my articulated defense of AI
One of the things that the Internet has done to me as a person revolves around the backlash against AI art, AI content creation, and AI in general.
I understand where this is coming from. There's a value in human art beyond its mere appearance. For most of my life, I've been able to look at art, and a lot of my enjoyment of art has come from the idea that wow, someone drew that. There's a sense of community around art, a bond between creators and consumers that is built on the impression and appreciation of effort. Now, though, seeing quality art can be exciting, but that excitement is often followed by the disappointment of realizing it's AI, and that there wasn't soul in the creation. I have experimented with AI art before, and I found that while I could get good results, and actually did have to work reasonably hard to get the details right, it wasn't at the same level as the effort that goes into actually drawing something. I didn't really care about the effort. What struck me the most was how empty the process felt.
To me, drawing is an exercise in freezing a feeling in time. With every stroke, you capture the feeling, and can stay in it and return to it any time you look at the result. It is a moment that can stay frozen yet doesn't ever seem to lose its allure, because from your depiction of that moment, you can continue to live it, real or fictional, any time you look back. Creating AI art doesn't feel the same way, even if it takes a lot of effort, because ultimately, the ideas and strokes aren't under your control. You can't describe a moment to an AI, because words can't capture moments with the accuracy that your own mind does, and when you decide how to portray that moment, it makes perfect sense to you, and is only for you, with all others being secondary. AI doesn't give the same control that creating by yourself does, where every detail is a perfect manifestation of what you are expressing. So the process feels empty.
From this, I concluded that, although I wasn't against AI art, it just wasn't for me.
I do, however, use AI text generation. I use it to write fanfiction, but not the fanfiction that I post, just fanfiction for me to read. It gives me ideas that I wouldn't otherwise have had, and that's not exactly that the AI is feeding me those ideas. It's more in the way that engaging in conversation tends to cause your mind to come up with more ideas, and topics tend to leap into one another in a way that they don't do when it's only your inner monologue. Even just a reflection of your own thoughts can help you brainstorm.
My opinion towards AI-generated text is similar, but since I don't have as deep a connection with text, I'm more inclined to consume text that comes from AI. If I ever met someone who had the same opinion of text that I have of art, I'd understand perfectly why they would be averse to any use of AI, but I'm just not as attached.
I will say that AI art is 'real' art. I define art as follows:
Something created with the intent of representing something besides itself.
"Intent" may not be possible from an AI as we know them today (neural nets, LLMs, you know the deal). But there is intent in the person who prompts the AI to represent something besides the output itself. Their input is the true piece of 'art', the rest is mechanism to create the output, a mere function of the input which carries the true act of representation. So, even if the AI output isn't necessarily connected to as much artistic effort as a human-created piece of art, there exists an act of art within its creation, so it cannot be said to be "not art".
Back to the issue of text and broader use, I feel similarly. I use AI for personal things, just for my own entertainment, because it's an infinite and effortless source of self-indulgent fanfiction. But it's just for me, just so I can smile, and I don't see it as a creation worth sharing with the broader world. It's like eating- I'll eat it even if I didn't cook it, just because it tastes good, but I won't be like "LOOK AT THE FOOD SERVED TO ME" or parade it around to my friends demanding they try a bite. I'll just eat, feel happy, and be done.
Now. From what I've seen on the Internet, there's a lot of conflation of AI itself with big tech companies and general corporate suck. Big tech companies have the money at their disposal to create AI engines, but AI itself isn't necessarily a product of those companies, even if literally it might be considered one. That's just who's currently interested. People who defend or encourage AI are portrayed generally as tech bros, which again, isn't necessarily true. There is bad AI-generated content, and there is the general 'slop' that is created with quantity over quality and spoon-fed to us, but humans also create such mass-produced 'slop' on a regular basis.
AI is, at its core, an algorithm. It's a big ol' equation that can be used for whatever it applies to. It's a tool, and the people who wield it may define it by guiding its development, but the idea of the tool itself doesn't hold any political or social views. AI engines are statistical, and they are much like statistics in their limitations- they can be unconsciously manipulated and used to lie, but also to tell the truth, simply due to selection of data and of how it is portrayed by the one who compiles it (or directs it to be compiled). Biases emerge, but not from nowhere. AI is a tool that can be used and engineered for many purposes- the tool itself may enable those ends to be achieved, but it is not to blame, nor is the concept of it inherently good or evil.
AI is a field of applied mathematics. Thanks to someone I know IRL, I'm somewhat subject to the thoughts of people more closely connected to the forefront of AI development. Yes, some of them are cartoon evil billionaires, but there is a theory that is being formulated. There is progress being made, and a general push to understand the mechanism by which neural nets function, which is also related to attempts to understand how the human brain works (or should be). I can't speak authoritatively on the matter, but I'm relatively sure of this.
I'll also address the environmental concerns. A lot of people talk about how energy-intensive it is, but... that's been true of most human innovations. And the truth is that, even growing up in today's world, I've never seen energy as a finite resource. When- not if, when we solve fusion, we'll have arbitrary energy basically indefinitely (once again, I can't speak with authority here). Problems will always arise, and problems can be solved. We can never go back. We can only go forward. AI will be a tool to help us progress, if we have some prudence.
I think the primary concern driving the backlash is an economic one. It's hard for people who create any kind of content, writers artists etc, to make enough money off it (it's hard for anyone to make enough money, actually). The decrease in demand that's caused by AI makes things even more difficult, and definitely puts big corporations at even more of an advantage. This will definitely be a difficult time, but if the issue is economic, argue it as such, rather than as societal or philosophical. People have been saying for a long time that new technology will interfere with employment, and while it of course does, this never seems to stop a technology from being adopted. I don't have anything to say to these concerns, because they are real and need to be addressed, but I don't think resistance will ever be a practical or optimal solution. Again, we can't go back. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube- same goes for human progress.
I don't object to AI, but what I don't want is to have it crammed down my throat. Sometimes I might want to interact with AI-generated content, but I would rather it be my own choice. What I would like is for AI-generated content to be mostly relegated to communities that want to see it, rather than advertised so universally. If I want to look at human art, I shouldn't have to try so hard to filter out AI. Looking at AI should be the choice, or at least there should be a simple toggle system that actually works, like what DeviantArt is trying to do.
