The Sum of The Parts Is Much Less Than The Whole: AI Art and Writing
I now understand the AI writing and art craze: it’s the same as Branded Corporate Food, Big Pharma, and ersatz fashion
I recoil from AI art. I laugh at AI poetry.
This was instinctive on my part: but now it’s deliberate and considered. I now understand what the AI art and AI writing crazes are all about.
Money? Yes, of course. Money for a few: low-quality images and ersatz experiences for the vast majority of others.
What else is new? These digital excretions are the 21st century version of Heinz 57 Varieties, Campbell’s Soup, and Nestle powdered baby formula. And Ralston-Purina pet food. The investment craze over these technologies reminds me of every prior economic trend I know of, and a few social ones too: like the pet rock.
It reminds me of a Dire Straits song: “Money for Nothing.”
The creation and growth of 19th and 20th century branded corporate products was based on two principles: 1) reductionism; and 2) value imbalance and extractionism.
Reductionism and Manufacturing
Big Food products like Cheetos, Doritos, and Heinz ketchup were created by breaking down basic food items and recombining them with added chemicals.
But why? Why make ketchup when you could use a sliced tomato or make your own? Ketchup and all other highly-processed corporate foods could be standardized, branded, stored, shipped, and sold much more profitably than the “old way” of growing and eating food through traditional farming and home cooking.
What is “reductionism”? It’s another great idea from Rene Descartes. This man suggested that any complex system or activity could be broken down into its component parts.
AI art programs take billions of digitized images and put the pixels into a blender. Based on verbal prompts, they recombine pixels into new images.
The resulting images are unsatisfactory in much the same way as highly processed food: a lab-created product made in massive factories by low-paid workers and shipped to stores in fossil-fuel burning conveyances. This stuff has been poisoning everyone who consumes it for decades.
This morning I saw an advertisement for a digital service aimed at independently published writers. It supposedly allows writers to create links for their books on sale. Like all similar services, it offers a no-value freemium version and charges per useful link.
I might have considered this service for my own work, except the first thing I noticed about their ad was, “Gee, that’s smokingly awful AI art.”
Value Imbalance and Extractionism
All of the big corporations I mentioned, from Nestle to Kraft Heinz (yes, since 2015 your ketchup and your maccy & cheeze are one and the same) exist to earn profit for their shareholders. That’s it. That is their purpose. It’s not to feed you, it’s not to feed babies, and it’s not to do anything other than what I just wrote.
They provide food substances or products, yes. But their sole purpose is to provide money for their shareholders.
They do this by extracting funds from customers: as much as possible, as often as possible. They also accomplish this goal by reducing the funds they must pay for any of their functions, from facilities and energy to raw materials to workers and logistics.
Some people will state that what I just wrote is the pinnacle of society and an unavoidable truth.
Ursula K. LeGuin said,
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.
Companies and individuals who take large amounts of resources from others — or from a common source, like water or fossil fuel or minerals — are extractive.
We have the 20th century concept of recycling, which many individuals do, but recycling has been shown to be largely ineffective in reducing pollution and waste.
But it’s the underlying attitude, work process, and basic conception of value imbalance and extraction which is the problem.
It’s not just a problem for the majority of humans, plants, animals, and the planet, it is also a problem for these massive corporations and even the small number of uber-wealthy individuals that they — in the short term — benefit.
There is no long-term sustainability or even “wealth” to be gained from any of these activities. There’s only degradation of quality of life, health, and our very planet — the place where we live. Douglas Rushkoff and many others have documented the apocalyptic attitudes of the extractive, exploitive billionaire and corporate CEO class.
Products made by corporations founded in reductionist thought, using extractive methods to enrich a small group of individuals can never recreate the original real things they purport to be duplicating or “improving” upon.
Highly-processed food doesn’t recreate real food. It provides low or no nutrition and poisons people slowly over decades. The process in which it is made and sold is the underlying process that is polluting every part of the globe and degrading lives.
Most prescription medication treats symptoms, not underlying disease. Much of it develops dependency and loses its effect over time. Some even blocks healing and dooms patients to slow and painful health decline.
Fast fashion provides low-quality clothing through poorly-paid labor and petroleum-based materials. The clothing doesn’t last and ends up in landfills or shipped to other nations where local clothing and traditions end up destroyed.
Overall, the lives of the majority of humans have improved in many ways since the 19th century. Today, people have the means to see problems and understand connectivity in ways that were impossible during the 19th and 20th centuries.
My grandfather said something to me that has stuck with me my whole life. He was an orange grower and gardener and the best man any of us ever knew. He said,
“Nobody’s candle ever burned brighter for blowing someone else’s out.”
Inventing something through reductionist thought, telling people it’s better than the original, can never, by its nature, work in the long term. Even the richest billionaire cannot make himself immortal or all-powerful no matter how he iterates this business model.
AI art is taking some artists’ jobs. It also uses images created by other artists without paying for the use. It’s the same process with art as the Cheeto makers replaced an ear of corn and a piece of cheese with a baked slurry extruded from a gigantic piece of machinery.
AI writing? The best analogy I can make is “someone invented a machine to run a marathon or play tennis.”
Writing is a fundamental human activity. Like breathing, eating, sleeping, and making love. Toni Morrison said, “I write in order to know what I know.”
The use of AI writing for creative purposes, I believe, is as much, or even more toxic to people’s lives and souls than highly-processed foods or anti-depressant medications which lose their effect after a few months. It’s potentially worse than medications like Ozempic, which must be taken every day for the rest of one’s life to cure chronic disease which is caused by toxic highly-processed corporate food.
Frito-Lay (now owned by PepsiCo) took low quality dried corn, cheese by-products, created a slurry, added preservatives and dyes made from petroleum, and cooked and extruded the resulting goo to make Cheetos. Working tirelessly, Frito-Lay food technicians made something that wasn’t just palatable, it had addictive qualities.
Will AI art and AI writing some day achieve the same type of lofty goal as the Cheeto?
I’m told by AI proponents that “yes,” of course! It just needs to learn!
But PepsiCo and Nestle say their products are healthful and good. The proponents of extractive capitalism also say this is the only way of life ever possible.
I’ve also been told, “Women can’t be sci-fi writers. You have to be smart to be a sci-fi writer.”
I say let the public decide about these new technologies — just like they did for the Segway.
I can't believe somebody actually said to you, in person, to your face, that you couldn't write SF because you were a woman and, ipso facto, not smart. Jeezus.
AI could be interpreted as another symptom of end-stage capitalism. Where everything cannibalizes everything else for the last scraps of "value".
Hannah Arendt observed that when people can no longer distinguish truth from lies, they don't believe anything. AI will hasten that. A positive effect could be everyone tuning out all advertisement or "news", as it's impossible to know if it's regurgitated AI slop, or real.