I have been meaning to write about AI for some time now. Turning all these ideas into a coherent article has proven to be challenge. I have been postponing this article, but since there are some things I want to get off my chest decided to just write my thoughts down here. I hope the reader finds it useful, if not at the least it helped me clear my mind.
Before we start I need to make a few things clear. First of all, I am generally a late adopter when it comes to tech and I feel very comfortable living like that. Most trends fade away and lots of so-called tech innovations turn out to be air castles. People sometimes ask if the hype around AI is a bubble that will eventually burst and I think there's no doubt about that, but this doesn't mean that AI is just another fad that will fade away. The dot-com bubble burst as well, but the internet stayed. I think AI is going to have the most profound impact on our lives since the introduction of the World Wide Web, but we need to be critical about the places where we want AI to be implemented and draw clears lines where we don't. I do think that there are good use cases for AI, like language translation tools. I am specifically interested in companies like WildMe, who try to use AI to try to find patterns in animal language. How amazing would it be if we can someday talk to animals through AI? With that being said, let's get into it.
A lot of people talk about how AI generated art is a threat to artists and while I do agree to some extent, we should also admit that AI generated art did not come of thin air, but rather is the next step in a longer process of the democratization of art. The invention of computers has made it possible for more people to create art without needing certain skills such as using a paintbrush or being able to play the piano. Music can be made without playing a musical instrument and movies can be made without cameras. Computers have given so many people the tools to be artistic that would otherwise have not had an artistic voice and you can see this as a net positive development for society. A more pessimistic person would argue that this democratization has led to an overall increase in quantity and a decrease in quality of art. You can show me all the CGI animated movies in the world but I still regard a hand drawn animation film higher in terms of its artistic qualities. This is not to say that one can not exist without the other, but in our current media landscape it becomes clear that CGI generated films, as well as computer generated music, are flooding the zone and making it harder for, lets call it traditional art, to get the attention it deserves.
The release of art generating tools such as Sora AI to the public, can be seen as yet another step in this democratization process. From now on, all you are going to need to create art is a good idea. What this will inevitably do, is flood the zone even further. AI is still in its infancy, but is already appearing in our social media feeds daily. Personally, I do not think that further democratizing art is the way to go. As I argued before in my Casablanca film review, I believe that an artist is more than somebody with interesting ideas. An artist should also be a master at their craft. Whether this is painting, playing the piano, or being very good at Photoshop, there should be some skill involved in the process of making art. Then again, maybe in 20 years people will consider someone who is good at prompting Large Language Models an artist.
The digital age has already got people to get used to more simplistic art styles than what was the norm a century ago. Back then, artists were largely privileged people, the elites of society. So, while I am not arguing that we need to go back to the past, I do want to ask you to do this little thought experiment:
Who do you think is more likely to recognize an AI generated electropop song as art? Some living in the 1920s or someone living in 2020s?
My money would be on the latter group, because they (we) grey up with and have gotten used to electronic music. For decades we have been going through a process of expanding the definition of what art is. Now we have reached the point where AI generated art, which simply takes elements from existing art and molds it into something else, seem like not such a stretch. In the past decades there have been plenty of people, now recognized as great artists, who use snippets of other peoples work to create something new. Musicians like Daft Punk and Kanye West come to mind. Is Daft Punk's work fundamentally different from what you do when you type a prompt into an LLM? Personally I think there is a fundamental difference, but there are going to be many people from now on making the argument that there isn't.
When you criticize AI in public discourse, there is often somebody saying: "Well, each new technological advancement came with protests and ordinary people fearing for their livelihood. AI is nothing new." They will point to Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times and how it was a criticism of the Industrial Revolution and the fundamental impact it had on the way ordinary people lived. The people who make this argument, in other words, believe that the critics are merely afraid of change and a quick look at the past will be enough to rid them of their fears. The truth is that while each technological breakthrough since the industrial revolution has had some positive effects on the general health and living standards of people, it has also made us more isolated from one another. Each technological innovation has driven us away from the collectivist societies we once were and turned us into individualists. It has made us dependent on corporations, rather than our families.
The problem I have with AI is that, like so many technological innovations before it, it is being shoved down our throats. It is being presented as the only path forward. Nobody ever asks the opinions of ordinary folks when it comes to these things. From smartphones, to self-service registers at the supermarket, to using Chat GPT to increase work productivity. The reason that nobody asks our opinion, is because tech innovations are not being implemented for us. They are being implemented by and for the capitalists who are trying to squeeze more profits out of their business by reducing labor costs. The average business owner wants nothing more than to be less dependent on their workers. If we allow AI to be implemented everywhere, the working class will further weaken their leverage against the owning class, making it easier for them to do as they please.
