I Just Had An Argument With An AI Supporter

I just had an argument with an AI supporter

And what I learned is that AI supporters are the most ignorant bunch you could ever imagine.

If someone ever tells you that AI is ‘inevitable’ and a natural step of ‘progress’ I give you my full endorsement to spit in their face. There is nothing inevitable about AI and the only people who want you to think so are filthy rich millionaires who want to get even more filthy rich. Don’t succumb to such transparent propaganda.

I just had someone argue with me and tell me that that’s not something they were told to believe but simply their own opinion. Completely oblivious to the fact that this opinion is being insidiously poured into their mind from every corner – newspapers, tv, online media. I know for a fact that you were reading a piece criticizing the strikes just the other day because you told me so. And yet you think that’s your opinion?

Well, even if it is, then please educate yourself for all our sakes.

Right now AI supporters believe in imaginary bogeymen, rich actors and Hollywood employees who are supposedly swimming in money. That’s exactly how these corporations want you to think. That there’s some privileged other you can stick it to by watching their godforsaken AI movies, filling their pockets with your cash while they pour toilet water down your throat.  

Meanwhile thousands of people on miserly pay are threatened by unemployment. The people who have been toiling and dedicating their life to art and giving you entertainment are threatened to be cast aside and have their livelihood taken away from them. Their work plagiarized by machines who will never understand it, much less make anything meaningful by mincing it and regurgitating valueless slop for some businessman’s profit.

All the people you see in the end credits, those lists that seem to go on forever, suddenly out of a job for years because of one AI generated film.

Someone had the nerve to tell me they would watch an AI movie if it made a good adaptation of the book they’re reading. (Which makes me wonder if Disney’s sh*tty adaptations weren’t planned from the beginning, to make you despise sh*tty adaptations so much that you’d rather turn to AI for them.)

How exactly are you paying respect to something by sentencing it to death? Your books, your movies, you cartoons, your comics, your art, your music, everything you love will be gone once we let AI take over. Because nothing, and I mean nothing, can replace humans when it comes to art. But once once you’ve allowed this to take off, there will be no going back. You will have driven humans out of art because people who are not able to make a living off something will not dedicate their lives to studying it and perfecting it.

They may try but niche hobbies cannot support the thriving landscape that art is supposed to be. Art feeds on time, passion, experience, reward.

But it’s progress, I hear some of them say, it’s machines that make your furniture and your food, that’s something people have lost jobs for too. I’ll say this only once: art is not a commodity. All criticism of capitalism aside, it’s not something you should speed up the making of by removing the human element. Fast production of commodities may be necessary to supply an ever growing population and ensure equal quality of life, give people of smaller means access to more things.

This is not the case for art. This is a false equivalence.

Art has changed and evolved in time but never before has the presence of the human element been threatened with complete removal from the equation. This is an unprecedented threat. Traditional artists have gone digital, playwrights have become screenwriters, authors sell ebooks instead of paperbacks but no matter what medium they work with, artists need to exist. They need to be the ones making art.

Sculptors are still sculptors whether they use clay or 3D software. Artists are still artists whether they use pencils and paper or a tablet. It’s sad to see some artforms go but it’s not nearly as devastating as the idea of purging artists from jobs, from culture.

How can a society be progressive if it sacrifices its creativity?? Its ability to express ideas?

‘Oh but it’s inevitable because in the end the majority of people will watch AI movies’. It doesn’t f*cking matter. You do things because they are right. Not because everyone else is doing it but despite it. You don’t vote because one vote will make a difference. You vote even if you know it won’t make a difference because this is a matter of principle.

Don’t parrot that fatalist bs rhetoric. Dig your heels in. Fight for what’s right. Boycott. Be vocal. Stand your ground and educate others. Even if you never get a pat on the back for it and the bad thing happens anyway.

All a society with herd mentality needs is for you to be a vehicle for ignorant propaganda until we’re all convinced of it to the benefit of those spreading it.

It’s inevitable, I still hear people say (what a lovely buzzword that is) well guess what: so is dying but we’re all still trying to keep alive every day, aren’t we?