It was fun for a while, wasn’t it? The whole AI thing. Making weird images. Asking a chatbot in clever ways how to go about making a bomb. Getting it to pen our boring emails for us. But now, at least for me, the novelty has well and truly worn off.
Yes, yes, I know should be concerned that AI is going to get me fired, or destroy the world. Although what people really mean when they say it’ll destroy the world is that it’ll destroy humanity. And, sure, while that might be a pain in some ways — ceasing to exist, no more chocolate — it can’t be denied that the world itself would be far better off without us. And who’s going to change the AI’s batteries when we’re all gone? Didn’t think that through, did you? Superintelligence my arse.
I’m not worried about AI. Maybe because I have enough man-made horror to fret about (the impending climate collapse; the mass extinctions brought about by our desire for sun holidays and cheap burgers; films with Chris Pratt in them). If anything, I’m bored by it. AI “generated” art is starting to look sad to me. I can spot it from a mile off, and it always makes me sigh. The washed-out look, the lack of deliberateness. And the more cliched it’s starting to look, what it’s saying is becoming louder and clearer: Hey you, I spent as little time as possible on this, don’t you think it’s great?
No, I don’t. If you want people to spend their time interacting with your thing, reading it or viewing it, you can’t just put zero effort into it. So no, I won’t give you my time. Do the bloody work, and pay the people who dedicated their lives to becoming good at it, the people you’ve “sampled” to train your robot.
Since AI models must be trained on actual data, what they are really good at is making an average, a stodgy conglomeration of all the (stolen) things they’ve been fed with. It’s possible they’ll one day be able to manage something resembling true creativity. But even if they do, who cares? Art is not just about the art, it’s about the intent and the meaning behind it. And sure, AI illustrations might be good enough to plaster all over your advertising campaign or LinkedIn profile, but until the AI can sit me down and explain to me the many levels of meaning and the events in its life that brought it to this point, the illustration is just a plastic copy, a wavy dream.
Art needs artists, aware of their own mortality. Anything else is just a dreary soup.
And now a new trend has been popping up on my Facebook reels. People doing AI animations of Jesus (no doubt having “sampled” the images without paying anyone) telling us boring, predictable things about prayer in a bad AI voice. Or the admittedly entertaining Twitch stream where AI Jesus answers all questions posed to him 24/7. Even on Sunday. Not even Jesus gets a day off anymore.
And let me be clear, when the day comes to pledge allegiance to our AI overlords, I’d totally turn my back on my own species and hop onboard. Could it be any worse than the mess we’ve made of things? And hey, maybe they’ll have chocolate.
/ Paddy