It seems you are using "art" to cover everything from MoMA-level work to basic commercial illustration - that's a big range to make blanket statements about. There is a huge range in between, just like the craft of writing can range from Nobel prize literature to genre (sci-fi, romance) and to Buzzfeed-like listicles, or just like telling stories with video and music ranges from Apocalypse Now to your average Netflix series to 10-second TikTok entertainment. AI tools have completely taken over (and "enshittified" as Cory Doctorow says) one end of the range, are being deployed to massively improve productivity/volume in the middle, but are and will remain an option, at the discretion of the artist, at the high end.
Yep. I did use a big brush because the focus wasn't about the lower level enshitification but the subjectivity of value + the important role of human thought within all art. What you describe is one way to understand where human generated content adds the most value. But there's a nuance here in that 'highbrow' art has always looked down on genre's like fiction. Even within the authoring community there's layers of 'merit?' between styles.
But I dont think it matters what level it is. There's value in human effort and threat from shitty use of AI.
Good post. Funnily enough I just posted my own take on the AI vs. Art question earlier today.
I work as both an artist and a graphic designer, and I feel the threat of AI in both fields. But what I've come to realise (and this is only partially articulated in my own essay) is that in regards to my artwork, I think engaging with the question is incredibly valuable, but I don't care about finding "the answer". For me, the finished work (usually collage) is less important than the time spent with it. To me it would have little/no value if it came from an LLM (or smaller, more specialised AI tool). The value is in the time spent, engaging with the piece, and making the decisions. And whether the finished product is good, whether it's "creative" or "original", or pretentious (your examples were maybe a little too cherry-picked :)), so be it. Working as an artist is making the work.
Anyway, thanks again and looking forward to more essays.
Great thoughts. My view changed a lot as I wrote this and I came to value the process a lot more. It's interesting to mix AI into that process like the title art for these essays. What's fascinating is that the difficulty in articulating the prompts for this one's art ended up being a trigger that shifted my view.
I am not an artist (unless you consider coding creative, which some people do and others think as an engineering field. I am fine either way), so what I am saying below needs to be read from an outsider's angle. Some of my thoughts will overlap with what you have written, and others will be just my thoughts on the topic of GenAI, irrespective of where we are using it:
Positive long-term impact:
1. Democratization and Accessibility: AI can potentially make art creation more accessible to a broader range of people, democratizing the artistic process and enriching diversity. Since it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, it will allow more people from different cultures and backgrounds to contribute to the field of art.
2. Hybrid art and experimentation: At least for a while, humans and AI working together may bring innovations in the field of art. Also, it will allow quick prototyping, which will help quickly generate and/or refine ideas, which is currently difficult. This may lead to new techniques and styles.
3. Learning tool: AI can serve as a learning tool, inspiring artists to learn and develop their skills more effectively and faster.
4. Opportunity: Would a tsunami of people create art like NFTs? I don't know, but it may happen. However, more people will likely see this as an opportunity to market and develop digital art.
5. Streamline building the art: I think AI can streamline some parts of the art-building process so the artists can focus more on the creative aspects of the art.
Negative long-term impact:
1. Quality vs. Quantity: Will the lower barrier to entry flood the market? I think the answer is yes. However, it may also devalue art and discourage people from becoming artists, making it harder to earn a living.
2. Overreliance and depth: we generally become dependent on technology and sometimes stop applying our judgment and creativity. It may happen here, too, leading to a decline in craftsmanship and artistic skills. Additionally, AI-generated art may lack the depth and emotional and personal expression that only comes from years of training and experience.
3. Homogeneity: if all rely on the same tools and similar AI algorithms, our art will look and feel the same. Several months ago, I talked to one of my friends about this topic, even about using AI co-pilot for work-related writing. I said that we may all sound very similar in the future, and our writing style will be identical, too. We may see the same effect in the art. The unique qualities that make an artist's work distinctive could be overshadowed by the ubiquity of AI-generated art.
