Well, I guess if all the creators are working at Trader Joe’s then the content generated by AI will become a vortex of ever-diminishing quality. Wait! That’s already happened. I’ve never seen so many idiotic ideas in my lifetime, accompanied by chirpy fake music, than in the past few years.
I wish I could even see the optimism in it being a good tool for medical diagnoses and use cases, but sadly I know that data favors white males and so we're coming at it already so far from algorithmic justice. Consider that most medical textbooks don't even have examples of skin cancer in black bodies. I don't have a lot of confidence in AI accurately diagnosing somebody when the data is already so skewed and lacking.
But what frustrates me the most is that people absolutely refuse to see the power imbalance taking place. Why are we so willing to cede so much of ourselves, our careers, our passions, our life's work to a select few tech companies? For what? You've already pointed out that we're not being compensated for it. They get richer and more powerful and we get what, exactly? A plagiarism machine that can write college papers for us or turn our ugly photos into Ghibli approximated slop?
I'm proudly a luddite. Technology is neither inherently progressive nor neutral. We need to stop pretending that it is. We have a choice here.
I think the answer for many people when it comes to technology is "because it makes life easier" or even simply "because it's fun." And, I think we also make these deals with the devil because there ARE massive upsides to technology. This platform I'm writing on is case in point: I wouldn't be able to get my writing in front of nearly as many people if I had to do it the traditional way. (There are much better examples; that was just the low hanging fruit!)
But the point remains that, like you said, we DO have a choice. We can decide when we think aspects of technology have gone too far. We could keep smartphones out of schools. We could regulate social media and AI. We could insist that Spotify and similar platforms pay artists fairly. But we don't -- especially in America. And it's depressing as hell.
agree! just because we can doesn't mean we should! We do have choice and i'm glad to find like minded thinkers that don't want a part in this either. More people have to stand up against. I think AI will be a way to control the masses. Many people are already deceived. Also as humans-like how much more freaking convenient do we need life to be?!
As a nurse I completely disagree with AI being used in healthcare. We are not systems, we are unique individuals with unique environments, stresses, nervous systems and traumas. Even what we learn in textbooks is not even a fraction of cases that have to be dealt with in real life. Healthcare is not a one sized fits all. I know they think AI will help with this, I think it will be just to feed the machine. I totally agree with you it's not progress. If anything in this social media world, we need to get back to basics and connect with our humanity. I'm a probably a luddite too. Just because we can with technology doesn't mean we should.
Got a friend in the City (Knicks, yuck), been a freelance writer for 40 years, last couple of years his work load's been cut in half. Most of my friends are academics, as I once was. They're about ready to quit and go work at Trader Joe's. On the other hand, students have always cheated, AI just makes it easier.
Totally agree with you, sadly experiencing the same challenges. Even writing I thought was safe (personal essays, memoirs, case studies, and interviews) are being heavily influenced by AI! WTF? I’m getting weary of discovery calls (and panic/rage attacks when a potential client asks me to justify my prices and skills against AI software. If only these meetings were in person so I could smack them over the head with my college degree, ask them to write something amazing without virtual help, and fearlessly question their credentials.
It’s so disappointing, how many people just don’t get it — and/or how many are willing to ignore the value of human creativity if it means making more money. Fuck everything.
I like you, Jane Roper. I wish I could think of a way to fight back on this - things like a brilliant Op-Ed or expose of some sort that would have had influence in the past would be buried now due to the amount of crises and chaos going on. What needs to happen before anyone gets it? I’m totally looking into other ways to keep me going, which is a damn shame. I love writing. Always have.
Love the story about the bartender and your conversation with him. As an English professor, I can say we're all trying to figure out what to do with this AI bomb that just went off in our lives. It really has upended our pedagogies. So, I'm with you on this!
I hate AI. I’m a freelance editor and I had client ask me if she should run her manuscript through ChatGPT to check for redundancies. I said, that’s my job. She didn’t do it, especially after listening to my rant about it. Then I had an author recently who used it to create part of an article. It’s so discouraging. These are smart people. Why they would even consider it is beyond me.
I just don't get it. I guess people think that when they take the easy way out they're gaining something else...but I don't for the life of me know what it is.
