Where do we go from here?
Signal in the Noise
I left off my last entry at the beginning, let's circle back :). I'm convinced we are looking at the AI Art issue the wrong way. I am convinced that you are likely being influenced to taking the wrong position in this battle. Is this a battle? It could be thought of as a battle. Are you an Artist? Do you feel a sense of dread and hopelessness by the specter that AI art represents? Are you anti-AI? I am going to try to convince you that this is the wrong position to take.
What these large corporate entities have done to build AI image models is theft. We all know this innately, but if you for some reason need authoritative backing to construct your world see the many active cases making their way through the legal system: Andersen v. Stability AI, Getty Images v. Stability AI, NYT v. OpenAI, Authors Guild v. OpenAI, Universal Music v. Anthropic. For me this is the main issue at hand. Whether or not what these models produce is 'Art' is irrelevant to me. Why do I hold this position? Well, it comes from my perspective on what 'Art' is. What I'm going to say, some people may not like, but I don't fucking care. There are some people, perhaps many people, who view 'Art' as some sort of ultimate, undefinable.... Well, for lack of a better word, 'Thing', an 'Ineffable Thing' to be more exact. Thing is the proper word to describe how some people think of 'Art', because 'Thing' represents the undefinable. While this is true, in a sense, this perspective is too narrow, in my view.
So as not to be too off-putting to those who view 'Art' through this 'Ineffable Thing' lens, I want to first define more clearly what it is I think you are picking up on. We as humans are wholly incapable of fully expressing ourselves to one another, and even to ourselves. This is something that on some level torments all of us. We express ourselves in the physical world in many ways. With these expressions we attempt to resolve the gaps we perceive in understanding and cohesion between others and ourselves. In my assessment, it is this aspect of 'Art' that does in fact make it an 'Ineffable Thing'. I would argue however, that it is your consciousness that is the real 'Ineffable Thing'. Again don't just take my word for it — for more context on this, read works of Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
'Art' is all of our attempts to express this ineffable thing in the material world. Think of a pond or lake. When you pick up a stone and toss it in, you create ripples. Another observer, who perhaps didn't see you throw it in, will still be able to see these ripples and discern that a stone was likely thrown. The ripples create a structure in the water. If we think of ripples akin to animated drawings or glyphs, we will see that certain aspects of the ripple express the shape, size, and weight of the stone. More than this, certain aspects of you, who threw the stone, are also reflected in the ripples. The ripples are all similar in form, outwardly moving circles that signal a meaning, though the full meaning resides at the bottom of the pond. It is true that the water is artistically expressing the ineffability of the stone. In the metaphor, the medium is water, and ephemeral in nature. With some exceptions, like sand mandalas, we create art that tries to give permanence to our given expression. This is true authenticity, that adds perceived value to art, what has been coined psychological essentialism. A 2004 Journal of Experimental Social Psychology study found identical poems and paintings were valued up to 2x more when participants believed significant effort was involved.
What does this have to do with AI, and being anti-AI? Well, it is essentially just a reflection of us. In some ways it is like the pond I described. A pool of data that has been diluted and contains the essences of our collective works. Philosopher Shannon Vallor argues that AI compels humanity to reconsider what makes its mind unique — it functions as "an introspective mirror" in which, by trying to define artificial consciousness, we refine our understanding of human consciousness. A well-known truth states, 'We are our own worst enemy'; in the context of AI this is true. AI is our collective enemy, as we are our own worst collective enemies. That said, to be 'anti' anything expresses the desire to do away with it. Metaphysically, it means we take a position against ourselves. Obviously, it follows that it is a losing position. Additionally, in terms of metaphysics, we can distill concepts of 'anti' and 'pro' into polarities. So taking the 'anti' position, you are adopting the negative polarity. This polarity is naturally an energy-draining polarity, and likely to affect individuals aligned with it negatively. In Taoism, rigidity is death, and flow is life. Fixed opposition is the posture of the unbending tree that breaks. Creative responsiveness (wu wei) endures. In Buddhism, hatred of AI is as binding as love of AI. The Middle Way transcends the duality entirely. Or as Jung might put it: What you oppose externally may be what you refuse to integrate internally. Anti-AI may be the artist's shadow projected outward.
So you'll likely be thinking now: "What do we do then?" How about we focus our energies on how we can build and create to solve the problems we are facing? Instead of wasting your creative energies on negativity, channel them into prosperity. Yes, models have been trained on stolen artwork. There may be very little we can do about those. We can change our current ways we interact with online systems. We can form alternative networks, and technology to protect our work from exploitation. In the next article I'll go into specifics of how we can do this. Until then, keep creating the future.