Fair warning: This is not just another piece about ai art, or ai and art, but about the conversation around ai and art. I think this is far more complicated, more nuanced, and perhaps more important. If you know me you know how much of my life and my social circles are deeply intertwined with artists who I can safely say are spread across the entire spectrum of opinions on ai. Some love it, some hate it, some use it daily, some would die before even considering it. I surround myself with historians, occultists, techno-optimists and apocalyptic doom sayers. Suffice to say, I have a lot of conversations on this topic: how we got here, where we are exactly, and where that might take us. I believe that perspective, especially as an artist myself, is unique and I hope to be hopeful, even if I don’t always land there.
I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to put into words what I’ve been thinking about for months. I write for hours only to find at the end of the day I’m further behind than where I started, feeling like the topic only gets more complicated as I try to simplify it. The way this generally plays out is that I think I know what I want to say, but as I write I realize there’s history I need to explore or a narrative that I need to unpack or an argument I need to consider. In some cases I see someone else doing one of those things and then I have to reflect on what I’m saying to decide if it still needs to be said. Am I adding something to the discourse or just reiterating a point that’s already been thoroughly iterated. I aspire to do the former, I loathe to do the latter.
In my initial thinking this was going to be a paragraph or two in an otherwise unrelated ramble. Then it became a blog post. Then it was going to be an article. Then an even longer article. I made outlines. Fleshed out narratives. Felt trapped by my narratives, deleted them and started from scratch. All the while people kept sending me links to rants and blog posts and articles by others poking at some of the ideas I think need poking. As a writer who really enjoys writing, and uses writing to help refine my own thinking I refuse to use ai to generate text. I do however use it like an editor. I ask if my reasoning makes sense, if I’m missing something obvious. I ask it to find holes in my logic or to take a critical and contradictory position and challenge me to defend my argument. Ironically, some of the articles people have sent me are almost certainly one prompt ai creations. 10 seconds from “write me a 5 paragraph article (or 10 post thread) about ai and art” to “publish.”
So in a very real way, while trying to thoughtfully discuss ai, I feel like ai is running circles around me, which keeps bouncing me back to square one. Stepping outside of myself, it’s an amusing problem I set myself up for, however sitting here trying to write, it’s full-on panic-inducing madness. But again I have hope. I hope somewhere in that struggle to find a way to talk about how the thing is talked about, rather than just talking about the thing, there is something human and worthwhile. Because ultimately, that’s what all this is about. Looking at art, looking at ai, and finding what is human and worthwhile. I know some people will read that and immediately conclude that it’s impossible, but that’s part of why I’m writing it.
After deleting outline after outline and realizing I was building a mountain I could never climb, I decided to just start walking. Rather than an epic longform diatribe trying to cover every single aspect of this incredibly complex topic, I’ve decided to write a series of essays (this is part one). They will be as long or as short as they need to be, and will be published when I’m finished with them. This is a serious topic, and the concerns around it are real. People are being impacted in so many ways, and it’s important to recognize that. It’s also frustrating to see those very real concerns boiled down into social media soundbites that are ultra-quotable but don’t hold up under scrutiny. And it’s important to reconcile that both of those things can be true at once, and it’s the inability to balance between them that causes so much of the tension. In the following essays I hope to address that, not to attack or defend, but rather consider how this is being discussed and shift the direction a little so that it produces more light than heat, so to speak.
So where are we heading? As I’m known to do we’ll set things up with some history. We’ve been here before and it’s important to look at that. By thinking about what has happened and where it led us in the past, we can better consider the way forward. It’s easy to assume all problems are uncharted territory, but that’s rarely the case. We are going to talk about theft. It’s the most pointed accusation, the one that invokes anger and keeps people up at night. We need to spend time on it, consider it, and understand it. But don’t think I’m framing that as just accusations, there are valid concerns and we’re going to spend time on the actual harm, both current and historical. These are important issues which I think are too often dismissed by apologists, and they deserve to be given real consideration.
But hand wringing and panic gets us nowhere, so in addition to the concerns we’re going to talk about what’s possible. The current reactions and new policies, well-intentioned but perhaps falling short as impactful solutions. I hate when people point at a problem without offering a solution, so I’ll include some proposals which I think may play out better. Of course if anyone will listen is another thing entirely. That’s actually no small problem, the lack of discourse or willingness to even engage honestly on these topics is a real stumbling block with emotionally charged topics like this. And that brings us back to the original point. Hope. I’m writing this because it matters.
Finally, I’ll spend some time on what “good” looks like. Without buzzwords, signaling or identity traps getting in the way. I’ll try to find the constants, the through lines, the things that are as true today as they were decades (or centuries) ago and why keeping those ultimate truths in mind will help as we move forward at increasingly mind-bending speeds.
This essay is part one of a series. If this resonates, you can subscribe below to have the future essays sent to you directly by email or on telegram, or just check back here over the coming days. As we go I’ll add direct links to each piece below so that you can find them easily and jump right to whatever is relevant. Thanks for reading, here we go.
[header image: Sasha Stiles, Cursive Binary: You are a soft machine, 2023. From the author’s collection]