However, it will depend on how the artist community adopts AI and how we train our future artists. We must ensure that we teach art so that students still build a strong foundation in the art before they are introduced to AI and that we do not outsource our creativity and style to AI but use AI to enhance our artistic process and quick prototyping.
One thing I see a lot today, and I want to avoid at all costs in a creative field like art, is people's inability to add two-digit numbers without a calculator, as I consider art a significant part of what it means to be human.
Wonderful points. I see so much value but the swill online is getting worse with AI but also easier to spot because of AI.
What I worry about with the reaction is a "one drop rule" for AI. For instance, because my title images are AI does that mean my entire essay is flagged that way?
Amazon has an ID feature but it doesn't have nuance. It makes it sound like any AI is all AI and that makes artists worried to even acknowledge the use.
It doesn't help that we have very vocal purists who will shame it's use either.
I know a doctor who has created a series of prompts and leverages with material from the Culture Map (a fantastic book on cultural communication) to basically say:
Gender
Age
Ethnicity / Culture
Diagnosis
Who else is in the room
And then has AI highlight cultural implications, suggest things to say / avoid and proposes a few ways.
It sounds terrible but he's been a doctor for 20 years and he's seen it all so he found he had lost empathy. This was a super fast way to take a pause in a busy day, ensure he was looking at the whole patient, and force himself to rethink the situation.
When you fail to differentiate Modern from Contemporary art, call avant-garde performance art "cringe" and use soyjaks to articulate your argument why should anyone take your stance seriously? The argument about photography being a good comparison to AI is also extremely poor, as if the lens and sensors themselves are responsible for choosing the subject, composition, and the thousands of other conscious choices a photographer makes. Semantic arguments are about as pointless as they come so there's no point in dissecting what is or isn't "art" but what we can pinpoint is effort and skill, both of which are completely incompatible with """prompt engineering""". You can smear the argument and it's facts all you want but you will never convince anyone with half a brain that these tools are anything but a crutch for the lazy and uninspired.
That's certainly one way to enter into reasonable dialogue. I'll pick photography for $500 because you missed that one even worse than your other attempted dismissals.
First, Painters did protest photographers. That was part of my point.
Second, current cameras are not like the first film cameras. The divide between digital and film shoots your critique in the face. The autofocus, auto ISO, auto everything including grid-lines and composure recommendations basically boils the conscious choices a photographer makes down to a few. Then go to cell phones and it's even more (which is why photographers were railing against cell phone cameras...)
Third, your critique wasn't my argument at all but you did provide a few good examples that further support my argument so I appreciate that. I'm not trying to convince those with half a brain... I'm going for the full brain. I don't think I could convince someone with half a brain as the topic is just too nuanced and they'd lack the ability to keep up.
Do you think art photographers don't shoot in manual? Do you think that studio photographers don't adjust their ISO? Does a camera chose its own lens? Have you met an artist in your entire life? It's extremely telling that you assume someone using a technologically advanced tool for personal expression will do so in the laziest manner possible. I have no stake in this as I'm not a professional creative but the attempt to legitimize AI produced material as anything besides a party trick is embarrassing.
Now you're making specious arguments. Don't strawman. It's not a good look.
I am an artist. I cut my teeth with an Olympus OM2 doing sports photography in highschool and moved through all the camera types shooting for newspapers through college. I've done videography work making my own mountain biking and snowboarding videos. I'm a published author with two books out and a third in draft. I have a large and growing audience here of aspiring polymaths where I write non fiction that explores what it means to be human.
So... I do have a stake in this and I do have context for my arguments. Your closing statement is perfect proof for why I wrote this essay to begin with.
whoa whoa whoa, I came here to listen to yelling, not a conversation about how this is a complex issue. I'm out.
In all sincerity, I have had the strong feeling of people arguing more about definitions than about anything else. I need to write about this ASAP, and I think this essay just pushed me a little over the edge. On art generation in particular, I feel strongly that many more people will be empowered to be creative in the long term, but the short term will be ugly and divisive as there seems to be more destruction than benefit.. but behavior will change, and people will quickly realize that they can have vastly more creative agency with these tools than without them.
