"How do you feel about someone who uses the same tools but has contributed no art of their own? Does that change your perception of their right to access?"
I am very non-judgemental in this area. I like it when anyone at all tries to make art, even if they use morally dubious AI tools to do so. (Clearly prompting an AI isn't the same as p…
"How do you feel about someone who uses the same tools but has contributed no art of their own? Does that change your perception of their right to access?"
I am very non-judgemental in this area. I like it when anyone at all tries to make art, even if they use morally dubious AI tools to do so. (Clearly prompting an AI isn't the same as painting an oil painting. But most people are not painting an oil painting; that is not what AI is displacing.) I am very accepting of the moral messiness of art and art-making and art ownership. But I am also very accepting of the fact that there are other ways to look at this. I'm not saying you are wrong and I am right: I am saying we are different and see these things differently, and that is fine. That is necessary.
If it helps to know: A couple of years back, as rumours of new, powerful generative AI tools started to leak from the labs, I was asked to join an IEEE committee to develop standards for AI in the arts. (IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and they set global standards for all kinds of technologies.) It was a good, hardworking committee of excellent people, most of them artists. And after a few months of participation, I resigned and walked away from it because I felt my level of uncertainty about any recommendations I could make was far too high. I literally could not tell if my recommendations were good or bad; would have good effects, or bad ones. I had thought about this stuff for MONTHS, in a very focused way, and at the end of it my feeling was this: AI is definitely coming. It will definitely transform the world. It will definitely transform the arts. But I have no idea in what ways. I have no idea what is the best course of action for humanity in relation to AI. I have no idea what direction we should try to nudge it in. I have no idea what the ACTUAL effects of any proposed nudges, regulations, laws, or standards would actually be. Any time you try to think through the consequences of an action, there is an immediate cascade of second-order and third-order consequences that blur out any clear vision of the future.
I have never felt so much uncertainty as I do around the subject of AI. And so I play around with it, I interrogate it, I explore it. And I try to have the humility to not impose my shifting, uncertain opinions on others, because I don't think any of us know – any of us CAN know – what will happen next. It's potentially a breakthrough as important as the first tool use by humans; the woven grass carrier bag, the chipped flint ax. And tools since then have done a lot of good and a lot of harm. But, having discovered tools, you can't undiscover them. Groups can give them up, can renounce them, can try to ban them., But others, elsewhere, will go on exploring their use, and those groups who have explored the new tools will soon be far more powerful than those who have renounced the tools. So this is going to happen. Hang on tight...
"How do you feel about someone who uses the same tools but has contributed no art of their own? Does that change your perception of their right to access?"
I am very non-judgemental in this area. I like it when anyone at all tries to make art, even if they use morally dubious AI tools to do so. (Clearly prompting an AI isn't the same as painting an oil painting. But most people are not painting an oil painting; that is not what AI is displacing.) I am very accepting of the moral messiness of art and art-making and art ownership. But I am also very accepting of the fact that there are other ways to look at this. I'm not saying you are wrong and I am right: I am saying we are different and see these things differently, and that is fine. That is necessary.
If it helps to know: A couple of years back, as rumours of new, powerful generative AI tools started to leak from the labs, I was asked to join an IEEE committee to develop standards for AI in the arts. (IEEE is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and they set global standards for all kinds of technologies.) It was a good, hardworking committee of excellent people, most of them artists. And after a few months of participation, I resigned and walked away from it because I felt my level of uncertainty about any recommendations I could make was far too high. I literally could not tell if my recommendations were good or bad; would have good effects, or bad ones. I had thought about this stuff for MONTHS, in a very focused way, and at the end of it my feeling was this: AI is definitely coming. It will definitely transform the world. It will definitely transform the arts. But I have no idea in what ways. I have no idea what is the best course of action for humanity in relation to AI. I have no idea what direction we should try to nudge it in. I have no idea what the ACTUAL effects of any proposed nudges, regulations, laws, or standards would actually be. Any time you try to think through the consequences of an action, there is an immediate cascade of second-order and third-order consequences that blur out any clear vision of the future.
I have never felt so much uncertainty as I do around the subject of AI. And so I play around with it, I interrogate it, I explore it. And I try to have the humility to not impose my shifting, uncertain opinions on others, because I don't think any of us know – any of us CAN know – what will happen next. It's potentially a breakthrough as important as the first tool use by humans; the woven grass carrier bag, the chipped flint ax. And tools since then have done a lot of good and a lot of harm. But, having discovered tools, you can't undiscover them. Groups can give them up, can renounce them, can try to ban them., But others, elsewhere, will go on exploring their use, and those groups who have explored the new tools will soon be far more powerful than those who have renounced the tools. So this is going to happen. Hang on tight...