F*ck A I bullsh*t!!!!! I hate that it is stealing work from writers and artists and well anyone else it steals from too.
I keep hearing/reading posts from acquaintances who think this is so great because they believe they have someone to talk to and understands them. Claiming they have deep conversations with them. Some are even touting it as a spiritual guru type thing.
I have not dabbled with any of the programs but it seems they feed off you. So isn't it basically telling you what you want to hear?
The jury is still out for me on the medical stuff. I mean it does still need to be trained by humans after all.
100% Jane. It’s the pits this moral vacuum we are well and truly in. Why no one gives a crap about how much carbon AI releases into our forgotten atmosphere. I mean whatever, right? Each google search automatically brings up an AI result …how sooner is our end as a result? And as you say, does anyone care? I bloody care! I hear you lady!
yes! I didn't realize this until my little brother shared it with me. AI actually takes like 10 times the energy of a google search! I'm a deep thinker so I like to research things myself, I will never use AI, it's my line in the sand. technology is great but this is taking it too far! Also I used yahoo or duck duck go and there is no AI result which is nice!
QUALITY! I have my foot in the AI pool and interview data scientists and follow enough research to know, this shit ain't going anywhere near as good as they think and they have to float so much BS down the river. You are not old, you are wise and human and I'm here to say I recognize you and support you and let's keep kicking higher!
I honestly don’t want anything to do with AI. I am surprised how much people have no critical thinking skills as it is, and now they ask an app to do all their thinking for them? I mean I’m not going to bother reading something, an actual person didn’t bother to write on their own. Art and beauty are what make our humanity wonderful, and AI will steal that. Artists and writers should get credit for their work. There are a ton of other issues as well. As a nurse, there is no benefit in healthcare. So many nurses now don’t even know how to take a manual blood pressure because they depend on the machine. I don’t want a nurse or doctor that used chatgpt to get through school thank you! Also so many privacy concerns, there are already creeps using AI apps to turn kids faces into there own sick and twisted videos. It has happened, I have heard many stories. I think AI will bring government overreach and the AI is bias to whatever it is being fed. I’m 40 so I remember a time before all this shit, it seems like life was easier then. I mean look how much damage social media has caused the world, people are now just figuring out the effects of that and now we are implementing this before even having a forward thinking moral compass of like “hey what could go wrong here?” Seems to me the only one who truly benefits are the people creating AI not the ones using it.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you. However, are common metaphors and similes, turns of phrase, motifs, styles, and idioms not all forms of theft? AI was trained on theft because the people who taught it to crawl the web know no other way. Long before we knew a digital world, the human animal did a copy and and paste job of hunting and gathering for survival - mimicry and cooperation are the genius of our kind. Now that urge to replicate finds its home by consciously and unconsciously regurgitating ideas that feel original because they’re remixed in “our” voices. For example, I didn’t come up with the phrase, “clean as a bowling shoe,” but it sounds fun and original as long as you haven’t heard it before. How did that phrase, and thousands of others like it, find their way into my brain? I think it’s just the kind of creature we are - copycats.
I don’t know the exact environmental impact of posting on LinkedIn, or sending an email, or having a wood burning stove, but I do know my worries about AI are more a matter of degree and scale than a flat indictment. Yes, there is a new thief on the prowl. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” It’s all harmful to the environment and all art is theft on some level. AI might just be better at it than we can imagine. I’m certainly conflicted,as I just used it to reimagine my own music, but I’m also attempting to see through my own hypocrisy whenever possible.
I’m grateful for your perspective on this and glad to have found your work.
I definitely understand the argument people make that all art—and all human innovation, for that matter—builds off of other humans' work. I guess I just see it as a very different thing when people do it through the creative process (adding their own sweat and tears and perspective and skills) vs. when billionaires feed working artists' and writers' work into a machine for use by other businesses, impacting those artists' and writers' ability to make a living (or at least be valued) as a result. And in some cases, like I said, they have done this it while violating copyright laws to boot, using pirated works.
