I remember reading an article maybe a decade or so ago about the impending automation revolution, describing self-driving cars and other technologies that seemed (to me) impossible at the time, but are very real now in 2023.
One of the things mentioned in the article was how the automation of those kinds of tasks (jobs) would free up humans to do other things. At the time, I thought, “What ‘other things’ are you expected to do if that was how you made a living?”
Now I understand the idea was that people would be freed from monotonous or even physically harmful tasks in order to pursue endeavors that truly mattered to them. The leap from point A to point B is maybe not as smooth as that old article made it seem, especially when we’re talking about the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people that would be outsourced to ‘employees’ that can work tirelessly 24/7 without break, salary, or benefits. But who wouldn’t love to have a robot scrub the bathtub for you, wash and fold your clothes, or clean your windows? How many people already have robots in their houses (still imperfect though they may be) that will mop and vacuum their floors?
The implication is that when we would be freed from these tasks that consume so much of our time, humanity would enter this new age of enlightenment, a digital era renaissance, in which we would have the time to write symphonies, paint masterpieces, and finally write that great American novel. Freed from drudgery, we could dream and create. After all, it is a true tragedy to imagine how many Beethovens or Picassos were lost to factories, fields, and plantations over the history of humanity, and how much richer would our lives would have been if they’d had the resources for their genius to shine.
Those creating these automation technologies–I have to believe–are doing so with that intent in mind, the intent to free humanity for true greatness
Enter the AI bots.
Over the last few months, my social media feeds have been bombarded with AI generated images that are vibrant and amazing with their apparent “creativity”. Their advent was swiftly followed by a chorus of voices telling us that this new technology is harming them, many artists who know for a fact that their works were stolen and used without their permission to train AI bots, bots that were now generating art based on the labor and creativity of real humans. If you haven’t seen or heard anything about this controversy, just google “AI steals art” and you’ll find almost 5 million search results. At the very least, AI art is harmful, unethical, and quite possibly prosecutably illegal.
While I understand the potential good of robots that perform physical tasks for humans, thinking about these “robots” designed to perform the mental and creative labor of humans seems like nothing but heartbreak to me.
If robots that sweep the floor or save a factory worker from injurious repetitive motions are supposed to be able to give us the time to engage in meaningful work, I would love to know how in the world a bot that can generate an image in minutes for free–an image that takes a human hours of dreaming, labor, and planning–is helping humanity?
The AI bots are not only stealing the work of the artists it uses to “learn”. They’re stealing the joy of creation, which many of us would say is the purpose of being on this plane of existence in the first place.
Yes, I hear you screaming that YOU as an artist/writer/painter/designer/musician will continue joyfully to plug away in your own chosen medium regardless of what the robots do.
I’m not suggesting we can’t still create art. But think about how much of what we consume every day is art. Clothing, shoes, tv shows, movies, music, video games, furniture, not to mention books, visual art, even company logos. Until now, those were all designed and created by people. How long before CEOs decide they no longer need to pay a marketing team if they can buy an AI program to do the work? How long before newspapers and magazines no longer pay journalists to write their content? How long before every bit of entertainment we see and hear is being generated by something that was told over and over what we like until it finally spit out the Oscar-winning movie of the year. How long before the majority of art that feeds into our everyday experiences bears absolutely no trace of human creativity?
The bots aren't creating anything especially good. They are learning how to recombine images that already exist in ways that we think are interesting and will make us click “like”. It isn’t actually generating any new ideas. It isn’t creating new art. When new ideas are no longer put out into the world, I worry for the next generations and the possibility of people learning to think for themselves.
The purpose of art–all art, as I understand it–is communication. And when it ceases being about communication and shared experience, it’s dead, it’s no longer art. While I acknowledge that the AI bots are here to stay, and will likely continue getting “better” at what they are doing, they will still never have what human-to-human created art has: shared experience. It's my hope that eventually we will come full circle, back to recognizing that this robot-generated art is not the shiny new toy we thought it was, but is dead, void of any human experience behind it. And when people begin to see the soul behind art created by humans, we will circle back around to truly valuing the work, physically, mentally, and emotionally, of our fellow people, our fellow creators on this planet.
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