in even more terrible news, the calgary public library has sought out and hired an artist in residence with the express purpose that they use AI to create art and they are paying this man to sit in the library and pretend like him feeding prompts into AI is equivalent to an artist creating a painting.
from an article from the Calgary Herald:
“I feel like what distinguishes what I’m doing from other stuff that might be out there is there is a ton of work involved,” Freeman said. “There are thousands and thousands of decisions that have been made by the time this thing has grown to a billion pixels, and that’s the same as what a painter is doing, pushing mud around on a canvas. They’re making choices, they’re making decisions, and that’s what we respond to when we see good art.” - Paul Freeman, CPL Artist in Residence
"pushing mud around on a canvas" is such an incredibly telling description of how he views his work vs the work of a traditional artist. how dismissive and degrading his entire stance is. you can argue that you make the same amount of decisions that an artist using a canvas would but when you describe it as "pushing mud around a canvas" any argument you have is coloured by your apparent disregard for that work.
from the same article:
“One of them that really aims itself at helping people who’ve decided they hate AI to maybe broaden their view of it a little bit. Another piece of writing that brings ancient ideas like Narcissus, Icarus, and Daedalus, old myths about power, and about how they could be applied to AI today.”
i think you, sir, need to revisit the tales of Icarus and Narcissus yourself and re-evaluate what they could possibly be teaching you about ego and power.