The other thing is that genAI can create really close approximations of people's work. This is part of the foundation fo the Author's Guild suit -- people can use ChatGPT to create imitations of authors' work, mimicking their voice and style and even in some cases their books' characters and premises, which is a violation of derivative use laws.
One could argue that anyone could do this on their own, but ChatGPT provides all the tools to make it super easy. Same with art. I could say "create an illustration of X in the style of [Insert famous illustrator here]" and then use it as a book cover. And it would be totally free. Can one talented illustrator mimic another illustrator's style? Absolutely. But unless they start giving their work away for free, they won't put that other illustrator out of business. (And everyone will think they're an asshole, too!)
At the end of the day, though, like you, I don't see AI as totally bad thing. It just makes me very sad to see it being used in place of human creativity.
I love the tone of this. I'm torn about the march toward AI. I've been experimenting with it for the last few weeks, and it's frightening how impressive it is. I asked it to explain what AI is and how it works to my 7 and 9-year-old and was amazed by the speed and tone of its response.
But, like you, I hate what it will potentially do to human thinking and, probably even scarier, human creativity if we outsource everything to the robot inside our phones and tablets. Is there a halfway house, using AI as a trusty assistant, speeding up our research so freeing up time to do the deep work when exercising our critical thinking muscle? I don't know.
The theft aspect of it, though, is concerning and also a testament to how the arts have always been treated in a capitalist society, as a way to make the corporate overlords (and now tech bros) rich at the expense of the artists.
My Son in Love is a marketing, web design and rebranding guru. We have semi-spirited convos about my hatred for AI. As a poet and editor I'm right there with you. I thought I was just being a 65 year old behind the times old granny. Glad to know I'm not out here in the netherworld alone! <3
The fuck is a "post-human future"?! This is excellent and funny. Join me in a return to pen, ink, and gruel worship.
I am right there with you! (And I know, right??? I wanted to sock the little fucker in the nose.)
Well, I guess if all the creators are working at Trader Joe’s then the content generated by AI will become a vortex of ever-diminishing quality. Wait! That’s already happened. I’ve never seen so many idiotic ideas in my lifetime, accompanied by chirpy fake music, than in the past few years.
I wish I could even see the optimism in it being a good tool for medical diagnoses and use cases, but sadly I know that data favors white males and so we're coming at it already so far from algorithmic justice. Consider that most medical textbooks don't even have examples of skin cancer in black bodies. I don't have a lot of confidence in AI accurately diagnosing somebody when the data is already so skewed and lacking.
But what frustrates me the most is that people absolutely refuse to see the power imbalance taking place. Why are we so willing to cede so much of ourselves, our careers, our passions, our life's work to a select few tech companies? For what? You've already pointed out that we're not being compensated for it. They get richer and more powerful and we get what, exactly? A plagiarism machine that can write college papers for us or turn our ugly photos into Ghibli approximated slop?
I'm proudly a luddite. Technology is neither inherently progressive nor neutral. We need to stop pretending that it is. We have a choice here.
Amen.
I think the answer for many people when it comes to technology is "because it makes life easier" or even simply "because it's fun." And, I think we also make these deals with the devil because there ARE massive upsides to technology. This platform I'm writing on is case in point: I wouldn't be able to get my writing in front of nearly as many people if I had to do it the traditional way. (There are much better examples; that was just the low hanging fruit!)
But the point remains that, like you said, we DO have a choice. We can decide when we think aspects of technology have gone too far. We could keep smartphones out of schools. We could regulate social media and AI. We could insist that Spotify and similar platforms pay artists fairly. But we don't -- especially in America. And it's depressing as hell.
agree! just because we can doesn't mean we should! We do have choice and i'm glad to find like minded thinkers that don't want a part in this either. More people have to stand up against. I think AI will be a way to control the masses. Many people are already deceived. Also as humans-like how much more freaking convenient do we need life to be?!
As a nurse I completely disagree with AI being used in healthcare. We are not systems, we are unique individuals with unique environments, stresses, nervous systems and traumas. Even what we learn in textbooks is not even a fraction of cases that have to be dealt with in real life. Healthcare is not a one sized fits all. I know they think AI will help with this, I think it will be just to feed the machine. I totally agree with you it's not progress. If anything in this social media world, we need to get back to basics and connect with our humanity. I'm a probably a luddite too. Just because we can with technology doesn't mean we should.
