AI art is automation and automation is good, actually
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I’m seeing a lot of people hating on Lensa and other AI art apps in a decidedly Luddite fashion. An artist whose work I really enjoy, Molly Crabapple, even tweeted a thread trying to rehabilitate the Luddites to crap on AI-generated art.
To which I say, let’s not try to rehabilitate the Luddites.
Here’s the deal:
AI is automation and automation is a tool. As such, it’s neither good nor bad. Whether it ends up being good or bad, and for whom, depends on how it’s used.
AI is going to happen, just like the loom happened. So fighting the tool is pointless. The fight needs to be over how it’s used.
I’m actually already using DALL-E to make header images for my newsletters. This isn’t me taking away an artist’s job. My newsletter just didn’t have header images before DALL-E. That’s what automation does. It allows more people to have whatever is being automated, in my case shitty header images.
AI thus far is simply the next generation of automation. History shows that automation makes people more creative, not less, on net. Automation frees workers of the relative drudgery of whatever a machine can do. Which means they have more time to focus on what only humans can do.
Take photography. Time was when if you needed to depict something you’d have to hire an illustrator. The invention of photography put many illustrators out of work. But the ones who kept at it got to do something much more interesting than try to faithfully render real life. The illustrators who remained in the game got to do work that was more creative, not less.
In one of the articles I linked from my first Lensa post an artist said using AI cut his work time down by more than an hour. If an AI can do a task, an AI should do that task and you should only do the tasks only you can do!
History shows very clearly that every major wave of automation has benefitted the vast majority of people. Stuff gets cheaper, and most people move into better work.
The problem, of course, is that not everyone benefits from automation. First, we have an economy that shovels the vast majority of wealth created by innovation to the very top. Second, we don’t have a functional safety net for people who can’t or won’t adapt to automation. Third, working conditions just generally suck more than is reasonable for the majority of workers in the wealthiest nation on Earth.
The lesson from the Luddites is that if you don’t trust that you’ll be okay after AI, (and you shouldn’t) it makes no sense to try to stop AI. You’ll fail.
They were trying to get better working conditions for a job that should absolutely not exist anymore. Trying to smash machines that can do the work cheaper so people can live better & have more interesting jobs is not the way.
Advocate for a social safety net. Promote UBI. Fight for workers rights. The Luddites not only failed to stop the loom, but they failed to force leaders to help more people win in part because they fought machines instead of leaders.
The loom/AI isn’t why working conditions suck. It’s the government and corporations. Keep your focus on the power, not the tools. Ludditism is ultimately totally counterproductive.
Tools are not good or bad. They’re neutral. How we use them is what matters. It’s the conversation we need to be having about AI. Because AI is coming and the rules and norms we converge on is the only open question. And these rules and norms will decide our fate.
Header images come from me putting the headline text into OpenAI’s DALL-E.