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Finally something that explicitly ties AI into the culture war: Why I HATE A.I. Art - by Vaush
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:
and, what was the real money shot for me:
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:
I guess everyone becomes a reactionary at some point - the only thing that differs is how far you have to push them.
The left sees the artistic class as fundamentally theirs, and AI disenfranchising them is a loss of social capital. That's all there is to it, and the appropriate response is to not care.
Did you actually watch the video?
I don’t see how you can walk away from it thinking that Vaush doesn’t deeply care about this issue on a personal level. And I went in skeptical, assuming that he didn’t care about it on a personal level.
He is a grifter without core principles. Whatever he has to say about anything is worthless. He is Unironicaly Evil
can you summarize the 1h40m video? Or ... explain this?
If I said "mitch mcconnell is a grifter with no principles. whatever he has to say is worthless. he is unironically evil". There's probably some truth to that - but, it's sort of true for many politicians, some R some not R (as well as those in other countries) - it's not useful, it doesn't explain why, how he is - and it doesn't even attack the arguments he's making.
I got about halfway through. It's a ton of examples of Vaush lying, shamelessly, about pretty much anything and everything. He appears to be the sort of person for whom language exists exclusively to manipulate others.
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Vaush is absolutely a disingenuous grifter.
He backflipped from 'rape and sexual assault of women is such an important, underappreciated issue that society tragically ignores' to 'bullshit, she's lying, Muslims would never rape white women in Australia' in real time. This isn't just standard politician inconsistency but completely refusing to believe evidence after it disfavours his cause - in a matter of seconds.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mhZ0JqQOsDA
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The short and sweet of it is that as any breadtuber out there he uses a bunch of tactics to argue in bad faith in any debate he has with ideological opponents. He constantly tries to dehumanize them when all is said and done and he is "alone" in his stream and his only apparent core principle is winning, expressed in the quote "You call it selling out your principles?, I call it Fucking winning. And that is my principle"
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