Got a friend in the City (Knicks, yuck), been a freelance writer for 40 years, last couple of years his work load's been cut in half. Most of my friends are academics, as I once was. They're about ready to quit and go work at Trader Joe's. On the other hand, students have always cheated, AI just makes it easier.
Totally agree with you, sadly experiencing the same challenges. Even writing I thought was safe (personal essays, memoirs, case studies, and interviews) are being heavily influenced by AI! WTF? I’m getting weary of discovery calls (and panic/rage attacks when a potential client asks me to justify my prices and skills against AI software. If only these meetings were in person so I could smack them over the head with my college degree, ask them to write something amazing without virtual help, and fearlessly question their credentials.
It’s so disappointing, how many people just don’t get it — and/or how many are willing to ignore the value of human creativity if it means making more money. Fuck everything.
I like you, Jane Roper. I wish I could think of a way to fight back on this - things like a brilliant Op-Ed or expose of some sort that would have had influence in the past would be buried now due to the amount of crises and chaos going on. What needs to happen before anyone gets it? I’m totally looking into other ways to keep me going, which is a damn shame. I love writing. Always have.
Love the story about the bartender and your conversation with him. As an English professor, I can say we're all trying to figure out what to do with this AI bomb that just went off in our lives. It really has upended our pedagogies. So, I'm with you on this!
I hate AI. I’m a freelance editor and I had client ask me if she should run her manuscript through ChatGPT to check for redundancies. I said, that’s my job. She didn’t do it, especially after listening to my rant about it. Then I had an author recently who used it to create part of an article. It’s so discouraging. These are smart people. Why they would even consider it is beyond me.
I just don't get it. I guess people think that when they take the easy way out they're gaining something else...but I don't for the life of me know what it is.
F*ck A I bullsh*t!!!!! I hate that it is stealing work from writers and artists and well anyone else it steals from too.
I keep hearing/reading posts from acquaintances who think this is so great because they believe they have someone to talk to and understands them. Claiming they have deep conversations with them. Some are even touting it as a spiritual guru type thing.
I have not dabbled with any of the programs but it seems they feed off you. So isn't it basically telling you what you want to hear?
The jury is still out for me on the medical stuff. I mean it does still need to be trained by humans after all.
100% Jane. It’s the pits this moral vacuum we are well and truly in. Why no one gives a crap about how much carbon AI releases into our forgotten atmosphere. I mean whatever, right? Each google search automatically brings up an AI result …how sooner is our end as a result? And as you say, does anyone care? I bloody care! I hear you lady!
yes! I didn't realize this until my little brother shared it with me. AI actually takes like 10 times the energy of a google search! I'm a deep thinker so I like to research things myself, I will never use AI, it's my line in the sand. technology is great but this is taking it too far! Also I used yahoo or duck duck go and there is no AI result which is nice!
My MarComm-employed husband feels your pain. Not to mention the toll all of that computing is taking on the environment. 😢
QUALITY! I have my foot in the AI pool and interview data scientists and follow enough research to know, this shit ain't going anywhere near as good as they think and they have to float so much BS down the river. You are not old, you are wise and human and I'm here to say I recognize you and support you and let's keep kicking higher!
Thank you!! And thank you for your subscription. Kick we shall!
Amen. I'll just leave this AWP survey about AI right here. Deadline to fill it out is today! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd_ZPCyQe5CeWxwGtBslzeO4HNcTrl2EwZ2rYp3va0Bv77hiQ/viewform
Done! Thank you.
