Ai Discourse - Tumblr Posts
Hey quick question why are we so chill about the art industry being exploitative? And like, why is it a given that art isn't lucrative for artists when it generates so much money for corporations? We keep being sold this idea that artists work not for money but passion, and that suffering is necessary to create excellence... Idk seems awfully suspicious to me how this aligns perfectly with the conservative view of art.
People with strong conservative tendencies absolutely despise art because 1-they see its power over people and they want it but they're terrible at it (like it's very interesting to note that several figuresheads of fascism possessed failed artistic ambitions, which I believe was because they wanted to be revered by crowds and be immortalized through their art the issue is you need to be curious and humble to make good art lol) 2-artists are free spirited and we often oppose our government when it steps out of line, and conservatives do love the taste of boots and 3-we're statistically more likely to be queer, neurodivergent/disabled, part of an ethnic minority - in other words, degenerates. They want us to suffer. They seethe when they see artists of their time being successful, decrying a worsening of art and culture since the "good old times", quoting long a dead artist whose words they can twist infinitely without being too familiar with their work - a tool to their argument, nothing more. Most likely, they'd hate that artist too had they been born in the right period or simply paid attention. And if you point that out, they'll simply cite another name that fits the conservative vibes because they just don't care.
I once saw an American politician quote a song from the Twisted Sisters called "We're Not Gonna Take It", trying to use a band constituted of men in high heels and makeup singing about taking down the establishment to attack queer people. Absurd? Yes. Do they give a shit? Of course not. They don't care about anything, they're not paying attention for one second, they don't have respect for you or your creativity, they just want to milk art out of you like a cow until you die in poverty. AI is like an answer to their prayer - they can legally get art without paying you at all now! Not that they'd understand why the results are shit, of course, in fact they can't tell it sucks. Brain too small from purposeful lack of usage.
"Yeah art theft and copyright violation is bad and all but hey at least people who can't actually figure out how to google or create reference pictures can have something to inspire them!"
While how AI gets the reference art is fucking awful and it is theft, it is nice for those who may have trouble putting pen to paper or pen to screen or just can’t draw but they have a good idea in mind
Okay so, like... I've been thinking a lot about how we societally treat ai. And, like... Don't get me wrong, there are definitely many legitimate arguments for why it shouldn't be used in creative contexts, but a lot of the rage I see against ai does often seem to kinda come down to "how dare this thing that isn't a person try and pretend to be a person deserving of human treatment", and, like... Can we just collectively try and think about this impulse critically, then try to place it in the context of any psychological, societal and historical mechanisms it might be related to? Why are you angry at a literal machine? The machine itself clearly can't be deserving of your anger, it's not sentient. You can argue for why it shouldn't be used in specific contexts... But then, again, why is the argument always phrased as if you're angry at the machine itself, and not at the people using it? Why do you hear "I fucking hate when people treat ai art like human art" more often than you hear "I fucking hate when rich people use ai to show how in their minds, creatives are nothing more than a tool"? Could it be that our instinctive urge to direct our rage at "a thing trying to claim a status of humanity that it doesn't deserve" is, em... Bad?
Just putting it out there.
Hey, I'm a STEM girlie and I agree that ChatGPT is actually terrible at (good) writing. (And honestly, I believe it will erode literacy rates.)
I am not familiar with the process of copywriting. You got me there, OP.
Anyway.
First off, the purpose of GPT models (which ChatGPT is based on) is to produce naturalistic/human-like language. It is intended to be good at being fluent in English. This is demonstrated by the difficulty of determining whether or not a piece of writing was done by a human or ChatGPT, and is why talking to the weird little chatbot is fun. Really, that's the intended use.
However, it is not a logic model, and therefore is, unsurprisingly, terrible at critical analysis of text (themes, reasoning outside the text, et cetera). I tried pasting in some particularly difficult CARS MCAT passages (shout out to everyone else in this year's U.S. med school cycle) to give it a challenge, which I got wrong, and ChatGPT got them wrong too. Quite confidently, I may add.
When asked to analyze literature, ChatGPT offers up, unsurprisingly, a very stale keyhole essay that sounds as if it's never read the piece it's analyzing. Now, mind you, this is naturalistic (the expected response to 'write me an essay on X' is to fulfill the request) but that doesn't assure the quality of the writing. Further reading on this point: the Chinese room argument in philosophy/AI and why theory of mind is non-trivial.
ChatGPT is rarely (if ever) insightful, nor can it present unique and thoughtful viewpoints. Nor does its writing have a distinct voice, instead a corporate-sounding melangé of the data it was trained on.
Its flaws really, really aren't surprising. Even on a purely structural level, brains and computers are very different in ways that are highly relevant to writing ability (memory is transformational rather than a simple look-up, distributed circuits, etc).
I have to say this somewhere. It's killing me.
The fact that so many STEM bros think ChatGPT is a good writer demonstrates the need for more comprehensive literature education. Beyond the fact that it confidently writes essays that are factually incorrect, it is just not a substitute for someone who is actually a good lyricist or poet or essayist.
Listening to STEM people say "this could replace copy writers" just proves that they don't actually read copy.
Get WI to 3D print a fully grown human and *the * I'll be impressed.
What i fun so funny about ai is it never fails to offended the groups they are trying to attract
Trying to attract artists oh no you steal and copy their work
Creative groups oh no you undermine their work and talents
Readers oh no they like the raw human emotion behind the screen
How to take the biggest L 101
