Technology

When technology allows us to do something that we could not before - like cross an ocean or fly through the sky a distance that would previously have taken years and many people dying during the journey, or save lives - then it unquestionably offers a benefit.

But when it simply eases some task, like using a car rather than horse to travel, and requires discipline to integrate into our lives in a balanced manner, then it becomes a source of potential danger that we would allow ourselves to misuse it.

Even agriculture, which allows those to eat who put forth no effort into making the food grow, or even in preparing it for consumption.

This is what CEOs are pushing on us, because for one number must go up, but also genuinely many believe they want what it has to offer, not quite having thought through what it would mean if they got it (or more to the point others did, empathy not being their strongest attribute).

If we're going with the "suicide" analogy, I'd say that AI is suicide like eating fast food/takeout every night instead of cooking for yourself is. It's an easy shortcut, but you are probably missing out on vital nutrients (in the case of AI, that would be critical thinking skills or potentially missing out on finding a hobby that you actually really enjoy). You could instead learn to cook yourself (which some people really enjoy and find as a meditative kind of experience), hire a nutritionist to make a meal plan, or even go to a restaurant instead.

Personally, I don't think it's a great analogy, and there's a much better basically 1 to 1 relationship between Gen AI and retail therapy/fast fashion. They're all bad for the environment, rely on worker abuse in many different forms, and all work to further our dependency on corporations and enrich their owners.

People often make the argument about Gen AI "democratizing" art, but that's nonsense. Art was already "democratized" by easy access to not just tools like a pencil and knowledge, but by the fact that even before the internet art was the most easily accessible it has ever been in history. You could go to a store and buy a canvas to put on your wall in the 50s. A century before and that would've been something only the wealthy could think of doing by hiring an artist to make a custom piece. People complain about artists charging too much, and yet a large portion of artists charge below minimum wage for commissions.

And that's not to say that I hate AI for the sake of hating it. I hate the implementation of it. Gen AI is just a more complex version of the Gaussian Blur tool in Photoshop. But it's fed with effectively stolen labor and robs artists of potential clients, people from possibly discovering a new thing they love doing, and clients from developing a working relationship with the artists that they commission. There's a great post that Temmie of Undertale fame posted recently about how when Toby can't describe what he wants animated he'll act it out and so he danced around with a broom to show her how he wanted the idle animation for an old man to go. That's the kind of stuff that can come up in the commission process. Obviously that's not gonna happen to everyone, but half the fun of art is the collaboration. It's like playing a co-op game.

People who commission art don't call themselves the artist. That's the big difference. If people found out you commissioned the painting that you later told everyone at the party that you painted yourself, and that it is practically your work of art, because you gave the precise description of what you wanted to the painter, and thus you're an artist. Then you would be the laughing stock and the butt of many jokes and japes for decades. Because that's ridiculous.

I misread you at first so here's an answer to if someone uses AI art:

Within the jokingly limited sphere of the discussion... "yes"? Particularly their artistic ability in that situation is being put to death slowly as whatever little they might have attempted without access to the tool will now not be attempted at all.

I don't know as much about if someone were to commission art from an actual person.

i don't want to read that shit again. it isn't worth the time i've spent wroting this message.

thanks for the precision. one analogy then