My Statement on Generative AI
aistatement
I do not use AI in my writing, and I do not use AI in my artwork.
If you use AI, you need to stop.
If you are a person of good conscience and rational mind, you must stop.
Generative AI is lazy. It does not “democratize art” and “finally make art available to everybody” the way its evangelists love to proclaim. Art and writing have never been gatekept. Artists do not hide away in ivory towers, giggling smugly about how they are special and no one else is permitted into their secret society of the chosen. Learning how to draw, or write fiction or poetry or songs — those skills can be learned by anybody. YouTube is full of free tutorials. The overwhelming majority of creative people are delighted to share and teach everything they know. No special equiptment or fancy supplies are required. Learning to draw takes only a pencil and paper, an investment of only a few dollars, even in 2024. Writing can be done in Google docs, which is free.
But these skills also take time and practice to improve, and it seems many proponents of Generative AI are unwilling to actually invest in bettering themselves. They only want shortcuts.
Generative AI is theft. LLMs (Large Language Models) scrape text and images off the internet to teach their AI engines. No one consented to this. It was done without anyone’s knowledge, and it’s still being done. Posting art or writing to the internet doesn’t mean it is automatically open source and free for everybody to take.
That is not how copyright law works (at least not in the United States). From copyright.gov:
“Your work is under copyright protection the moment it is created and fixed in a tangible form that it is perceptible either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. […] Copyright exists from the moment the work is created.”
AI Video Generator Runway Trained on Thousands of YouTube Videos Without Permission (404 Media - July, 2024)
Anthropic AI Scraper Hits iFixit’s Website a Million Times in a Day (404 Media - July, 2024))
Generative AI is just one more wave of tech-bro corporate hype, like pivot to video and NFTs and the Metaverse. Nobody asked for this. Nobody sane wants this — at least not in its current, unregulated form. It is taking jobs, crushing dreams, and killing the internet. It is essentially useless. Every piece of AI art looks like AI art. Souless. Slightly greasy. Those Sora videos seem promising, but how many failed videos were scrapped before the AI finally disgorged something acceptable?
Generative AI is a scam. It is a pyramid scheme. It is a rug-pull, just like cryptocurrency. Big tech wants consumers on board with AI everything, so they can impress their investors, grab the money, and then when the AI revolution inevitably flops, the tech-bros will move on to hyping up the next big thing. Google’s AI search is a joke at best and dangerous at worst. Amazon is flooded with nonsensical AI books generated in minutes and aimed at young kids. AI “authors” are feeding garbage to our children. For profit. Think about that for a while.
Luckily, it seems the hype bubble is deflating. We are already reaching the limits of what Generative AI can do (which it turns out is not much). The youths are referring to AI art as “Boomer art.” And Gen AI startups are getting sued for violating copyright and trademark laws.
A.I is B.S. (Adam Conover, 2023)
Don’t fall for the AI hype. Don’t contribute to propping up. Let it shrivel and fade away like the indefensible, morally bankrupt embarrassment that it is.
If all this isn’t enough to convince you…
Generative AI is killing our planet. Much like crypto, AI prompt generation requires immense computing power, which in turn requires ridiculous amounts of fossil fuels, and then stupid amounts water to cool those processors. Corporations have voiced “concerns,” but none of them have put forth any actual plans to mitigate the harm they are causing.
AI Is Accelerating the Loss of Our Scarcest Natural Resource: Water (Forbes - March, 2024)
Generative AI is causing physical and mental harm to our fellow human beings.
Noise pollution from bitcoin mining causes actual physical and mental harm to people, animals and plants. Bitcoin mining corporations have done nothing to remedy this, and in fact they are fighting with governments, attempting to get noise pollution regulations struck down. Generative AI, left unregulated, allowed to grow in the same malignant fashion, will inevitably lead to GenAI mines. We have already seen that corporations won’t lift a finger to undo the harm they’ve done, as long as they keep making money.
‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town (Time Magazine - July, 2024)
Kenyan workers were paid poverty wages to sift through images of violence, sexual assault and child pornography — all so an AI could be taught what not to include in its prompts. Workers from all over the developing world are paid pennies by billion-dollar companies, to train their LLMs.
OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic (Time Magazine - January, 2023)
That AI You’re Using was Trained Using Slave Labor, Basically (The_Byte - October, 2023)
I used to have a Midjourney account, before I fully realized how harmful Generative AI is. I also had an Adobe account for many years. I’ve ditched them both.
Adobe users are outraged over vague new policy's AI implications (Mashable - June, 2024)
Also… unrelated, but Adobe is now being sued by the DOJ, lolololol…
The government’s lawsuit against Adobe shows deceptive design is good for business—until it’s not (FastCompany - June, 2024)
The power is all in our hands. We, the little guys. We, the consumers. We MUST use our power to hit these corporations where it will hurt them most: their profits.
Vote with your wallet.
Vote with your Block button.
Vote by canceling your subscription.
Starve this fire by cutting off its oxygen!
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