On ChatGPT, My Luddite Awakening, and Why I Hate Computers
An AI-generated artwork, with prompts by Jean Quarcoopome on Midjourney
“My business - my artistry, is not an algorithmic game I'm playing with people's minds. It is a good idea and good execution put towards a service people desire.” — CJ the X, ‘Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos’
Spawn Point
In the three weeks since ChatGPT first started making waves on the internet, I have been repeatedly informed by my friends that the natural language processing AI’s greatest strength is in its ability to be an efficient tool. In those three weeks, I have also never felt more like a Luddite.
It is not that I refute the fact that ChatGPT is a capable tool to support all manners of work, from copywriting to software development. In fact, I do concede (with contempt) that there is utility in having a piece of software that can supplement the creative process or a person’s general lifestyle. In fact, I recently (and quite hypocritically) used ChatGPT to kickstart the writing process for an article at work. It was one of those articles you write for SEO optimisation, and I had been struggling with writing something so lifeless and stale, so I got the computer to do it, and then I edited and built on what it did. My manager said the final result read a little robotic, but after a few more edits it was good to go.
While I would readily wear the crown of the hypocrite without shame, I personally do not think my use of ChatGPT in this manner after posting 15+ anti-AI tweets was actually hypocritical. Because, when I talk about how ChatGPT makes me nervous, I am not talking about the program in itself.
I’m talking about the global system to which it was introduced.
Aside #1: AI Art and NFTs
It’s been a tough two years for the artistic community. In quick succession, millions of people around the world to which art was a thing they poured heart and soul into suddenly had to watch (or were even forced to compete) as their communities devolved into corporate shilling areas where tech bros competed in dick-swinging contests and attempted to automate artistic processes for profit, not necessarily to help the artist.
I’ll try not to beat a dead horse and leave NFTs alone. At this point, most people can already identify NFTs as soulless, quick money grabs (when they’re done by huge corporations) and collector pieces without further utility (when done by actual artists). After all, as much as blockchain technology has been an exciting development in crypto technology, there’s yet to be a widely accepted use for the technology beyond making profit. Sure, owning the digital receipt to a really cool piece of art you like is nice and it does support the artist, but you could also buy the artist’s actual physical or digital art with no substantial difference in ownership, security, or appreciation.
AI Art, however, is quickly bringing new sins to light.
In September, a man won an art contest with a piece he generated with Midjourney, sparking widespread outrage over what transformative work he did besides typing in prompts into a software[1]. A few weeks ago, a tech bro on Twitter bragged about how he had streamlined the process of creating a children’s book into a single weekend by using ChatGPT and Midjourney, ignoring the fact that children’s authors do extensive research into the best ways to communicate complex ideas to small children in a way that doesn’t insult their intelligence and ability to spot poorly created art and instead focusing on the fact that he could reduce the creative process into a weekend diversion from his normal job[2]. People like this are symptomatic of the fact that art has been identified as the last great industry that is yet to be automated for quick and easy entry and profit.
For a long time, the perceived barrier to entry into art is its inaccessibility. However, commitment to art requires accepting that it would not come easy and instead submitting to the process and finding joy in the gradual growth. People draw when they’re young and then realise they’re not as good out the gate as someone who shows a little more affinity to it, so they stop. They incorrectly identify this as a problem - that art is inaccessible because they can’t ‘get good’ easily or because they don’t have the time to dedicate to the soulful and humbling process of worshipping a god that’ll never thank them. They fail to realise that this hubris is in fact the real barrier.
Now, the internet is awash with people talking about the best prompts to generate the best ‘art’ that they can quickly flip for profit. These tech bros and ‘entrepreneurs’ identify AI as the great equaliser, a way for them to achieve the financial heights they crave without working for it, all the while ignoring valid complaints about how these large AI corporations are stealing art from various people and aggregating them into large data pools for sampling.
Aside #2: You Can’t ‘Democratise’ Art, Go Touch Grass
A common mindset among those passionate about AI art is the idea that they’re making art more widely available. This is hilarious simply because not only has art always been publicly available, but it also remains one of the most under-funded and under-appreciated public amenities. Despite its ability to heal and provide solace, a large percentage of people who become notable artists have had to dedicate themselves to it without support or funding. They do not receive massive grants from silicon valley VCs. Public funding from governments is hard fought.
Yet, at any rate, art has been a thing for which people could turn solace to and use as a method of self expression. People turn to art due to a yearning from the soul. They form their own relationships with it. Some people pour hours into learning new techniques, networking, and improving their craft. Others are fine doing the occasional painting, the small poem, the tiny song they sing in the shower. Some people are performers, and some are audiences with a desire to partake by replication. It’s all art.
The presupposition that these people make about art is that ‘it’s not Art (with a capital A) until it’s good’. They claim AI gives them the ability to easily make good art. What they do not realise is that:
As a general maxim, Art can sooner be said to include than exclude[3]. Doodles can sooner be said to be art, than the Mona Lisa can be said to not be art.
