This is of course inspired from that "AI entrepreneur" douchebag that spent $745 to commission a treat printer to print out a shitty and soulless whitewashed version of Princess Mononoke and assigned himself that title the way that putting a quarter in a gumball machine makes someone a candy entrepreneur.
I really don't have a good answer. Anyone else?
I like to believe that I'm a total peacenik, live together in common humanity with all tolerant people kinda guy, but stuff like this gives me, I think, some small window on the sort of thinking that allows for the mass violence of the European Reformation. Because normal people who see no issue at all with generative AI are alien to me. That line of thought is not only wrong, but I believe it to be actively hostile to life itself and all human endeavor. And that's ignoring the environmental issue entirely. If the situation were reversed and using generative AI somehow helped the environment I'd still be opposed to its existence.
I look upon it with revulsion and horror. The idea that we could live in a future where you never know when you pick up a book or go to see a film if you're about to see a genuine piece of human expression or a machine-hallucination that has the shape and look of art while being bereft of expression or meaning makes me want to retreat from society and live as a hermit. I'd lose my mind and become a primitivist (I already have leanings that way, but am stopped by my appreciation for modern medicine, on-demand potable water, and central heating and cooling). The way it's eating the internet is bad enough already.
I understand how you feel about it. I share some of that feeling, too... and it gets harder to make generous appraisals, or to humor concilatory arguments, with just how cold and misanthropic so many of the generative "AI" pushers have demonstrated themselves to be, both among each other while congratulating themselves on their dubious investment and while stanning for it and proselytizing for its inevitable and imminent ascendancy and supremacy in places as far away as here.
Not trying to make you run screaming for the nearest copse, but aren't we already there? The number of times I've picked up a widely-acclaimed something only for it to turn out to be utter bullshit feels pretty high. Tons of people are writing novels and producing movies with a stunning absence of interiority because that's what'll sell, or what an algorithm has determined what will sell.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, mass culture is not in a good or healthy place right now. It’s all becoming corporate-friendly pap. And I do despair a bit every time I see the acclaim a Colleen Hoover or Sarah J. Maas book or a Star Wars sequel show or Marvel slop receive. But I see it as a bit of a Hays Code thing; even though most artists are forced to produce work under the edicts of the invisible king Capital there are enough of them who are smart enough, subversive enough to make art that is still real, beautiful, and just human. And since the current state of culture is largely the result of studios and publishers conglomerizing and then chasing bigger, safer profits I believe that eventually they will become too big, collapse under their own weight, and something else will replace them.
And of course there’s a smaller but healthier scene of lesser studios, publishers, and indies still putting out interesting stuff. Even during that brief period where Streamers were throwing money at everything resulted in some art that never would have gotten made under the regime of cable TV, though obviously that’s quickly ended up replicating the issue.
That might all sound a bit hopeful, I suppose. It is hard for those artists on the fringes eking out work, and it’s hard for those making work that’ll be allowed in by corporate gatekeepers while still being meaningful, and if the publishers and studios do collapse that’ll probably be harder still. But I think it’s possible that someday mass culture will be healthier than it is now.
I don't have high hopes for mass culture (penny dreadfuls and their descendents date back to the printing press), but true art has always thrived on the margins. AI (hopefully) won't change that, but it'll make the going harder.