Once AI becomes super popular and normalized in all creative fields, there will be a demand for “100% human made works only”. It’ll be like how people still buy vinyl when streaming exists. Or a better analogy, people still listen to local bands with bad mixing and lyrics when there are musicians with a team of songwriters and producers. People will still crave authenticity and human connection.
Or how people still occasionally like to go for horsey-rides instead of using a car or motorcycle. A bored aesthete's distraction, or a hipster's counter-signal, or a deliberate anachronism. This is a trivial demand that only underlines how far marginalized human skill and capability has become from the artistic creation process.
Every technology makes certain human skills redundant or obsolete. Automobiles made saddlery obsolete. But what happens when entire ranges of human capacity are surpassed? Now humanity is less the rider and more the horse. Sure, we still have horses. But millions and millions less of them. They're just not needed. Just like we won't be. I already know I don't have apotheosis in my bones - whether from cowardice, weakness, stupidity, some other failing, or all of the above, I don't know - so I'm resigned to my fate. It's still stupid, though.
On most of this I agree, but that recent New York Times article about how teenagers prefer interacting online and digitally instead of face-to-face for various reasons is a worrisome possibility, however remote.
Authenticity and human connection can only do so much against the rush to create compelling alternatives, which AI will no doubt be enlisted towards. (Consider the rising popularity of virtual therapist chatbots and cute anime vtubers, the latter of which I am speaking hypothetically as an observer and definitely do not have any personal experience with...)
>On the production side there’s so much more I want to write but I also wonder, why bother writing anything if it’s just going to be swallowed up whole and incorporated into the labyrinthian halls of a Borges infinite library. Realistically the only effect this post will ultimately leave upon the world is a faint whisper of an errant memory...I see the entire corpus of mankind’s creative output as a tiny ship, a gnat really, about to swallowed by a towering ocean wave.
There's some statistic out there saying that all the literature and media humankind has produced in history would take more than a hundred thousand or something human lifetimes to consume, so for most of us, this feeling was already functionally true; it's just that AI has made this fact more apparent to all of us instead of just the people working on self-publishing "My Vampire Stepbrother Saved Me From Satanic Werewolves" to Amazon.
>I’m the idiot holding the hand axe. I’m the imbecile mangling my shins with rock debris. Why bother?
first of all: I want a kilo of the clearly high-grade coke you’re hoarding that you’re on such a creative roll the last few days.
secondly: I’m easily able to exhaust myself just thinking about the stupidest things (that poorly chosen photo for a marketing campaign you saw on Twitter: the sheer number of meetings, rounds of approval, the middle and upper managers involved who saw it and said “okay,” the boots-on-the-ground creatives who mocked it up in the first place, the one or two people who voiced their concerns, more meetings, more approvals), so you nailed one of my big aversions to AI. IT’S EXHAUSTING.
I’m not a young lass anymore--we barely had dial-up internet in college and mostly used it for instant messaging--and I’m probably going to keep doing things the old way (writing and fact-checking on my own) because if I touch the damn thing, my tendency toward sheer laziness will kick right in. that’s my other big aversion.
Apr 8, 2023·edited Apr 8, 2023Liked by Yassine Meskhout
Welcome to the party. Here ya go, if you ain't already in the front door: https://stable-diffusion-art.com/beginners-guide/ . I'm sure you've messed around with ChatGPT, but there's something useful about getting to know Stable Diffusion. Get your arms in the innards.
Mess around with it. If you're feeling ambitious, the link up there's got a link to Automatic111's GUI so you can run it on your own machine. I strongly recommend that. Never trust an AI that ain't on your own hardware.
Oh most def, I already have InvokeAI running locally but even a 2070 Super RTX is a smidge too slow so I usually default to Midjourney unless I need some fine-tuning.
Once AI becomes super popular and normalized in all creative fields, there will be a demand for “100% human made works only”. It’ll be like how people still buy vinyl when streaming exists. Or a better analogy, people still listen to local bands with bad mixing and lyrics when there are musicians with a team of songwriters and producers. People will still crave authenticity and human connection.
