As we're in the topic of AI, I remember my mom once insisting I learn how to use it as she believed all jobs are going to be replaced by machines in the future. When I tried giving my valid arguments to how AI should be implemented without totally replacing people, harming the environment, spreading misinfo (I'm lookin' at you, Google AI!) and stealing information, she just shut me down with "Oh, but you risk being left behind! Remember Kodak? They shut down when everyone started going digital!"

There was this wise man who said "I'd prefer to have AI help me do my chores and reduce the workload but not take over the job I love." As an artist, you know that anything that's made by a human becomes a novelty and more sought after. I remember passing by our local mall and all of the ads had these hollow, generic AI-lookin' CGI graphics. There is just something in them that makes me gag!

Heck, I'd rather look at those corporate Memphis illustrations more than those slop. Again, I wonder if she's even listening when I suggested how AI could be susceptible to privacy breaches. I hate how even Google and DuckDuckGo have AI features now whenever I search for something. Even one of the prestigious art schools such as Gobelins landed under fire for using AI!

For now, AI doesn't seem to be a very promising tool. It's not like digital art or cameras because at least it doesn't feed off data and just makes creating art or taking photographs much easier. At least you get to curate the results by toggling with settings and textures instead of just typing random prompts leading to some sickening random image.

In regards to AI, I know a lot of people have anxiety around the topic. But it's a great time to actually talk about what AI is and isn't.

And what we call AI is not actually artificial intelligence. What we are calling AI is still a highly regulated script of pseudo-reasoning that is impressive on first blush, but quickly shows its debilitating limitations.

For one, large language models are impressive as long as you don't think about it. The hive mind these companies have sought to create fails at the basics due to the fact that this is still just a software program we are talking about. It is utterly useless as a data collection and research tool as it has no idea what is and isn't true. The large language models look impressive. It looks like it's thinking as it goes step by step to “prove it's work” so to speak. But it is just sifting through data, it's not actually thinking. Thinking would be reasoning. It would be categorizing sources based on accuracy, while also taking into account implicit bias of such sources.

Asking GhatGPT to make a pasta recipe, but asking for substitutions to certain ingredients will not yield a surefire result as the computer is not going to understand the difference between a tomato and a lemon as both are acidic fruits. It does not understand the concept of texture or where it comes from. It doesn't grasp the experience of eating food because it is running on an assumption that the ability to taste yields a singular result. That everyone will find a lemon sour and a grapefruit bitter and a cherry tart. But what if you don't taste soap when you eat cilantro? What if lemons are sugary sweet while grapefruits are tart? The machine is never going to be able to account for the experience of sensing.

As such, AI will never be able to portray meaningful art either. The fact that AI has taken up so much of the artistic community's discourse goes to show the issues with art today. People are so afraid of a machine creating something that looks pretty because that's all we make any more. We have commodified and commercialized art to the point of it being soulless. Its only purpose is to appear aesthetically pleasing for an audience who will spend less than a minute on a piece of art we've spent hours to days to weeks working on. But the reason is because our art lacks meaning. Whenever someone praised art on Twitter and claimed an emotional reaction, they attribute their feelings to the context of the source material or the appearance to the art.

When I went to an art museum, the paintings were all very well done, but not all aesthetically pleasing. And the one that stuck with me the most was a painting of four elderly women staring back at me. The only aspect of the painting that is in sharp focus are these women’s blue-grey eyes. And that was intentional. Because I kept finding myself going back to that painting because I kept feeling a strange sense of guilt. These eyes were on me and I couldn’t tell if it was with tenderness or scorn, so I had to keep going back. I felt guilty, if it was with tenderness I was ashamed I couldn’t remember anything else about them. Their faces left my mind the second I looked away. If it was with scorn, I felt the need to figure out what I missed. What quality was in the painting that was leaving me confused about the way these women looked at me.

That’s when I noticed their faces were literally painted in such a way that gave them an almost dream-like effect. The artist played on my brain’s inherent desire to identify a face, and with the eyes painted in such fine detail, the hazy idea of a face was held together in my brain. But I couldn’t say anything else about them without looking directly at them.

And it made me feel, but feel in a way that was slow and contemplative. It made me consider what the artist was trying to say without just googling it. A guess based on our wordless conversation through his medium. Because the real beauty and power that makes art ART is the way you get to interact with it as an individual. It’s vaguely spiritual. You can have these conversations with people long passed, and come to know them through their works.

That isn’t how it is anymore.

When you’re chasing numbers, be it in the form of money or perceived admiration, you inherently lose sight of what got you started: a feeling, a thought, an idea. Computers will never be able to question an idea. Never be able to extrapolate meaning from information or technique. Computers only understand numbers.

The fear of AI is the fear of replacing capitalism and consumerism. All we are thinking about is numbers. Numbers in the price of rent and food. Numbers in the hours worked and days off. Numbers in how we justify our own existence through social media clout and how much we consume with literal numbers. We function like computers, so of course people are scared of being replaced by computers. That they need these computers to stay on the latest operating system.

Only machines are scared of machines.