Why I hate AI
(By AI I mean generative AI, specifically LLMs and image/audio/video generation)
I'll get right to it, I tried to really get to the core of why I hate AI and it comes to the following argument:
- The purpose of a system is its outcome.
- The effect of AI on our society has been a net-negative.
To me, it's really as simple as that, this is why I think AI is fundamentally evil, at least as it exists in our society today. With that being said, I do want a chance to dig a bit more into the nuance here and talk about some of my other thoughts on AI, but I think this alone sums up my position and why I believe what I believe.
The purpose of a system is its outcome
I think this is a pretty uncontroversial take, and not directly related to this post, so I'll keep this short. When evaluating whether a system is good or bad (and whether we should support or reject it), I think the most important thing to consider is the outcome of that system, not it's stated "intended" purpose. This is the same logic behind "actions are louder than words," and I think it's especially true in this case.
The effect of AI on our society has been a net-negative
I think this should be obvious to most people by this point, whether it be AI-layoffs (regardless of whether they're actually caused by AI or not, companies are still using AI as an excuse for layoffs), the sloppification of the internet, the negative impacts on education, or any number of issues, I think it's pretty safe to say the cons here far outweight any potential benifits.
One caveat: research
One caveat to everything that I've said is that I don't blame anyone for using AI for research like you would use google, reddit, or stackoverflow. I try not to do this myself, but honestly with how bad search engines have gotten, how much slop there is on the internet, and how places like stackoverflow and reddit have gone downhill since AI's inception, it has honestly become harder to do research without it. I also don't think that using AI for research doesn't harm the quality of a creative work the same way using its output directly does.
AI "art"
When I say AI "art," I'm speaking of media created that would typically be considered art (e.g. images, music, writing, videos, video games, programs, etc.) but where the output of generative AI was directly used as a part of the creation process rather than doing it by hand.
I don't respect this kind of media at all, and there are a few reasons for this. First is that using AI is a choice, and given that as I explained above I think AI is fundamentally evil, I can't get behind anyone who chooses to use it for this purpose, to me it's just not justafiable.
More than that, however, I also think that using AI in art deminishes the value of that art because it cuts out an important part of the creative process. A lot of people who advocate for AI claim that it cuts out the "busywork" and lets you be creative faster, but I believe this is fundamentally just not the way it works. I think what these proponents of AI claim to be "busywork" is in fact a very important part of the creative process. I completely reject the idea that the only part of making a creative work is coming up with an idea, it has been my experience as it has with many other artists the best ideas come as a result of sitting and thinking on a hard problem in the middle of making something, not at the beginning.
I don't want your slop
When I am going on the internet to find art that other's have created, I want to see something that other people have put themselves into, not something that was made by a machine. One might argue that it's interesting in itself that a machine can create such artifacts, but that is not what I want, and importantly I don't think it should be considered "art." People have argued for decades about what "art" means, but I think an important part has always been that the artist put some piece of themselves into it, and with AI slop, that just is no longer the case.
Another issue I have with AI generated output being posted online is that it's so easy to create it makes no sense for other people to be creating it and posting it online. If I wanted a piece of AI slop, I can generate it myself in half the time it'd take to find your pregenerated AI slop already out there on the internet. I think this comes down to people who make slop thinking they are making something creative because it was their idea or something, but the result is just that the internet has become overflowing with nothing but endless inhuman slop.
About whether AI is "good" at making art
The "quality" of the output of AI, whether images or code or anything else, is complete irrelevent to me. A lot of people who don't like AI have mentioned how it's not good at it's job (myself in the past included), and while I agree with this, I also think it's not a great argument against AI. Particularly because of how unproductive as an argument it is, for one thing, it's something that can easily change at a moment's notice, and since your position is unlikely to change with it (in fact, I think a lot of us don't actually like to see AI get better), it's clearly not something even the person giving the argument believes (usually).
And so much more
There's so much more I could say, like how AI has made my personal university experience so much worse, or how the people developing AI are pretty openly evil people (see Sam Altman talking about how he fully believes that AI will bring the end of the world), or how the data for AI has been collected very unethically, or any number of other things, but frankly I've gotten tired of discussing AI so this will have to do for now.
One final note before I finish this is that I think it's very notable how many projects that endorse AI like ladybird and hyprland are run by leaders that hold transphobic beliefs. I'm not saying this is neccesarily the case for every project, but it's a trend I have noticed and I don't think it's a coincidence. Particularly I'm sure this has something to do with the fact that the group of people that AI has seemed to have benifited thusfar is the extremely rich and powerful, serving to widen the gap between the working and upper class.
But that's a story for another blog post, this was a quick one because I honestly just wanted to jot my thoughts down in one single place, but if you enjoyed reading it, I'm glad :)