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ZorbaTHut  3yr ago (text post)   Edited 3yr ago   40505 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 12, 2022

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Finally something that explicitly ties AI into the culture war: Why I HATE A.I. Art - by Vaush

This AI art thing. Some people love it, some people hate it. I hate it.

I endorse pretty much all of the points he makes in this video. I do recommend watching the whole thing all the way through, if you have time.

I went into this curious to see exactly what types of arguments he would make, as I've been interested in the relationship between AI progress and the left/right divide. His arguments fall into roughly two groups.

First is the "material impact" arguments - that this will be bad for artists, that you're using their copyrighted work without their permission, that it's not fair to have a machine steal someone's personal style that they worked for years to develop, etc. I certainly feel the force of these arguments, but it's also easy for AI advocates to dismiss them with a simple "cry about it". Jobs getting displaced by technology is nothing new. We can't expect society to defend artists' jobs forever, if they are indeed capable of being easily automated. Critics of AI art need to provide more substantial arguments about why AI art is bad in itself, rather than simply pointing out that it's bad for artists' incomes. Which Vaush does make an attempt at.

The second group of arguments could perhaps be called "deontological arguments" as they go beyond the first-person experiential states of producers and consumers of AI art, and the direct material harm or benefit caused by AI. The main concern here is that we're headed for a future where all media and all human interaction is generated by AI simulations, which would be a hellish dystopia. We don't want things to just feel good - we want to know that there's another conscious entity on the other end of the line.

It's interesting to me how strongly attuned Vaush is to the "spiritual" dimension of this issue, which I would not have expected from an avowed leftist. It's clearly something that bothers him on an emotional level. He goes so far as to say:

If you don't see stuff like this [AI art] as a problem, I think you're a psychopath.

and, what was the real money shot for me:

It's deeply alienating, and if you disagree, you cannot call yourself a Marxist. I'm drawing a line.

Now, on the one hand, "leftism" and "Marxism" are absolutely massive intellectual traditions with a lot of nuance and disagreement, and I certainly don't expect all leftists to hold the same views on everything. On the other hand, I really do think that what we're seeing now with AI content generation is a natural consequence of the leftist impulse, which has always been focused on the ceaseless improvement and elevation of man in his ascent towards godhood. What do you think "fully automated luxury gay space communism" is supposed to mean? It really does mean fully automated. If everyone is to be a god unto themselves, untrammeled by external constraints, then that also means they have the right to shirk human relationships and form relationships with their AI buddies instead (and also flood the universe with petabytes of AI-generated art). At some point, there seems to be a tension between progress on the one hand and traditional authenticity on the other.

It was especially amusing when he said:

This must be how conservatives feel when they talk about "bugmen".

I guess everyone becomes a reactionary at some point - the only thing that differs is how far you have to push them.

counter-trans ideology

I have noticed the analogy, which is part of why I’m slightly surprised that this forum is so pro-AI. I mean, given the LessWrong origins of this forum, it makes sense they’d be pro-AI. But this is a decidedly reactionary slice of that original LW readership. How can the same group of people be so reactionary on so many issues while also supporting the prospect of AI-induced complete social disruption. Yes yes, it doesn’t have to be the same individuals making both types of posts, but still.

I'm just not convinced it'll be that disruptive or destructive in the end. Human art will still have a place in the world of AI artists in the same way that organic or natural alternatives find a spot in many other markets. Printing presses didn't destroy artists, and neither will this. People didn't suddenly become uninterested in owning original artworks because they could buy a cheap print instead. Buyable asset packs and the existence of crap asset flips like Gone Home have not destroyed proper ground-up game design.

I predict that AI art will be briefly high status for a while as a curio, and then once everyone can do it cheaply and easily it'll be low status. People who don't really care about art will hang some cool-looking stuff on their wall because it's relatively cheap, everyone else will go on as before.

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