A.I., A.I., Ohh.
“The real problem of humanity is the following:
We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”
— DR. E.O. WILSON, SOCIOBIOLOGIST (link)
Artists began to sit up and notice when Midjourney/ Dall-E/ Stable Diffusion started spitting out Deviant Art quality fantasy portraits while-you-wait. Turns out it wasn’t a coincidence:
The lawsuit cites a study that found that 47 percent of the LAION-Aesthetics dataset is made up of images from stock photo sites such as Shutterstock and Getty Images, shopping sites including Pinterest, and websites hosting user-generated content such as Flickr and Tumblr. An estimated one of out every 50 images in the dataset (or about 3.3 million images) had been sourced from DeviantArt, according to the complaint.
So, heyyyyyyy art friends! How many years have you been told to put your work up on on Tumblr or Pinterest or DeviantArt or wherever to get noticed? Well, congratulations! All your work wasn’t for nothing!
Evidently, it was for A.I.
How can we mortals- artists and everyone- overcome the overwhelm & begin to wrap our minds around exponentially more ubiquitous, exponentially more powerful “artificial intelligence” that feeds off our own trail of digital breadcrumbs?
I’ve given this a lot of thought. Really, I’ve come to feel we should all be giving this a lot more critical thought. No matter how fast the news comes flying at us, no matter how exhausting and futile and marred by technicalities, we need to engage with the facts & effects of our “progress”.
Yes, I’ve heard the “printing press was also a disruptive technology” argument. The “every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” maxim. I’m tracking on all the people “collaborating with A.I.” to make their work… Reading all the fevered Medium articles panting about how if you don’t use A.I. to generate your “content” you’ll be left in the dust/ you’re leaving money on the table…
Here are a few articles I’ve appreciated on the topic:
Machine Metaphysics and the Cult of Techno-Transcendentalism
A.I. Emotions Dreamed Up By ChatGPT
And The A.I. Dilemma from the excellent Center for Humane Technology :
A prompt for you:
Take notes while you read and watch any of the above sources. Then, pull one word or phrase from your notes that sticks out and make it the title/topic of a haiku. (Haiku are typically three lines: the first and third line have 5 syllables, the second has 7 syllables.) Comments are on to share!
I realized that the phrase sticking out for me today was already 5 syllables, so here’s one of my haiku:
“alignment problems”
intention makes me human
i don’t make content
(LM 2023)
"...and on that (server) farm they had a non-biological, non-sentient entity..."
Love that you opened with E.O. Wilson—not only because he was brilliant, the quote's right on and I thoroughly enjoyed "Consilience" back in the day, but also because his initialism flows right from your title. Also, his name sometimes reminds me of the incredible Captain E.O., but that's beside the point.
As always, Lisette, I enjoy your insightful writings, and the well-curated AI article appreciations at the end. Just read through the articles, and especially connected with the New Yorker one. I'll need to take more time with the video, though I'm familiar with Tristan Harris and his leading voice in this conversation. Another good one I've come across is www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/jun/06/microsofts-kate-crawford-ai-is-neither-artificial-nor-intelligent
So much to say on this topic. I'll leave the bulk of it for a future salon on AI...Eh? Eh? For now, I'd like to share some high level thoughts as bullets:
- Partly based on the Guardian article above, I prefer calling this technology 'machine learning (or ML),' which I feel is more accurate—though there may be a better term we could envision or discover
- I'm heartened by the existence of the Center for Humane Technology. Too much tech is released to the masses without proper vetting around consequences, due to economics and efficiency being the driving considerations. Having some tech clients on my roster, I've been introduced to the further-heartening fields of "Responsible AI" or "Trusted AI," which focus on training these entities to be benevolent according to elevated human values
- I agree that there needs to be more critical thought and discussion, especially around ethics. ML isn't inherently good or bad, but the potential for bad actors to misuse it is high
- While I'm not frozen by fear, I'm witnessing ML's incursion into the fields of art and design with a watchful eye. We need to protect ourselves legally, which may involve legislative advocacy. On the job displacement front, Pandora's box has been opened, and we'll have to figure out a way to use ML as a advantageous tool while promoting the intent (as you said) and authenticity of human creative processes
- As excited as I am around 'spatial computing' via Apple's Vision Pro, the face-scanned avatar creeps me out. I didn't hop on the Lensa bandwagon for a similar reason, and only later discovered the platform's horrendously one-sided privacy policy
- What we've got here is a Frankenstein's monster. If cared for, it can be benevolent, despite its appearance. But it has a sledgehammer body, and for now I'm keeping a certain distance except to try and understand what's really going on
Haiku to come. Loved yours, especially the last line.