#i think the content algorithms are getting to me and im getting too much influx on this one topic

[idreamtofmanderleyagain]

One thing about the anger directed at AI from other artists right now is that what I'm alarmed and frustrated by is not the legitimate concerns of the usual corporate hellscape issues the tech industry created with it. It's not the concerns over theft and plagiarism (although I think there is misinfo about some aspects of this and a lot of intense reactionary shit. Even so, it's okay and normal to feel alarm and concern and want to discuss protective/ethical measures). And it's certainly not people fighting and advocating for worker's rights.

No. What's bothering me is the weird borderline elitist shit being the loudest voice in artistic/fandom spaces. It's "I worked so hard and suffered so much and now because people can ask a machine to make stuff, it's ruined my special identity." It's "people who make anything at all with AI will never be real artists like I am, and that's why we should ostracize them all, deny them legal protections, gatekeep all our spaces, etc." It's "everyone who uses AI for any reason is uncreative, a liar and a thief." It's "only people who endured my definition of hard work are real artists." It's "art can only be made by certain people under certain parameters that I dictate as legitimate." It's the insinuation that the bad shit that AI did to our jobs should be happening to everyone else but artists. It's the way I'm for some reason seeing fanfic writers, the queens of 'taking inspiration,' literally pull arguments from Anne Rice's famous hits.

I didn't know that my understanding of art was so different from so many people. And I think that's part of what is bothering me so much about this.

Like, listen. I put in the hard work. I have taught myself for decades. I have taught other people for a living. I have struggled, and shared my work to the world, and known what it was like to try and fail to make financial successes happen. I have known what it feels like to have others take 'heavy inspiration' from my hard work. I have known what it feels like to project that kind of "they're copying me!" anxiety and self-protectiveness unfairly onto others who did not deserve it.

But the way some of us have been behaving, the vicious pettiness, the fearmongering, the misinformation, the sheer anger directed at folks who are *not* shady corporate tech bros. It's ugly.

Art is not just all the hard work we put into being ~special~, or the endless struggling to get paid for it, or even the fucking attention. And if your voice in the conversation is just "weh all those ~less creative~ people might use this to make better looking, more financially successful art then me, when I should be the one rewarded with attention because I worked so hard!" Well. Welcome to having your work automated like everybody else ~less creative~ than you already has. Can we get back to just...enjoying ourselves making art for each other? Sharing the experience of creativity? Teaching one and other? Communicating deeper ideas about the human condition? Because nothing about AI is actually interfering with those things for me. AI hasn't taken my hands or my mind or my voice (not even if it manages to actually plagiarize my public work), but late stage capitalism has taken all my time and my energy and my money. AI's not ever stopping me from making art. People who play with it and make things are not interfering with my capacity to create, they are not actually harming me at all by playing in my sandbox. The mere presence of it will not crush the human drive to create (it might even open new doors). But the daily grind of exploitative american labor sure will. AI might take away what would be an already shitty, soulless, exploitative job that drains me creatively, but uh...that's the system I was already living in. The issue of workers rights is much bigger than just automation.

AI alone won't take anything away from you but a shitty job you would probably hate anyway, but billionaires sure will find ways to take away all your time and energy and financial security to be creative. And whether AI is a fad or is here to stay, unless we advocate for our rights politically, unless we hold politicians and corporations accountable, that will not change.

#I'm sorry #I promise I will give it a rest #i think the content algorithms are getting to me and im getting too much influx on this one topic #tomorrow is Hellraiser only #ai #ai controversy #ai art