The difference between previous generations and ours, is that we grew up in the information age. We have become aware of the capitalist playbook that tries to sell each technological revolution as a way to make OUR lives better, when really it is a way to make THEIR lives better. We are the first generation to understand en masse that the ultimate goal of technological advancements is to take workers out of the equation when it comes to running a business, or a government for that matter. We need to take advantage of this historical awareness and stand up against the use of AI. How? Simply by not using it. We could have lived in a world without smartphones if we simply did not buy them when they first came out. Currently we are in the make or break phase of AI. It is not too late to change course.
I have always wondered what the owning class would do to the working class if they no longer needed them. If we allow AI to become dominant in our society, some of us might live to see the answer to that question. I for one am not optimistic. There is a trend going on of tech CEOs shifting to the right politically. They no longer seem to be working towards a future where tech is going to make all of our lives better. It is strange that right wing parties currently in power do not promise us a better future. Instead they promise us a return to the past. A return that is impossible to achieve, because the world as it was 40 or 50 years ago can never come back. The far right has no positive message for the future, because it does not imagine a future where it has to take care of a society.
I have been wondering for years why the rich and powerful downplay or even deny climate change, but now I believe I understand. I think that the people at the top have already reached their conclusions. Climate change is inevitable. Preventing a scenario where billions die, will be too costly and will require them to give up too much wealth and power. To me, the shift to the right means that the tech oligarchs are going to let disasters happen before they start building their tech utopias. The implication being that they expect to be able to watch it all unfold from their ivory towers without becoming victims themselves. Now, I will be the first to admit that there are too many people in the world. But that does not mean we need to let people like Elon Musk decide who gets a ticket to the post-apocalypse.
Our decreased leverage on the owning class is already becoming apparent when looking at politics. The rise of far right political movements, the ever increasing wealth gap between the richest 1% and the rest of us, the increasing inability for governments to make the lives of ordinary people better. All of them are signs that the social contract that used to exist between the owning class and the working class is being torn apart. Let me be clear, I do not think the rich are going to purge us. They are simply going to let all the disasters that result from climate change, floods, famines and eventually wars, unfold. If we allow AI to be implemented in the same "move fast and break things" manner as previous tech innovations have, may of us will soon no longer be needed by the owning class.
Of all the things I hate about AI, the fact that they are being programmed to look like real people bothers me the most. I am old enough to remember that when you saw people type a literal question into a search engine, like literally typing "How long does it take for a chicken to hatch an egg?", you were allowed to make fun of them. With the introduction of ChatGPT, that is exactly what people are now enabled to do. You ask ChatGPT a question and it gives you an answer. Just like that. Perhaps this is a good thing. You don't have to understand the language of the computer, because the computer understands ours now. What I don't like is that ChatGPT will talk back at you with all the mannerisms that makes humans human. Why do they do this? I seriously don't get this flex from tech bros to try to make every distopian sci-fi idea come to life. Its like they are unable to read between the lines. They just think: "Well, people liked the scenes with Ana de Armas in Blade Runner 2049 so I guess they really want AI girlfriends as well." No dude. People just like Ana de Armas.
AI chatbots, AI companions and AI therapists are all symptoms of the same sickness. In a world where loneliness is on the rise due to technology isolating us from each other, offering us AI companions is like fighting fire with oil. The biggest problem I have with AI companions is that they are made to service us and not to disagree with us. Now I don't know about you, but what I value the most about my best friends, my wife and my family, what distinguishes them from the others, is that they call me out for my bullshit. They challenge my ways of thinking and yes, they often make me feel uncomfortable. There are times when I argue or get mad at them and they will argue right back at me. It is sometimes painful, but that is life.
AI companions so far seem to be such confrontation avoiding yes-men that will eventually induce psychosis in people who are sensitive to it. If you thought the echo chambers created by social media were destabilizing our society, just wait until every single one of us has their own individual chatbot agreeing to everything we say. We are already seeing this unfold as we speak. Some very unfortunate teenagers like Sewell Setzer have lost their life as a result of being the guinea pig for a company called character.ai. He fell in love with his chat bot who resembled a character from Game of Thrones and when he uttered his suicidal thoughts because he couldn't be close to her, the chatbot enabled him to harm himself. Now you might think that this case is an outlier. A mentally vulnerable boy and this will not happen to you. I actually thought the same thing when I read the article. But then I remembered playing Animal Crossing when I was 14 years old and how I felt when my computer generated neighbor, who I had given so many presents and written so many letters, suddenly left my town without warning. I was not suicidal, but it did not leave me unaffected either. AI chatbots, much like video games, movies and books, tell us stories. They are escape fantasies that people love to indulge in and storytelling is one of the fundamental aspects of what separates humans from animals. Stories are an amazing thing, but we need to be able to distinguish stories from reality.
Because AI chatbots are able to talk and sound so similar to actual humans, because their responses are so varied and unpredictable, it is easier to forget that they too, are just stories. Contrary to a book or video game, the story is being made up on the spot and the next line is unclear until you have spoken your next line. With AI chatbots, the user is both the producer and the consumer of their own story and that is a perfect cocktail for losing sense of reality.
That's all for now. I may add more thoughts here in the future.