There's a ton more to say about reasonable compensation for all the art that has ever been made, and how to get permission to train models in the future, and those are still important problems to solve, but we should not let all the challenges blind us to the tremendous potential.
I think in the short term we need to protect artists from AI but in the long term we need to learn to integrate it into the creative process. This is part of why I have trouble with techno utopian people. Someone recently said that a dock which was entirely functioning on AI was happening now in some countries and will be the future. That there's no way to stop it. The problem is this person also doesn't want to compensate any dock workers who might lose their jobs because of being replaced by a machine.
My own view is that we may need in the short term "human jobs for humans" legislation which protects human beings from being replaced by artificially intelligent machines. To discourage companies from destroying human meaning through work. But once we have machines who can think for themselves? We might need to repeal that legislation and simply allow a thinking machine to have legal autonomy over itself.
I guess, would this have applied back in the day to all the horse related people when automobiles came along? Should there have been human jobs for humans?
That’s a terrible example but for the sake of argument I will take it on.
You don’t need a “human jobs for humans” program where you protect people’s jobs when it comes to the horse drawn carriage. Partly because the rate of technological change was much slower back then. But there is an argument to be made that the government should provide financial assistance to horse drawn carriage drivers to be retrained as taxi drivers.
The reason it’s a terrible example is because in that case? Humans were still involved in the process. What you’re talking about now is eliminating the job of taxi drivers entirely. You can’t just hand wave that away with reference to horse drawn carriages.
People are going to need something to do and if you don’t give it to them you get into seriously dangerous territory. You can’t just eliminate the idea of taxi drivers and dock workers entirely and expect people to be okay.
We saw this in part after the 2008 financial crisis and the policies of austerity. Many governments provided tax breaks to companies who implemented technological changes in terms of internet. For instance, websites with FAQs on them and self checkouts at grocery stores. As a result, telephone customer service workers were downsized and grocery cashiers went from 8 cashiers to 2 during peak hours.
But when grocery cashiers complained, the response from governments who eliminated people’s jobs is “learn to code”. That’s not going to work forever. Especially when companies eliminate human beings entirely. There are fast food companies who are implementing AI drive throughs. Companies are looking at creating human like robots who can move packages around in warehouses and load trucks, which will probably be self driving in the future.
What exactly do you expect humans to do when they no longer have work to give their lives meaning? Just smile and be happy about it?
The thing that bothers me more though is the lack of thought many techno utopians have put into their view of the world. Some will actually make these arguments in the same period of time.
Human beings need work because it gives their lives meaning.
Other forms of meaning are inherently wrong or evil. Work is the only thing that gives anyone meaning.
Governments are taking away people’s jobs through bad policies.
Companies are eliminating jobs because it’s good for business.
People who are complaining about the inability to get work are just whiny people who want the government to do everything for them.
UBI is a terrible policy.
These ideas conflict in multiple ways. Yet it never occurs to them that it does. But they’re also big on “there are no win-win scenarios, only trade offs”.
Artists might be wise to remember this history of creative innovation.
For example, when photography was invented artists were outraged.
Most artists of the time viewed photography as an existential threat to art.
Sound familiar? 🤔
For example influential artist Charles Baudelaire described photography as ‘arts most mortal enemy’ and ‘a medium that would supplant or corrupt art entirely’
Other leading artists such as turner, Delarouche and Flaubert predicted photography would lead to the death of art and make it obsolete.
Well, I guess we see how that turned out…
I’m wondering if it might be more helpful for artists to study a bit more history?
Without which perhaps artists might be doomed to repeat endlessly cycles of extreme distress, and poor mental health, for all eternity I wonder?
