The deliberate conscious effort that we humans require to do anything, like make art or write an academic paper, has been belittled and glossed over.
Instead results are glamorously prized as the product of success, and the amount of effort that it took to get there is hidden away in shame.
AI is the obscene extreme to that mentality: not more thinking, effort, work, anything— get the result now. While it was that exact effort that made us human in the first place.
@Ameboid There's a take from @oatmeal that captures this idea beautifully [1].
Art, scientific pubs, etc... are all forms of communication, all attempts to connect people across time and space. The process of craftsmanship is useful because it naturally selects for works that have something valuable to contribute to the conversation.
GenAI makes it possible for someone to create an artifact has the trappings of meaning, but without a process that forces the person to actually think through what they actually have to contribute.
It's a hot take, or as The Oatmeal puts it:
"As a kid, I had one of those little Casio keyboards where you could hit a button and it'd automatically play a song.
I remember hitting the button.
I remember standing there pretending to make music.
That's how I see AI art.
Standing there.
Pretending."
The full take is far more nuanced, and the medium conveys the emotion far better than a text excerpt. It's worth a read.
Amelia Rochko
Oliver Kennedy