In my opinion, AI just feels like the logical next step for capitalist exploitation and destruction of culture. Generative AI is (in most cases) just a fancy way for cooperations to steal art on a scale, that hasn’t been possible before. And then they use AI to fill the internet with slop and misinformation and actual artists are getting fired from their jobs, because the company replaces them with an AI, that was trained on their original art. Because of these reasons and some others, it just feels wrong to me, to be using AI in such a manner, when this community should be about inclusion and kindness. Wouldn’t it be much cooler, if we commissioned an actual artist for the banner or find a nice existing artwork (where the licence fits, of course)? I would love to hear your thoughts!
Human thought is what allows us to change our environment. Just as our environment shapes us, and creates our thoughts, so too do we then reshape our environment, which then reshapes us. This endless spiral is the human experience. Art plays a beautiful part in that expression.
I’m a Marxist-Leninist. That means I am a materialist, not an idealist. Ideas are not beamed into people’s heads, they aren’t the primary mover. Matter is. I’m a dialectical materialist, a framework and worldview first really brought about by Karl Marx. Communism is a deeply human ideology. As Marx loved to quote, “nothing human is alien to me.”
I don’t appreciate your evaluation of me, or my viewpoint. Fundamentally, it is capitalism that is the issue at hand, not whatever technology is caught up in it. Opposing the technology whole-cloth, rather than the system that uses it in the most nefarious ways, is an error in strategy. We must use the tools we can, in the ways we need to. AI has use cases, it also is certainly overused and overapplied. Rejecting it entirely and totally on a matter of idealist principles alone is wrong, and cedes the tools purely to the ruling class to use in its own favor, as it sees fit.
Matter being the primary mover does not mean that ideas and ideals don’t have consequences. What is the reason we want the redistribution of material wealth? To simply make evenly sized piles of things? No, it’s because we understand something about the human experience and human dignity. Why would Marx write down his thoughts, if not to try to change the world?
I never for one second suggested that thoughts had no purpose or utility, or that we shouldn’t want to change the world. This is, again, another time you’ve misinterpreted me.
All I am saying is that, baked into the design and function of these material GenAI systems, is a model of human thought and creativity that justifies subjugation and exploitation.
Ali Alkhatib wrote a really nice (short) essay that, while it’s not saying exactly what I’m saying, outlines ways to approach a definition of AI that allows the kind of critique that I think both of us can appreciate: https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai
I’m saying capitalism is the issue, not the tool. Art should be liberated from the profit motive, like all labor. Art has meaning for people because it’s a deeply human expression, but not all images are “art” in the traditional sense. If I want to make a video game, and I need a texture of wood, I can either make it by hand, have AI generate it, or take a picture. The end result is similar in all cases even if the effort expended is vastly different. This lowers the barrier for me to participate in game making, makes it more time-effective, while being potentially unnoticable on the user end.
If I just put some prompts into genAI, though, and post the output devoid of context, it isn’t going to be seen as art at all, really. Just like a photograph randomly snapped isn’t art, but photos with intention in message and form are art. The fact that meaning can be taken from something is a dialogue between creator and viewer, and AI cannot replace that.
AI has use-cases. Opposing it in any and all circumstances based on a metaphysical conception of intrinsic value in something produced artisinally vs being mass produced is the wrong way to look at it. AI cannot replicate the aspects of what we consider to be art in the traditional sense, and not every image created needs to be artisinal. What makes the utility of a stock image any different from an AI generated image of the same concept, assuming equivalent quality?
The bottom line is that art needs to be liberated from capitalism, and technology should not be opposed whole-cloth due to its use under capitalism.
At the risk of misinterpreting you, it seems like you’re arguing against the labour theory of value
In what way?
Are you not implying that human effort is not valuable?
Not intrinsically. A mud pie that someone spent 10 hours making does not have 10 hours of value. For equivalent use-values, their value is regulated around the average time it takes to reproduce them across all of industry. A chair that someone spent 15 hours making and a mass produced chair that someone spent 5 hours making, if equivalent use-values, would each be worth 10 hours (if this was the standard in the economy).
Labor-power and raw materials are the source of all new value proper. Use-value, on the other hand, is distinct. AI art fundamentally cannot take the place of human art, as human art’s use-value is derived from what the artist is saying and how they choose to say it. The process becomes the use. However, something like a texture in a video game is only useful inasmuch as the end user sees a texture and experiences it as a texture, the manner in which the texture was produced does not matter whether it was painted pixel by pixel, distilled from a photo, or was AI generated.
I’m not trying to use the “I read theory” card as some thought-terminating cliché, but I have actually read Capital volume 1, and am about a third of the way through volume 2. What you are describing is closer to the LTV of Smith or Ricardo, not of Marx.