricky parts to the algorithm. So as an inherently not-creative person, maybe I look at things differently.
I was wondering what your thoughts are around what people will choose to learn and how they will choose to be creative now that AI has removed a lot of challenges. There is a cottage industry around using AI to replicate singers' voices and musical styles. I've seen some interesting AI art. It's even getting into human relationships (tell me this isn't disturbing on at least one level if not many--https://fortune.com/2023/05/09/snapchat-influencer-launches-carynai-virtual-girlfriend-bot-openai-gpt4/). I believe that people WILL learn, but the question is what?
I get your point and some I like and agree. It is very ableist to say that because you and others are able to do these hard tasks and had the privilege of education and time and resources to learn than it is bad for people to use these tools to try to work and connect and create. I am a home health care helper and I have been using GPT in Microsoft to help my clients some are well in their 70s and 80s write letters to health care doctors and medicare offices to write letters to disagree with care decisions. There is no writer to help and no lawyer to draw up the letters and i cannot help. i also use ai apps to help my patients take their old photos and make them easier to see and take out the wrinkles and folds because of the age. I don't think it right to say your use of these new websites is ok and everyrone else is not right and disgusting because you draw a line.
I love this Anna, thank you. Hurray for real people & let's hope realness triumphs in the long term...
I could talk about this all day, but I think the struggle, as you say, is so important to how we make art. I've heard a lot of people suggest that this will democratize art (everyone can make it now!) but I think that sorely misses the point about what art is and what artists do. The difficulty isn't coming up with the ideas or concepts to feed into a prompt machine, it's in finding the right language to communicate with another person, to share in the common experience and struggle about what it means to be alive. The books you read, the art you study--consuming and thinking about existing art takes hours, and this too is part of the creative process. Prompting a machine to write a novel in the style of Hemingway does not mean you can write like Hemingway. I'm reading Mario Vargas Llosa's Notes on the Death of Culture, and you could say I have some FEELINGS.
I love this comment and it gets to the heart of some of the disconnect in conversations. People saying "this can write/do art FOR you" leave me baffled. Why would I want that?! Do they not understand why people write? It's not for the pay! It's like saying that the only purpose of walking would ever be to get somewhere. I like walking because I like being alive.
Process is it's own reward - and I think those of us who have chosen, and have been talking about, the slow lane for years now (slow food, slow art, slow writing, slow sewing in my case), will just have to hunker down in our eddies until this wave of capitalism washes over. Or at least that's my plan.
I am very much a process person -- always good to keep company with others!
@antonia Check your email for one from me :-)
When I hear speed...I just hear money. No one needs more “efficiency” they just want cheap labor. 💔💔
Footnote 1! Do I laugh or cry?!
"We are inviting this tool to do our things for us" is the part I ask people to pause at. Who's the "we" here? Some people are playing around with seeing what art it can generate, yes, but for the most part the "we" are the already highly paid people who want to see even more enormous profits and think they can do that by replacing people (and their pesky sick days and health insurance policies and wages) with AI.
Naomi Klein had probably the best piece on the actual risks in this regard (including environmental; the energy this stuff needs to function is mind-boggling) in The Guardian, but I really love science fiction writer Catherynne Valente's essay about it. It's fierce and ragey and on fire and well worth reading if only for passages like this: "ChatGPT doesn’t need to feel alive. It will go as long as we put things into it to make it go. Not us though! We aren’t going to face the emptiness life without the buffer of art and distraction, are you kidding me? Take away the cashier position and no one is going to ring up groceries to fulfill their own needs and longings. It’s not a thing. Take away art and we’re going to art harder just to spite you."
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/the-great-replacement-not-that-one?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
(Also, for anyone who wants a detailed breakdown of why self-driving cars are unlikely to ever be much of our future, there's an infrequent newsletter written by someone who used to run an autonomous vehicle company and does a great job explaining why they don't work: https://apperceptive.substack.com/p/driving-is-a-social-process)
I have to think about all this but I do love "art" as a verb.
Me too!
One of the things I've written about frequently over the years is technology and choice. There's an accepted myth that American's wanted a car-centric world, for example, but the industry in fact spent decades and enormous amounts of money forcing that world on us and then persuading us it was the one we wanted. Car dominance was fought really hard in the early 1900s after World War I. The big questions for me are always: are "we" choosing this technology, and even if we do, do we have any say in what its impact on our lives will be?
hmm, well, some of us are definitely choosing it (I could name names), and some of us are rejecting it (me, at minimum). Also, gaslit by the auto industry? I'm sure that has never happened before re opioids or capitalism or the insurance companies or carbon emissions or I don't know, now I'm just ranting because none of it is surprising, after all.
Oh! And yes, people are and will choose to use it. It's the "we" I always get stuck on, but that's true of everything for me. "Who is the 'we' we're talking about" is something I'm always wondering.
(Also, a friend of mine's sister teaches public health and said she just redesigned her curriculum so exclude essays because she has no way of knowing if students use AI to write them. That brought me up short, but then I wondered if in-class discussion might become more important.)
😂 Yeah, there's a technology historian at the University of Virginia, Peter Norton, who has all the receipts on the auto industry, including eventual creation of think tanks that then led into decisive government positions and pushing for a highway system. It's a long story, and businesses who profited by denying climate change (and smoking's harms before that) definitely learned from it.
Good stuff Anna. I think AI is a great tool for those of us who have already gone through the perseverance of learning, but what will it do for the next generation? What will they learn instead, that we would have if we weren't busy bumping our heads against our own mistakes time and again?
I disagree with pretty much everything you said here but appreciate the conversation.
💣
Do you disagree that it can be a good tool for those of us who have already learned to compose and communicate? I'm a little curious about that.
I do like the way you think though. :)
I reject the idea that there is an end point to learning to compose and communicate.
So true! We're always learning. My sister does trauma-informed management trainings, and I'd never even heard of trauma-informed management until a few years ago. Talk about learning to communicate differently.
I appreciate that. I liked your other comment too, and was replying to it when the screen refreshed with this one. I guess I view it like I look at a good calculator, as a time saving tool. I write code as part of my job, and I can tell ChatGBT to write a routine that does A, B, and C. That's mundane stuff that it does well. Then I can go edit it to add any tricky parts to the algorithm. So as an inherently not-creative person, maybe I look at things differently.
I was wondering what your thoughts are around what people will choose to learn and how they will choose to be creative now that AI has removed a lot of challenges. There is a cottage industry around using AI to replicate singers' voices and musical styles. I've seen some interesting AI art. It's even getting into human relationships (tell me this isn't disturbing on at least one level if not many--https://fortune.com/2023/05/09/snapchat-influencer-launches-carynai-virtual-girlfriend-bot-openai-gpt4/). I believe that people WILL learn, but the question is what?
I get your point and some I like and agree. It is very ableist to say that because you and others are able to do these hard tasks and had the privilege of education and time and resources to learn than it is bad for people to use these tools to try to work and connect and create. I am a home health care helper and I have been using GPT in Microsoft to help my clients some are well in their 70s and 80s write letters to health care doctors and medicare offices to write letters to disagree with care decisions. There is no writer to help and no lawyer to draw up the letters and i cannot help. i also use ai apps to help my patients take their old photos and make them easier to see and take out the wrinkles and folds because of the age. I don't think it right to say your use of these new websites is ok and everyrone else is not right and disgusting because you draw a line.
Thanks for your thoughts. I’ll keep them in mind.
How do you plant a garden during lunch hour? Ask AI.
Did you see the photo? There are like 6 plants. I put them in the ground AND ate my lunch during that hour!