If you’re a writer or any kind of artist, chances are you feel besieged by AI on the twin fronts of art and commerce.
On the art front you fave to deal with more ugliness and mediocrity. Clunky summaries, uncanny valley images, reading ‘voices’ with less warmth than a Garmin GPS.
If the goal is simply to knock out product, which is all a hack wants, people now have the tools to get robots to write, edit, design a cover and record audio. But a human still has to read the thing, and scroll past the thousands of Book-Products that now clog the internet. AI has added a lot of ugliness to the world.
On the commerce side, generative AI is a plagiarism machine that steals authors’ work. Like Big Tobacco and Purdue, tech companies are betting that what they make up for in sales will easily offset what they lose in lawsuits. AI steals authors’ work and denigrates both writing and the necessary crafts and skills that make a book into a thing of art, like good editing, design, and audiobook performance.
Flooding Amazon and Spotify with low-quality junk strengthens the stranglehold big companies have. It makes them arbiters of what gets seen—the book you spent a year on, or the piece of shit Book-Product made by a guy buying advertising on their site.
It’s telling that the ‘landmark’ Simon and Schuster payment deal for authors is with a tech company that wants to be anonymous. Who can make an informed and fair decision about going into business with an unnamed partner?
Only people as money-dumb as artists would even consider it.
In a way it’s not unlike the bust-out joint in Goodfellas—an unnamed partner steals from the suppliers, charges the customers for inferior goods, sinks the business and then light a match.
Last December I had a couple of lively discussions on AI. One with a college administrator who uses it for work. it made their job easier. What’s wrong with that?
Well, what’s right about it? If you’re interacting with students, especially vulnerable international students away from home and learning in a language that’s not their first, isn’t about the most important thing you can offer them a genuine human connection?
But it’s also stupid long-term, for one’s self-interest. The one thing a college would love to do away with is human connection, because it is hard, and it costs.
The other person was upset that I called their Facebook writer’s group a grift. This was one of the posts. You decide.
(It’s tough for me to feel any love for the idea of writing ‘community’ these days, when so often that involves pay-for-play businesses, get rich quick schemes, social media blitzing, and other activities that cost money and time. I’d rather go for a coffee and do the odd Noir at the Bar.)
Artists should be compensated fairly, their copyrights upheld, including ‘training.’ AI content should be clearly labelled as such. There’s a quick buck to be made in not doing these things, but in the long term it hurts artists.
And I think that’s the point. Instead of looking to art we look to the platform. Instead of art we get content. Even if the platform lets you crank out your own Star Wars, it can’t give you what art does.
What’s that worth to you?
It's a total devastation and Big Business is shoving it down our throats. Many repetitive tasks can be automated and humanity will benefit; automating creation is a recipe for mental degeneration. There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back titled "Does AI make me stupid?" - the answer was "yes" and it happened really fast too. The old principle of "use it or loose it" applies to the brain too. I'm sticking to my 10-year old version of Word because I don't want their "co-pilot" (AI assistant) that pops in each time you type something, and that you CANNOT get rid of! Good enough reason to with to Pages on the Mac...
100% agree!