Exactly right. The more I dug in, the more I found the pattern of "extreme distress, and poor mental health" of artists reacting to technology. Hopefully they aren't doomed to repeat but right now the odds aren't looking good. 🙃
Dude - I love reading your posts because so often they reflect a current topic I'm eyeballs deep into. What rattled my cage lately were the protest signs the longshoremen were sporting "No Automation" "Automation Hurts Families" and such. It seems short-sighted, given the technologies their industry has ushered in. My post later today will explore -
Thanks! I was just talking about that automation issue this weekend. As if those longshoremen are still hauling bags of wheat from the bowels of a ship or handcarting crates. the Shipping Container has already revolutionized logistics and increased our oppulance.
try and find a $20/hr cashier in Cali for fast-food - not happening - order on that screen over there, pay on that screen there, pick it up from that auto-locker over there
Many good points here. I think one "rosy" way to look at the potential of AI is to see it as freeing you up to take up the TYPE of creativity that you truly enjoy. As a writer, I can get help to generate the images I have in my mind but can't draw, which frees up my time to focus on honing my writing skills. On the flip side, a painery can throw themselves at their art while having AI write e.g. grant proposals, applications for galleries, etc. So you can choose to use AI in a way that gives you room to be more creative in the discipline that you find the most fulfilling.
It seems you are using "art" to cover everything from MoMA-level work to basic commercial illustration - that's a big range to make blanket statements about. There is a huge range in between, just like the craft of writing can range from Nobel prize literature to genre (sci-fi, romance) and to Buzzfeed-like listicles, or just like telling stories with video and music ranges from Apocalypse Now to your average Netflix series to 10-second TikTok entertainment. AI tools have completely taken over (and "enshittified" as Cory Doctorow says) one end of the range, are being deployed to massively improve productivity/volume in the middle, but are and will remain an option, at the discretion of the artist, at the high end.
Yep. I did use a big brush because the focus wasn't about the lower level enshitification but the subjectivity of value + the important role of human thought within all art. What you describe is one way to understand where human generated content adds the most value. But there's a nuance here in that 'highbrow' art has always looked down on genre's like fiction. Even within the authoring community there's layers of 'merit?' between styles.
But I dont think it matters what level it is. There's value in human effort and threat from shitty use of AI.
Good post. Funnily enough I just posted my own take on the AI vs. Art question earlier today.
I work as both an artist and a graphic designer, and I feel the threat of AI in both fields. But what I've come to realise (and this is only partially articulated in my own essay) is that in regards to my artwork, I think engaging with the question is incredibly valuable, but I don't care about finding "the answer". For me, the finished work (usually collage) is less important than the time spent with it. To me it would have little/no value if it came from an LLM (or smaller, more specialised AI tool). The value is in the time spent, engaging with the piece, and making the decisions. And whether the finished product is good, whether it's "creative" or "original", or pretentious (your examples were maybe a little too cherry-picked :)), so be it. Working as an artist is making the work.
Anyway, thanks again and looking forward to more essays.
Great thoughts. My view changed a lot as I wrote this and I came to value the process a lot more. It's interesting to mix AI into that process like the title art for these essays. What's fascinating is that the difficulty in articulating the prompts for this one's art ended up being a trigger that shifted my view.
I am not an artist (unless you consider coding creative, which some people do and others think as an engineering field. I am fine either way), so what I am saying below needs to be read from an outsider's angle. Some of my thoughts will overlap with what you have written, and others will be just my thoughts on the topic of GenAI, irrespective of where we are using it:
Positive long-term impact:
1. Democratization and Accessibility: AI can potentially make art creation more accessible to a broader range of people, democratizing the artistic process and enriching diversity. Since it can be accessed from anywhere in the world, it will allow more people from different cultures and backgrounds to contribute to the field of art.
2. Hybrid art and experimentation: At least for a while, humans and AI working together may bring innovations in the field of art. Also, it will allow quick prototyping, which will help quickly generate and/or refine ideas, which is currently difficult. This may lead to new techniques and styles.
3. Learning tool: AI can serve as a learning tool, inspiring artists to learn and develop their skills more effectively and faster.
4. Opportunity: Would a tsunami of people create art like NFTs? I don't know, but it may happen. However, more people will likely see this as an opportunity to market and develop digital art.