I honestly don’t want anything to do with AI. I am surprised how much people have no critical thinking skills as it is, and now they ask an app to do all their thinking for them? I mean I’m not going to bother reading something, an actual person didn’t bother to write on their own. Art and beauty are what make our humanity wonderful, and AI will steal that. Artists and writers should get credit for their work. There are a ton of other issues as well. As a nurse, there is no benefit in healthcare. So many nurses now don’t even know how to take a manual blood pressure because they depend on the machine. I don’t want a nurse or doctor that used chatgpt to get through school thank you! Also so many privacy concerns, there are already creeps using AI apps to turn kids faces into there own sick and twisted videos. It has happened, I have heard many stories. I think AI will bring government overreach and the AI is bias to whatever it is being fed. I’m 40 so I remember a time before all this shit, it seems like life was easier then. I mean look how much damage social media has caused the world, people are now just figuring out the effects of that and now we are implementing this before even having a forward thinking moral compass of like “hey what could go wrong here?” Seems to me the only one who truly benefits are the people creating AI not the ones using it.
For what it’s worth, I agree with you. However, are common metaphors and similes, turns of phrase, motifs, styles, and idioms not all forms of theft? AI was trained on theft because the people who taught it to crawl the web know no other way. Long before we knew a digital world, the human animal did a copy and and paste job of hunting and gathering for survival - mimicry and cooperation are the genius of our kind. Now that urge to replicate finds its home by consciously and unconsciously regurgitating ideas that feel original because they’re remixed in “our” voices. For example, I didn’t come up with the phrase, “clean as a bowling shoe,” but it sounds fun and original as long as you haven’t heard it before. How did that phrase, and thousands of others like it, find their way into my brain? I think it’s just the kind of creature we are - copycats.
I don’t know the exact environmental impact of posting on LinkedIn, or sending an email, or having a wood burning stove, but I do know my worries about AI are more a matter of degree and scale than a flat indictment. Yes, there is a new thief on the prowl. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” It’s all harmful to the environment and all art is theft on some level. AI might just be better at it than we can imagine. I’m certainly conflicted,as I just used it to reimagine my own music, but I’m also attempting to see through my own hypocrisy whenever possible.
I’m grateful for your perspective on this and glad to have found your work.
Wishing us all good luck…we’re gonna need it.
Thanks, Andrew!
I definitely understand the argument people make that all art—and all human innovation, for that matter—builds off of other humans' work. I guess I just see it as a very different thing when people do it through the creative process (adding their own sweat and tears and perspective and skills) vs. when billionaires feed working artists' and writers' work into a machine for use by other businesses, impacting those artists' and writers' ability to make a living (or at least be valued) as a result. And in some cases, like I said, they have done this it while violating copyright laws to boot, using pirated works.
The other thing is that genAI can create really close approximations of people's work. This is part of the foundation fo the Author's Guild suit -- people can use ChatGPT to create imitations of authors' work, mimicking their voice and style and even in some cases their books' characters and premises, which is a violation of derivative use laws.
One could argue that anyone could do this on their own, but ChatGPT provides all the tools to make it super easy. Same with art. I could say "create an illustration of X in the style of [Insert famous illustrator here]" and then use it as a book cover. And it would be totally free. Can one talented illustrator mimic another illustrator's style? Absolutely. But unless they start giving their work away for free, they won't put that other illustrator out of business. (And everyone will think they're an asshole, too!)
At the end of the day, though, like you, I don't see AI as totally bad thing. It just makes me very sad to see it being used in place of human creativity.
Thanks again for your thoughts!
Thanks for the thoughtful response. I’m relieved to know that folks with well calibrated moral compasses are keeping an eye on the machines!
I love the tone of this. I'm torn about the march toward AI. I've been experimenting with it for the last few weeks, and it's frightening how impressive it is. I asked it to explain what AI is and how it works to my 7 and 9-year-old and was amazed by the speed and tone of its response.
But, like you, I hate what it will potentially do to human thinking and, probably even scarier, human creativity if we outsource everything to the robot inside our phones and tablets. Is there a halfway house, using AI as a trusty assistant, speeding up our research so freeing up time to do the deep work when exercising our critical thinking muscle? I don't know.
The theft aspect of it, though, is concerning and also a testament to how the arts have always been treated in a capitalist society, as a way to make the corporate overlords (and now tech bros) rich at the expense of the artists.
My Son in Love is a marketing, web design and rebranding guru. We have semi-spirited convos about my hatred for AI. As a poet and editor I'm right there with you. I thought I was just being a 65 year old behind the times old granny. Glad to know I'm not out here in the netherworld alone! <3