Any creative endeavour poured from the soul is art. Be it a three-year-old’s finger painting, or an old Italian man playing a Stratavarious. Don’t let arbitrary markers of value colour the fact that self-expression is still art.
When something is perceived as ‘good’ art, it’s often the hours of development of skill and technique that’s being appreciated. Not just talent.
Art made by AI is not unique. It is a computer model’s approximation of a prompt based on thousands of samples, creating an end result that appears unique. AI is not capable of the kind of dynamic thought that would create iconic pieces of art. It looks at those iconic pieces of art and reduces them to data that can be mass produced. There is no intent, no story to technique, no idea of form and structure and techniques. The art is not good. It just looks pretty, while doing as little as possible,
Aside #3: Luddism
The term ‘Luddite’ is often used to describe people who oppose developments in technology. This, over the years, has been short-circuited to mean old-fashioned or antiquated. Analogue humans. The people are too stubborn to evolve with the rapid changes in life. However, the original group of English textile workers from the 19th century who rose up in arms against the industrial revolution didn’t smash textile machines with hammers because they feared change. They did it because they recognised that these machines had become a reason for manufacturers to be “fraudulent and deceitful”[4].
Manufacturers had realised that they could avoid paying fair wages for skilled workers, circumvent standard labour practices, and cheat thousands out of jobs simply because they could. To them, those people whose standards of life they so casually obliterated were simply a rising green line on a balance sheet.
Aside #4: Capitalism
Our consent in capitalism is manufactured and assumed[5]. We do not engage with the capitalism-induced consumption out of choice, but a manufactured necessity. It is understood that we have to consume and then work to afford our consumption. As a result, a percentage of our existence is dedicated to the creation of profit. If you’re predisposed to the creative arts, and are willing to don the outfit of the performer, then it follows that you’ll at some point consider selling your creative output. You’ll have to assign it a value and then compete under capitalism to survive. And if it so happens that there’s a cheaper way to produce the same value of your creative output, capitalism dictates that be the preferred method of production.
Aside #5: Value vs. Profit
There are things that are valuable, but not profitable[5]. Like the creation of art. The value of art does not come from its estimated profitability but from the fact that it is a captured part of the human soul. It has inherent value as a thing anyone is capable of doing with a little time and passion. But people started selling art due to this value and now, there’s an expectation for all art to be profitable.
People started selling art because art was deemed valuable, due to the beauty of human expression, but people keep selling art today because it is now becoming about profit. In a world of rising inflation, widening wealth gaps, and utter disrespect for paying trained artists fairly, some people still have to put food on the table.
The preservation of jobs and skills is also valuable but not necessarily profitable. Textile manufacturers in the 19th century didn’t have to fire employees. Their bottom line would have been fine. They wouldn’t have been making losses. But they wanted bigger profits and so they eschewed the labour (and in turn, livelihoods) of thousands.
And now we get to watch history repeat itself.
Putting it All Together
Somewhere in this ramble, I mentioned having tested out ChatGPT while I was writing an article for SEO purposes. It was a sad full circle moment, that the most soulless article I could be writing with my skill - a type of article only necessitated for the sheer purpose of boosting numbers on a webpage and thus profit, was the one with which I tried the software for the first time.
We sadly belong to a world where everything has the end goal of profit. The days of doing things simply because they are worth doing are slowly eroding. We are all watching it happen in real time too: children are born ready to perform on the internet, sell their personalities, become living advertisements for giant corporations. Our attention is being colonised by the internet, while we grapple with the dozen different ways our planet might be teetering on edge.
And in all of this, a team of computer scientists somewhere is creating and perfecting software that will make it even easier for big corporations and revolting tech bros to eradicate the need for actual trained writers, artists, and musicians.
It is important to highlight that this technology only exists as a way to create profit. It was not created to be a tool. It was made to optimise and streamline processes that industries that were previously human led. The people who back it understand this. That’s why its biggest supporters are not the artists themselves, but people in corporations that understand how it is yet another cog in the global game of numbers.
The actual artists, the people to whom writing, painting, drawing, music, and all other forms of expression have provided respite, look upon the art with disgust because they do not see a tool. They can tell that these programs were not made with them in mind. It wreaks of scientists meddling in another industry that can be reduced to 1s and 0s for no reason other than streamlining and capital and profit and stock prices.
Scientists that are so enamoured by the fact that they could do create such a technology, that they’ve not stopped to think for a second if they should.
“I want to see old men with full beards learning ballet. I want to see terrible art from people in their 30s who have only just got their first tablet. I want to see mothers picking up their old hobbies. I want to see people in their early 20s figuring out how to be alive by making bad music in their bedrooms. I want zines to be handmade paper pamphlets of devotion. I want creation to be fun again, instead of a competition where we all have to monetise joy until we lose the invaluable currency of unashamed love.” — @gabr1elkit on Tumblr