5. Streamline building the art: I think AI can streamline some parts of the art-building process so the artists can focus more on the creative aspects of the art.
Negative long-term impact:
1. Quality vs. Quantity: Will the lower barrier to entry flood the market? I think the answer is yes. However, it may also devalue art and discourage people from becoming artists, making it harder to earn a living.
2. Overreliance and depth: we generally become dependent on technology and sometimes stop applying our judgment and creativity. It may happen here, too, leading to a decline in craftsmanship and artistic skills. Additionally, AI-generated art may lack the depth and emotional and personal expression that only comes from years of training and experience.
3. Homogeneity: if all rely on the same tools and similar AI algorithms, our art will look and feel the same. Several months ago, I talked to one of my friends about this topic, even about using AI co-pilot for work-related writing. I said that we may all sound very similar in the future, and our writing style will be identical, too. We may see the same effect in the art. The unique qualities that make an artist's work distinctive could be overshadowed by the ubiquity of AI-generated art.
However, it will depend on how the artist community adopts AI and how we train our future artists. We must ensure that we teach art so that students still build a strong foundation in the art before they are introduced to AI and that we do not outsource our creativity and style to AI but use AI to enhance our artistic process and quick prototyping.
One thing I see a lot today, and I want to avoid at all costs in a creative field like art, is people's inability to add two-digit numbers without a calculator, as I consider art a significant part of what it means to be human.
Wonderful points. I see so much value but the swill online is getting worse with AI but also easier to spot because of AI.
What I worry about with the reaction is a "one drop rule" for AI. For instance, because my title images are AI does that mean my entire essay is flagged that way?
Amazon has an ID feature but it doesn't have nuance. It makes it sound like any AI is all AI and that makes artists worried to even acknowledge the use.
It doesn't help that we have very vocal purists who will shame it's use either.
Yes, I work with some of the purists, and one of them used this quote when I asked him why he is against it:
"Rather worn out instead of Rust Out."
I am all for using any tool to help refine my thoughts, but I am against outsourcing my brain to a tool that does thinking for me.
That there is the crux I discovered art helps me think better. If AI can help with that then good. But I'd be dumb if I used it to replace that.
I just read (https://ailogblog.substack.com/p/the-long-and-the-short-of-our-confidence?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true), and the post starts with:
“Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
There are two laws discrete
Not reconciled,
Law for man, and law for thing;
The last builds town and fleet,
But it runs wild,
And doth the man unking.”
"Ode, Inscribed to William H. Channing"—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Also, there was an opinion from a doctor yesterday, which I found interesting. Here is the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/05/opinion/ai-chatgpt-medicine-doctor.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb
I know a doctor who has created a series of prompts and leverages with material from the Culture Map (a fantastic book on cultural communication) to basically say:
Gender
Age
Ethnicity / Culture
Diagnosis
Who else is in the room
And then has AI highlight cultural implications, suggest things to say / avoid and proposes a few ways.
It sounds terrible but he's been a doctor for 20 years and he's seen it all so he found he had lost empathy. This was a super fast way to take a pause in a busy day, ensure he was looking at the whole patient, and force himself to rethink the situation.
When you fail to differentiate Modern from Contemporary art, call avant-garde performance art "cringe" and use soyjaks to articulate your argument why should anyone take your stance seriously? The argument about photography being a good comparison to AI is also extremely poor, as if the lens and sensors themselves are responsible for choosing the subject, composition, and the thousands of other conscious choices a photographer makes. Semantic arguments are about as pointless as they come so there's no point in dissecting what is or isn't "art" but what we can pinpoint is effort and skill, both of which are completely incompatible with """prompt engineering""". You can smear the argument and it's facts all you want but you will never convince anyone with half a brain that these tools are anything but a crutch for the lazy and uninspired.
That's certainly one way to enter into reasonable dialogue. I'll pick photography for $500 because you missed that one even worse than your other attempted dismissals.
First, Painters did protest photographers. That was part of my point.
