Mastodawn

Paul Cantrell 6d ago

My knee-jerk reaction to this article from @adamshostack was a cynical [citation needed] re “artists from all mediums emphatically support the use of AI.”

On further reflection…well, that’s still my response to the eyeball-grabbing lede, yes, but the actual article is what I wish we’d had instead of this inane hype avalanche:

Artists poking at the new thing, playing with it, finding its possibilities, critiquing it, problematizing it, asking us to ask what it is, helping us see it with fresh eyes from many angles. https://infosec.exchange/@adamshostack/114704865574139727

Adam Shostack :donor: :rebelverified: (@adamshostack@infosec.exchange)

Well, this is one way to introduce a topic: > Artists from all mediums emphatically support the use of AI, saying it augments and enhances their work, expanding what is possible. They are also unequivocal that they are still the creators of their work and the AI is not—but believe artists and technology must learn to coexist harmoniously. https://cacm.acm.org/news/ai-and-art/

Infosec Exchange

Paul Cantrell 6d ago

The arts and education — when they are at their best, anyway — have in common this deep root: they ask us to see and to think and to feel, to see with fresh eyes, to be aware of our own seeing, to be •active• in our seeing.

In that way, both the arts and education are antidotes to the AI hype cycle, and similar endeavors of capitalism run amok.

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Paul Cantrell 6d ago

I’m fond of quipping that arts education is •the• foundational form of education, and that education in any field should never stray too far from being arts education.

It’s little wonder that the forces that push investment bubbles and wealth concentration are so hostile to both the arts and education. And we need to recognize that hostility, which is so often cloaked as support:

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Paul Cantrell 6d ago

Commoditization disguised as democratization is a form of hostility.

The AI venders saying “Now anyone can make music!!” slip quickly into “Nobody wanted to work at making music,” then “Music is best manufactured and sold by the yard,” then “Music is essentially worthless.”

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But here’s the thing: anyone could make music •before• gen AI. Some more skilled or more artistically successful than others, sure! But that’s not the point. •Doing it• is the point. •Living it• is the point.

A product that promises to generate it for you so that you neither do it nor live it is antithetical to the point, is hostile to the idea of art itself.

(Note: that’s exactly what the artists in the OP are •not• doing! They are all grabbing the AI and actively •doing• and •living• while poking at the curious new object.)

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Paul Cantrell 6d ago

Similarly, hostility to education cloaks itself as support by saying that education should be useful, should be practical, should be focused only on what students need, should be narrowed to what students need, should narrow students, should narrow students into being only what capitalism needs.

I wrote extensively about this dangerous line of thought here:

https://innig.net/teaching/liberal-arts-manifesto

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What Liberal Arts Education Is For – Teaching – innig.net

Paul Cantrell 6d ago

Susan Sontag:

❝What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to •see• more, to •hear• more, to •feel• more.❞

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Paul Cantrell 6d ago

Georgia O’Keefe:

❝Nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small—we haven’t time—and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time.❞

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Paul Cantrell 6d ago

Maria Montessori:

❝Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.❞

❝We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.❞

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Paul Cantrell 6d ago

More Montessori:

❝Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.❞

And here’s a kicker:

❝Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.❞

Put that last thought in the context of arts and education being deeply intertwined, and oligarchy seeking to dismantle both, and…well….

/end

GinevraCat 6d ago

@inthehands Exactly why I teach in international education, not national education.

Dr Maria Montessori is truly one of my inspirational heroes, a genius massively in advance of her time. Not infallible, but so careful in her observations that many "common sense" child psychology concepts originated from her.

Alison Wilder 6d ago

@inthehands gorgeous thread!

David Smith 6d ago

@inthehands I went to a Montessori preschool/kindergarten and it worked out very very well for me

Paul Cantrell 6d ago

@Catfish_Man
Same!

Marc Trius 6d ago

@inthehands yeah I can't get over how much I love this manifesto of yours

Marc Trius 6d ago

@inthehands you're a better anarchist than the majority of anarchists I've ever met lol

Paul Cantrell 6d ago

@alter_kaker
Ha, I will take that as a great compliment. I don’t describe myself using the word “anarchist” because it invokes a whole bunch of very specific philosophy, history, and subculture that variously fits and does not fit at all — but as you detect, I very much share that underpinning suspicion of hierarchy and subjugation of all kinds.

crabmusket 6d ago

@inthehands @alter_kaker Very James C Scott of you!

Abigail Lazarevich 🏴‍☠️6d ago

@inthehands @alter_kaker same

@inthehands One of my first-year professors made the point that I was at a university, as in "universal," and that's why we had things like breadth requirements.

I don't think the administration had the same perspective even then, but it made an impression on me.

Fandangio 6d ago

@inthehands That was a very interesting read. Thank you.

Dave Gray 5d ago

@inthehands The language is old fashioned but I like the intent:

https://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27314.html

The Quotations Page: Quote from John Alexander Smith

"Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education."

The Quotations Page

Fish Id Wardrobe 6d ago

@inthehands another instance of computers having fun for you so you can get on with work, I feel.

Paul Cantrell 6d ago

@fishidwardrobe
Yup. “As for living, our servants will do that for us.”

Ordovician 6d ago

@inthehands Art has become so diluted in the past thirty or so years. Nearly all of it churned out, not because it was what the artist was feeling, but because it appeals to a demographic. Getting narrower in definition before it becomes so saturated by sameness, one is indistinguishable from the next! What's adding AI to the process? It appeals to the hype culture of disposable everything. Add that to the list of "genres!"

@inthehands i don't think i disagree with any of your "actual" points, but i kinda don't like the specific phrasing of "anyone could make music <or other art form>"

i've recently been doing some more-serious self-experiments and found that I *definitely* (neurologically?) cannot hear what other people seem to hear in music (amusia is a thing, apparently). everyone around me nowadays also suspects i have awful undiagnosed dyspraxia which made me *hate* "doing art" as a child

@inthehands this of course only becomes a problem when "music" and "art" end up becoming the goal in and of themselves rather than "doing it", and whatever i can manage to do would probably still fit within _your_ idea of what music and art are, but the former problem seems especially common in the compulsory education system, and being told this exact phrasing as a child was *incredibly* frustrating and demotivating