Yes, it's the demand for artisanal wares. Hand-typed essays on a typewriter in an air-gap room.
Anti-AI will be the new crunchy granola hippie crystals antivaxxer subculture.
Or how people still occasionally like to go for horsey-rides instead of using a car or motorcycle. A bored aesthete's distraction, or a hipster's counter-signal, or a deliberate anachronism. This is a trivial demand that only underlines how far marginalized human skill and capability has become from the artistic creation process.
Every technology makes certain human skills redundant or obsolete. Automobiles made saddlery obsolete. But what happens when entire ranges of human capacity are surpassed? Now humanity is less the rider and more the horse. Sure, we still have horses. But millions and millions less of them. They're just not needed. Just like we won't be. I already know I don't have apotheosis in my bones - whether from cowardice, weakness, stupidity, some other failing, or all of the above, I don't know - so I'm resigned to my fate. It's still stupid, though.
On most of this I agree, but that recent New York Times article about how teenagers prefer interacting online and digitally instead of face-to-face for various reasons is a worrisome possibility, however remote.
Authenticity and human connection can only do so much against the rush to create compelling alternatives, which AI will no doubt be enlisted towards. (Consider the rising popularity of virtual therapist chatbots and cute anime vtubers, the latter of which I am speaking hypothetically as an observer and definitely do not have any personal experience with...)
>On the production side there’s so much more I want to write but I also wonder, why bother writing anything if it’s just going to be swallowed up whole and incorporated into the labyrinthian halls of a Borges infinite library. Realistically the only effect this post will ultimately leave upon the world is a faint whisper of an errant memory...I see the entire corpus of mankind’s creative output as a tiny ship, a gnat really, about to swallowed by a towering ocean wave.
There's some statistic out there saying that all the literature and media humankind has produced in history would take more than a hundred thousand or something human lifetimes to consume, so for most of us, this feeling was already functionally true; it's just that AI has made this fact more apparent to all of us instead of just the people working on self-publishing "My Vampire Stepbrother Saved Me From Satanic Werewolves" to Amazon.
>I’m the idiot holding the hand axe. I’m the imbecile mangling my shins with rock debris. Why bother?
It's about the journey and not the destination.
first of all: I want a kilo of the clearly high-grade coke you’re hoarding that you’re on such a creative roll the last few days.
secondly: I’m easily able to exhaust myself just thinking about the stupidest things (that poorly chosen photo for a marketing campaign you saw on Twitter: the sheer number of meetings, rounds of approval, the middle and upper managers involved who saw it and said “okay,” the boots-on-the-ground creatives who mocked it up in the first place, the one or two people who voiced their concerns, more meetings, more approvals), so you nailed one of my big aversions to AI. IT’S EXHAUSTING.
I’m not a young lass anymore--we barely had dial-up internet in college and mostly used it for instant messaging--and I’m probably going to keep doing things the old way (writing and fact-checking on my own) because if I touch the damn thing, my tendency toward sheer laziness will kick right in. that’s my other big aversion.
Cocaine accusation is the best possible compliment
Small typo
in a game where no one will ever the difference.
Should be
Ever notice the difference
Loved both the writing style and the feeling it generated. Though, TBH, I am not sure what was the larger point you are trying to make.
Sometimes, that's good enough.
Welcome to the party. Here ya go, if you ain't already in the front door: https://stable-diffusion-art.com/beginners-guide/ . I'm sure you've messed around with ChatGPT, but there's something useful about getting to know Stable Diffusion. Get your arms in the innards.
Mess around with it. If you're feeling ambitious, the link up there's got a link to Automatic111's GUI so you can run it on your own machine. I strongly recommend that. Never trust an AI that ain't on your own hardware.
Oh most def, I already have InvokeAI running locally but even a 2070 Super RTX is a smidge too slow so I usually default to Midjourney unless I need some fine-tuning.