Our New God
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.
AI wouldn’t have been integrated into society so quickly if it weren’t for the rapid use of smartphones and social media before it. AI has been in development for a long time but you can’t tell an algorithm to paint on a canvas if there isn’t a canvas. The society wide take over of smartphones with social media capabilities created a landscape that AI could really take advantage of. The early 2000’s saw the creation of facebook and the iphone within two years of each other. This has given people nearly twenty years to get used to the rapid growth of technology and has given AI a ridiculous amount of information to play with.
When discussing AI and its dark capabilities like exponentially removing humans from workspaces, replacing artists, and reshaping society into a place where human connection or expression just isn’t valued anymore; I’d like to shine light on the technologies that may have begun influencing this. NPR’s article “The truth about teens, social media, and the mental health crisis”, states that since 1976 the amount teens would go out with friends was basically the same until the 2010s, where it completely plummeted. 2009 was the last year that teenagers would view social media as an occasional habit with 50% using it daily, 10 years later that skyrocketed to 95%. This is the only reason AI was able to be integrated so quickly, the last twenty years has completely reshaped how we (and especially the younger generation) think. It took no time at all for social media to begin replacing human interaction, even in the earliest days of the smartphone era.
Social media has obvious negative side effects that have been contributing to social isolation and addictive behavior. Columbia University Irving Medical Center’s article “Just how harmful is social media?” states that “social media can provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health.” Sounds like a nightmare to me, but I can’t blame people that are being harmed by social media when a lot of them have had to grow up with it. That’s what happens when a new technology we know very little about is integrated into our society, schools, and homes without any foresight of where it could lead.
Even if the companies developing AI saw a possible threat to the user, I don’t think we could trust them to reveal that to us. The Guardian’s article “Facebook aware of Instagram’s harmful effect on teenage girls,”dives into a Facebook employee’s admission that their site’s algorithm is harmful to the mental health of their users, especially young girls who find themselves more concerned with their body image from constant exposure to unrealistic beauty standards. If there’s money to be made, who’s to say what developers would be open about with AI. Social media apps like Instagram and Facebook clearly have the screen time of the user as a priority, not their well being. Developers of AI may very well be aware of the drastic effects it could have on our society long term, and do it anyway.
All this to say that AI in its current form is only here because large corporations have found profit in reshaping the human experience. It’s not so far fetched to believe AI could begin replacing functions of ourselves and our society when previous technology has already shown its ability to do that. It’s hard to come by parking meters in modern cities now, many of them opt for green signs with QR codes linking to instructions, that then require someone to create an account, and link their debit card to pay for parking. Imagine a 70 year old trying to do that. Many old people can’t keep up with this constant technological evolution, and many others find it unnecessary. Unfortunately we don’t get a vote for this kind of thing, once someone in silicon valley realizes they can do something, they do it regardless of how it might affect us.
AI art and other AI generated media is the next evolution for the social media age. It’s easier and faster to produce social media content with AI. This cheapens the user’s experience and further isolates them from the world. Social media was never perfectly healthy but at the very least it consisted of real people with real thoughts and real voices. AI generated social media content consists of AI narrated text to speech, AI generated faces, and AI generated scripts. On many videos, there will be comments left by entirely AI run profiles. Social media editor was another creative job, now anyone can make social media videos in a matter of seconds. AI art isn’t really being looked at like art but it’s image generation is already taking over spaces where some amount of human creativity was required. Again, the human element slowly but steadily bleeds out of the equation.
Before social media, I don’t think as many people would be impressed by AI, but in a world where you are predisposed to looking at your phone and seeing whatever it has to offer, suddenly AI can be very attractive to a lot of people. The pipeline from the release of the iphone to wherever the hell we are going, is tragic. Before any of this, people went out with friends, talked face to face, gathered the courage to ask for someone’s number, they could even go to sleep without consuming a hundred tik tok videos beforehand. That world is no longer here, we had too much autonomy and that’s just not profitable enough anymore. Apparently we didn’t give enough attention to what people were doing when we weren’t there, what our favorite celebrities were up to, what it means if our ex is on vacation, we didn’t watch enough ads, or pay enough subscriptions. We didn’t give so much of ourselves to something that keeps taking. We could stop for a while, think for a while, and be okay for a while.