Second, current cameras are not like the first film cameras. The divide between digital and film shoots your critique in the face. The autofocus, auto ISO, auto everything including grid-lines and composure recommendations basically boils the conscious choices a photographer makes down to a few. Then go to cell phones and it's even more (which is why photographers were railing against cell phone cameras...)
Third, your critique wasn't my argument at all but you did provide a few good examples that further support my argument so I appreciate that. I'm not trying to convince those with half a brain... I'm going for the full brain. I don't think I could convince someone with half a brain as the topic is just too nuanced and they'd lack the ability to keep up.
Do you think art photographers don't shoot in manual? Do you think that studio photographers don't adjust their ISO? Does a camera chose its own lens? Have you met an artist in your entire life? It's extremely telling that you assume someone using a technologically advanced tool for personal expression will do so in the laziest manner possible. I have no stake in this as I'm not a professional creative but the attempt to legitimize AI produced material as anything besides a party trick is embarrassing.
Here's a good primer for avoiding the strawman logical fallacies:
https://www.polymathicbeing.com/p/steelman
Now you're making specious arguments. Don't strawman. It's not a good look.
I am an artist. I cut my teeth with an Olympus OM2 doing sports photography in highschool and moved through all the camera types shooting for newspapers through college. I've done videography work making my own mountain biking and snowboarding videos. I'm a published author with two books out and a third in draft. I have a large and growing audience here of aspiring polymaths where I write non fiction that explores what it means to be human.
So... I do have a stake in this and I do have context for my arguments. Your closing statement is perfect proof for why I wrote this essay to begin with.
I have been thinking A LOT about Asimov and Clarke lately. Great post
I just dusted off my Asimov and there's a ton of interesting insights. What about Clarke has got you thinking?
HAL 9000 comes to mind, lol
Valid.
The integration of AI with art is amongst the most read about topics and tends to trend much higher and frequently.
It's very contentious that's for sure. Lots of extreme positions out there.
whoa whoa whoa, I came here to listen to yelling, not a conversation about how this is a complex issue. I'm out.
In all sincerity, I have had the strong feeling of people arguing more about definitions than about anything else. I need to write about this ASAP, and I think this essay just pushed me a little over the edge. On art generation in particular, I feel strongly that many more people will be empowered to be creative in the long term, but the short term will be ugly and divisive as there seems to be more destruction than benefit.. but behavior will change, and people will quickly realize that they can have vastly more creative agency with these tools than without them.
There's a ton more to say about reasonable compensation for all the art that has ever been made, and how to get permission to train models in the future, and those are still important problems to solve, but we should not let all the challenges blind us to the tremendous potential.
Totally agree. Maybe another collab?
Yeah, let me get the "arguing over definitions" one out there first. I've got it in my rolling queue, so probably publishing fairy soon.
I think in the short term we need to protect artists from AI but in the long term we need to learn to integrate it into the creative process. This is part of why I have trouble with techno utopian people. Someone recently said that a dock which was entirely functioning on AI was happening now in some countries and will be the future. That there's no way to stop it. The problem is this person also doesn't want to compensate any dock workers who might lose their jobs because of being replaced by a machine.
My own view is that we may need in the short term "human jobs for humans" legislation which protects human beings from being replaced by artificially intelligent machines. To discourage companies from destroying human meaning through work. But once we have machines who can think for themselves? We might need to repeal that legislation and simply allow a thinking machine to have legal autonomy over itself.
I guess, would this have applied back in the day to all the horse related people when automobiles came along? Should there have been human jobs for humans?
That’s a terrible example but for the sake of argument I will take it on.
You don’t need a “human jobs for humans” program where you protect people’s jobs when it comes to the horse drawn carriage. Partly because the rate of technological change was much slower back then. But there is an argument to be made that the government should provide financial assistance to horse drawn carriage drivers to be retrained as taxi drivers.
The reason it’s a terrible example is because in that case? Humans were still involved in the process. What you’re talking about now is eliminating the job of taxi drivers entirely. You can’t just hand wave that away with reference to horse drawn carriages.
