Our New God Part One:
Death of the Artist
Humans have had an insatiable thirst for innovation for as long as we have been around, and I think we just created our last invention. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly developing technology that while only first conceived of within the last hundred years, is quickly becoming the next big thing. Innovation for innovation’s sake might not always be a good thing. AI has the potential to completely reshape how our society functions, and destroy the very concept of creativity. AI is capable of creating false images, videos, and strings of text all based on simple written prompts. The biggest companies in the world are selling AI as a fun new technology to help come up with recipes and do math homework, in reality they are selling people their replacement.
AI art is completely free to use, all it requires is a brief description of an image and it will improvise from there, but it’s not really improvising. In the BBC’s article, AI: Digital artist’s work copied more times than Picasso, artist Greg Rutkowski discovered that his name was used in AI prompts over 400,000 times without his consent. This is what AI really is, an algorithm that looks up a thousand images and smashes them together to create a lifeless amalgamation of real peoples work. When companies are training their AI models, they are purposefully feeding it media made by actual people, not to learn what a painting is; but to learn how to make something that would look enough like a painting. This makes sense, how else would an artificial intelligence learn anything, but if we have to create something like this the very least we could do is compensate or credit the artists that it’s blatantly stealing from.
AI images very existence steals from artists, both when generating an image based off their work, and stealing their jobs. In WIRED’s article, AI is already taking jobs in the videogame industry, employees express concern about the future of their career with AI in the workspace. “Managers at video game companies aren’t necessarily using AI to eliminate entire departments, but many are using it to cut corners, ramp up productivity, and compensate for attrition after layoffs. In other words, bosses are already using AI to replace and degrade jobs.” Keeping in mind the current version of this technology has barely been around for a few years, this is just the beginning. Innovation has always affected the job market, but people can still work in factories with automatic conveyor belts and robotic packing machines. AI’s continuous involvement in workspaces will rapidly remove the human element from the equation. Artists, graphic designers, videographers, animators, code developers, and hundreds of other jobs involving some form of human creativity could very well be obsolete within 10 years.
Just two years ago, an AI image generator would just barely be able to create something recognizable. Most of what AI was able to produce consisted of weird dream-like images that were fuzzy and lacked detail, most attempts at human likeness would include deformed eyes and multiple limbs. This is not the final product, this is just a sliver of what AI could be capable of. Nothing in human history has ever evolved so quickly, AIs capability to learn from its flaws could allow it to understand nuances and better replicate human art. The fact that companies have already been using AI in its current form to streamline creative workplaces, spells a grim look into the future. Once AI perfects its craft to human standards, there won’t be any reason to hire someone for creative jobs.
Our humanity is on the line here, this technology is capable of completely replacing a human’s creative mind and promoting a society where no one desires or is even capable of forming an original thought. There was a time where art was respected, people were astounded by beautiful paintings, moved to tears by music, transported to other worlds by film, art was mankind’s most beautiful way of communicating emotion. Art was something to aspire to, something not everyone could do but something everyone could learn. Anyone could put time into an instrument, a canvas, or a typewriter, failing over and over again and not stopping until their fingers bled and they had something to show for it. AI is here to destroy all of that, AI is here to cut corners and skip to the finish line. There will be an entire generation of children who come into the world after AI, it will be integrated in schools, and students will ask their parents why anyone would bother to learn how to do anything when AI could have just done it for them.
There is no stopping this train, but we can hope that one day people will tire of things being done for them, and realize that life is not worth living if we’re letting an algorithm live for us. I want AI to do my taxes and fold my laundry so I have time to make art, I don’t want AI to make my art so I have time to do my taxes and fold my laundry. Technology has always been sold to us as a way to make our lives easier but at a certain point it’s just over complicating it. What’s the point of an AI that does something that humans are already capable of doing like writing and drawing. AI could be an incredibly useful tool in medical and science fields but it has no business creating art and taking away human jobs. AI integration is the most short sighted technological advancement of all time, they are literally selling the people on something that can completely replace them within decades, and I’m not buying. This is the death of the artist, and AI is going to bury his body, take his name, and move to a new country where no one will be asking what happened to him.
References:
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Your paper will be less than fully satisfying if it amounts to a curated list of “things that suck about AI,” Lobsterman. If you plan to continue gathering examples of bad consequences, find a theme around which you can organize the instances, Lobsterman.
I’ve broken your longish paragraphs where they transitioned from ONE MAIN IDEA to another. The breaks aren’t altogether clear because you ramble a bit in your first draft, but the job of every paragraph should be to fully develop a single main point.
The section inside [brackets] is more of a rant than a bit of scholarly writing. We don’t have to be terribly formal in this “informally academic” writing class, but consider print standards vs podcast standards as a “style guide.”
You may be misleading readers in your section on captions. The example of the AI attempt to describe an old lady rummaging through a trash bin for discarded cans and bottles as “person carrying a bag” is laughably inept, but it’s not as if the caption ever appeared printed below the image.
The caption type the source describes (https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/political-science/articles/10.3389/fpos.2023.1245684/full) are the SPOKEN captions that blind internet users hear when a photo accompanies text. Granted, the description “person carrying a bag” won’t help the blind web surfer understand AT ALL the implications a human doing the caption could accomplish, but it’s hard to see the lousy description doing much harm to the “reader” who can’t see the picture.
As for DeepFakes, phony nudes are certainly deeply unpleasant and disturbing to their victims, but are they really the biggest threat fake images pose to our politics and national security? I’m much more concerned about the corrosion of our faith in ALL IMAGES when “did you get it on tape?” is the easiest way to deny behavior. As soon as malefactors can create “fake tape” evidence good enough to fool a jury or an electorate, the lies travel 100x faster than any “retraction” or “correction” that follows.
See what you can do to focus your ire more selectively.
Wonderful job of following up on recommendations and thoroughly I MEAN COMPLETELY tearing down your essay to the bones and building it back better.
I’m very impressed. This essay is still very light on research, but its intentions and scope are much more focused. More than a full letter-grade of improvement.
I admire that you were willing to put in the work.