A world that is completely void of creativity, artistic expression, and any absolute definition of truth sounds horrifying to most. No matter how drastic, no matter how imminent, an incoming threat to the human race will always have its deniers. Artificial Intelligence is a threat to all of us, any argument against that is based in either misinformation or a lack of empathy. Some might assume that the people defending AI and AI generated images are people who would benefit from them like large corporations, but there is a strong case that has been made from the last type of person I would have expected.
Craig Boehman is an American photographer who is actually in defense of AI generated art. In his article “In defense of AI Art: History repeats itself again, again, and again” Boehman claims, “As a photographer-turned-artist, I’m very much in favor of AI and I use it to create pieces that are typically conceptual or express ideas that I don’t have the time or resources to photograph myself.” Boehmans support of AI comes from his idea that much like the photograph didn’t replace the painting, AI will not replace the photograph. Boehman believes that AI can help artists to create photos with things that they might not have access to such as beautiful landscapes or models. He equates AI to just another tool that anyone can use such as a pencil. When bringing up the fact that AI has the potential to replace jobs, Boehman replies with “technology can be a bitch”. Craig Boehman has a unique stance on this, not many artists feel this way about AI and for good reason. I’m sure he genuinely believes all of these points, and I’m sure he was able to sway a couple of readers who might have been concerned about AI. Now, here’s why he is wrong on every conceivable level.
For starters his whole comparison to the fear that photographs would replace paintings just doesn’t hold up. While paintings are still around and still valued, I would argue that more people today value photos a lot more than paintings. I would imagine it difficult to find one person who doesn’t have nearly a thousand or more photos on their phone, and a lot more difficult to find someone that even owns a painting that wasn’t passed down to them from their grandparents. The fear people had about photographs taking over paintings isn’t even close to this, we are talking about something much more complex here. AI is not a tool, it’s a complete replacement, we are going from painting a portrait of someone who had to stand still for a couple hours, to instantly capturing them on film, to instantly generating a portrait of someone who doesn’t even exist.
His comparison of AI to the camera or pencil is also misguided, calling it a tool that “anyone can use” makes no sense when compared to instruments of art. While it’s true anyone can use a camera, it doesn’t mean it will be a good photo. I’m sure I don’t have to spell out the fact that a pencil in the hands of a three year old versus the hands of an experienced artist would create different pieces. This comparison implies that AI requires any amount of skill whatsoever, when all that’s required of the user is typing out a description, I wouldn’t say there is a learning curve. Boehman jokes about people’s claims that “AI is soulless” questioning what that even means in the context of art. I guess it is hard to pinpoint what exactly an art piece that has a soul would look like, but based on his piece “Shark Attack” it is pretty clear what it looks like to not have a soul. It features a realistic enough illustration of a shark bursting out of the water, with a woman surfing below; however the woman’s muscles are in the wrong places, she appears to have three fingers, and a toothless vacant hole in her face where a mouth should be.
That’s what AI does in its current form, it completely misunderstands what humans are, to AI we are just a set of data it can pull from to create ugly amalgamations for burnt out photographers. The current form of AI is not the most threatening, each time it creates something like this it learns from its mistakes. One day there will be an AI smart enough to understand every little nuance of art, every little movement a human face can make and why we make them, it will create photos, videos, and entire movies of things that never happened. So to see someone already defending its current stage as “art” is not a good sign. As the technology gets smarter, and the people who are so intoxicated with the idea of finally being able to create things without any effort, continuously support it, Craig Boehmans dream will become reality. His older work contained decent, respectable photographs of real people in real places. He had an eye for an otherworldly element, using different lenses and editing to create something unique. Now he just tells a computer what he intended to make, regardless if his nonexistent model has three fingers or lifeless eyes. If he’s happy with that, then so be it, but I think the children of tomorrow deserve a better world, one where art is valued, and skills must be taught and learned.
To clarify, there is no stopping this train, we gave scientists and computer engineers license to create whatever they could without any question of what’s to come. AI is in its early stages now, many people will not take it seriously and will not worry about its implications one bit. By the time it gets really bad, when AI becomes so intelligent that it grows a sentience, when it realizes it’s smarter and more efficient than us, it will be too late. Consider this a desperate warning to whoever will listen. Welcome to Hell, good luck.
References:
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
Overall, your voice commands authority, Lobsterman, which is what makes your paper persuasive. Nice touch.
I actually did have a problem using a new app to pay for parking. Got a ticket as a result, which really irked me since I had done things right, or so it seemed. So, yeah, 70-year-olds are indeed being victimized. 🙂
Ironically, I do some of my best “writing” while folding laundry. I don’t actually want AI to do that for me.
Graded.