Creative AI is another Main Street moment. We should be concerned.
AI counterfeit art and writing is poised to be a megastore attack on small culture creators |
Remember when Walmart was a revolution? A megastore that could out-bargain any small business’ pricing, it was the trend in retail stores that everybody condemned — and then shopped at. By the time online shopping took off, most Americans were already used to an impersonal experience, and people had already forgotten why else they went to Main Street. Once we had gutted an arterial source of money and community for towns and neighborhoods, Main Street was dead.
I believe that enough people could get used to writing and art by AI* that when we have wiped out the ability of an ordinary person to earn a living as an artist, we’ll hardly notice the difference. At first. But the ripple effects will be real — and painful.
Some will complain, of course. And wealthy people will always get to create art. But If the economic infrastructure of creative people, already quite tenuous in this country, is undermined by millions of potential customers who choose instead to consume artificial art, the consequences will be far reaching.
It is, of course, already underway. You see it here in the AI-generated images used by even some of the most original writers. Somehow we are not all making the connection that the same force that is impacting the writing community is impacting visual artists — because we “need” Pope Francis’ head on the body of a bear crossing Commonwealth Avenue in Boston for our essay on nonconformity.
No, no you do not need that. And if you do, if your heart is set on it, spend the fiver to get a human to do it — or learn some basic graphic design skills. It’s good for your brain!
I should also point out that machine learning in technology is not an inherently bad thing, but that doesn’t mean it should be applied everywhere possible. Our choice should not be between a world in which machine learning tech helps a driver detect road conditions and one in which musicians write music and not robots.
Our planet is burning because we have been unable to manage the development of technology. Part of this has been ignorance in the past. Part of it has been economic. But you cannot be writing on Medium and use ignorance as an excuse. This conversation is blowing up on here.
And economics are not much of a factor either. Using artwork that is freely given by an artist and providing credit and links is really important. You’re validating that person and their choices, their trust in a system beyond transactions. And if you can afford to spend a little money, using a service like Adobe Stock gets artists paid when you use their images.
Main Street used to be a critical part of just about every town and city in this country. That’s where all the local entrepreneurs who were ready for commerce on a storefront scale could be concentrated and support one another through shared customer traffic. That’s where kids had their summer jobs. That’s where all sorts of civic events took place, because downtown was known by everybody. That’s where a lot of people had their first dates. That’s where your grandparents could have coffee with their friends. To the extent these things still happen — elderly Americans are more isolated than ever, so that damage has endured — they are happening in sterile spaces, with one type of activity segregated from another. There is a human cost to this that not everyone is capable of seeing, partly because of this very phenomenon. The less human-sized the world becomes, the less feeling people have for it.
We seem to be systematically dismantling all of the ingredients of human-centered culture in the name of progress and profit, the two-headed beast. I choose to not allow either to run my life — whenever possible. Where I have no choice, such as the river of plastic that comes with the food I buy, it really frustrates me. We could do so much better if our priorities were in order.
The lesson humanity fails to learn over and over again in this era is that what’s new isn’t always what’s best; what nourishes us and binds us together cannot be extracted, processed, and packaged. Or, perhaps more accurately: What you end up with when you do is unrecognizable as anything meant to feed the soul.
Writers and artists reflect the world they see and feel back to humanity, and we are enlarged by it. The creative process is incredibly painful for many, yet they endure that path because the need to nourish the world and be a part of culturemaking is deep within them. A machine can mimic what that process makes, but it will be meaningless from a soul perspective. And, more practically, every time you choose to engage a machine instead of a person in the process of “creation” (I do not think it wise to call art production by machines creation), you are further destabilizing an already fragile economic support system for creatives. You are harming every artist and writer you know.
I wonder how many people who read this will remember local delis and newsstands and the neighborhood jeweler who everyone had gotten their wedding rings from. Those vibrant streets they existed on went dead. The families who in many cases had served us for generations, who gave their children and grandchildren their start through those stores, were left abandoned, to become greeters at Walmart or take social security and hope they didn’t get sick.
This isn’t about nostalgia. It’s a warning for people who disregard the consequences of making writing and painting and photography economically untenable for everyone but the rich. The Main Street that this will eviscerate is spiritual. It’s our folkways. In a moment when the human project hinges on us getting humans to feel more for one another, learning machines — so-called AI — must be used with thoughtfulness and restraint. And if some part of our nation and our planet chooses to charge recklessly ahead like a late-20th-century Walmart shopper, then the rest of us have to build walled places where the heart and soul matter as much as possible — and certainly more than money. When the rest has burned down, we will have saved a critical piece of what it means to be human.
* I refer to machine learning technology as AI only because of the ubiquity of the term. I do not believe that it is Artificial Intelligence. Machines collect and process information. They do not produce knowledge. They are incapable of intelligence. They mimic it.
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✍ — Published by Warren Brown, at Dancing Elephant Press. Click here for submission guidelines.