People are going to need something to do and if you don’t give it to them you get into seriously dangerous territory. You can’t just eliminate the idea of taxi drivers and dock workers entirely and expect people to be okay.
We saw this in part after the 2008 financial crisis and the policies of austerity. Many governments provided tax breaks to companies who implemented technological changes in terms of internet. For instance, websites with FAQs on them and self checkouts at grocery stores. As a result, telephone customer service workers were downsized and grocery cashiers went from 8 cashiers to 2 during peak hours.
But when grocery cashiers complained, the response from governments who eliminated people’s jobs is “learn to code”. That’s not going to work forever. Especially when companies eliminate human beings entirely. There are fast food companies who are implementing AI drive throughs. Companies are looking at creating human like robots who can move packages around in warehouses and load trucks, which will probably be self driving in the future.
What exactly do you expect humans to do when they no longer have work to give their lives meaning? Just smile and be happy about it?
The thing that bothers me more though is the lack of thought many techno utopians have put into their view of the world. Some will actually make these arguments in the same period of time.
Human beings need work because it gives their lives meaning.
Other forms of meaning are inherently wrong or evil. Work is the only thing that gives anyone meaning.
Governments are taking away people’s jobs through bad policies.
Companies are eliminating jobs because it’s good for business.
People who are complaining about the inability to get work are just whiny people who want the government to do everything for them.
UBI is a terrible policy.
These ideas conflict in multiple ways. Yet it never occurs to them that it does. But they’re also big on “there are no win-win scenarios, only trade offs”.
Another good one, Michael. I love that you aren't shy in promoting your own works.
Thanks! I find it helps to build on themes and weave the threads together.
Lots of good thoughts here. Fancy, I just wrote on the same thing a bit ago. Thanks for taking the time and effort to share them. I enjoyed this. https://capturingdelight.com/blogs/news/the-coming-of-ai
There are a few of us in the same page it appears. Yours added a nice perspective!
Excellent post!
Artists might be wise to remember this history of creative innovation.
For example, when photography was invented artists were outraged.
Most artists of the time viewed photography as an existential threat to art.
Sound familiar? 🤔
For example influential artist Charles Baudelaire described photography as ‘arts most mortal enemy’ and ‘a medium that would supplant or corrupt art entirely’
Other leading artists such as turner, Delarouche and Flaubert predicted photography would lead to the death of art and make it obsolete.
Well, I guess we see how that turned out…
I’m wondering if it might be more helpful for artists to study a bit more history?
Without which perhaps artists might be doomed to repeat endlessly cycles of extreme distress, and poor mental health, for all eternity I wonder?
Art history… might be worth a look… 🙂👌🏽
https://medium.com/@aaronhertzmann/how-photography-became-an-art-form-7b74da777c63
Exactly right. The more I dug in, the more I found the pattern of "extreme distress, and poor mental health" of artists reacting to technology. Hopefully they aren't doomed to repeat but right now the odds aren't looking good. 🙃
Dude - I love reading your posts because so often they reflect a current topic I'm eyeballs deep into. What rattled my cage lately were the protest signs the longshoremen were sporting "No Automation" "Automation Hurts Families" and such. It seems short-sighted, given the technologies their industry has ushered in. My post later today will explore -
Thanks! I was just talking about that automation issue this weekend. As if those longshoremen are still hauling bags of wheat from the bowels of a ship or handcarting crates. the Shipping Container has already revolutionized logistics and increased our oppulance.
Sadly, this strike just inspires more automation.
try and find a $20/hr cashier in Cali for fast-food - not happening - order on that screen over there, pay on that screen there, pick it up from that auto-locker over there
Many good points here. I think one "rosy" way to look at the potential of AI is to see it as freeing you up to take up the TYPE of creativity that you truly enjoy. As a writer, I can get help to generate the images I have in my mind but can't draw, which frees up my time to focus on honing my writing skills. On the flip side, a painery can throw themselves at their art while having AI write e.g. grant proposals, applications for galleries, etc. So you can choose to use AI in a way that gives you room to be more creative in the discipline that you find the most fulfilling.