Generative AI and its Consequences
an editorial from VOODU.XYZ
I have been an internet user for the majority of my life. The internet was around for about 5 years before I was even born, and it took me about 5 years before I was intelligent enough to use it. I have fond memories of personal websites, flash games, and early Youtube. When Facebook entered the scene, everything started to change. Facebook fostered the homogenization of the internet, and here we are in the 2020's, where people are using the same handful of social media sites and access to information is becoming increasingly difficult (read Dead Internet Theory).
Furthermore, the individuality, creativity, and diversity that the internet once brought has been taken away from us by the trillion dollar companies who fight for domination over our phones and minds. In the past few years, these companies have invested heavily in Generative AI technology, the newest, hottest dystopian development on the block. Many works of science fiction envisioned a future in which we could talk with our computers and they could respond with active intelligence. They even fantasized that we'd be able to produce images or compose a symphony at the click of a button. These fantasies have now become a reality - there are tons of companies, apps and programs which offer to offload the difficult work of content creation to a server across the planet.
I remember being fascinated with Generative AI when it was first discovered by the internet en masse. I enjoyed experimenting with it, and there was even some content on my site that used AI generated imagery. Back in these days, there were image generators that would generate blobby, low-res interpretations of prompts. This was endlessly fascinating and amusing, seeing what kind of things came out of the prompts I and other people had. I remember learning about NightCafe and using it for the first time. It was still goopy and dream-like, but it seemed to generate things with a slight sense of intelligence. The results would never be good enough to be mistaken for a real image or used for business purposes. They were more of a fun trippy passtime. I remember learning of Dall-E 2 before it was released to the public and being amazed at some of the images it produced. It was legitimately mind-boggling stuff.
If I could have shown myself the state of Generative AI in 2024 back then, I would have shit my pants. We have definitely come a long way from the days of discernably artificial output. Nowadays, generative models such as OpenAI's sora is being used to create fully-fledged commercials. Generative models are now also capable of creating high quality music with lyrics, something it wasn't capable of back then. The quality of AI generated writing has also increased, and people everywhere are using it to make school/work that much easier. These models are trained largely on other peoples works that are scraped from the internet without permission, regardless of copyright. This has caused a lot of controversy in creative circles (illustrators, musicians, etc.), and now there is a rise in people claiming to have "created" the art that they have prompted (a particularly ironic example being students of a prestigious French animation school, among other things.)
I think you can see why my opinion has changed after all this time. It rubs me the wrong way that now that the quality of output has been increased, Generative AI is being used to replace creatives who are already struggling in the first place. Capitalism is bad enough, but it will be much much worse when we are all forced to do manual labor when all other forms are delegated to energy-guzzling computers. It rubs me the wrong way that people who have not worked to build talent in the slightest are now claiming to be artists because they commissioned a computer to do it for them. It rubs me the wrong way, most of all, that the amount of energy these generative models are speeding up the agonizing heat-death of our planet. This added to the problems with the political climate (the imminent usurpation of our basic rights as fascism grips ever tighter on our country, leading to the eventual genocide and/or enslavement of the lower class and marginalized communities) have weighed heavily on my mind and cement 2024 as the year we crossed over into a dystopia. Generative AI will only make the slope slippier as it replaces our jobs and leisure activities. Once this happens, the human race will become obsolete.
There was life before AI. Hell, there was life before the internet. Despite this, I'm not suggesting that we all become amish and destroy all technology. I just think we could make things a little bit better by being more conscious of the consequences of the technology we use. If we want the the world to be a better place, we must stop propping up the billionaires who are making it worse. We must be aware of the fact that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. AI Generated media doesn't just materialize out of thin air, it is trained upon the wrongfully stolen works of billions of artists around the world and is manifested through wasteful consumption of valuable energy and resources. Worst of all, it ends up making some rich asshole even richer, and talentless assholes even more successful.
I will invite you to think about other situations where these consequences apply. We live in a culture where everything is disposable, conceptually and physically, and our survival is threatened by the magnitude of unchecked waste. It is quite literally a cancer on our planet and society as a whole. I don't expect everyone to stop using AI, and I certainly think that anyone who wants to use it has the right to. The bottom line in this country is the dollar, and if we want things to change, the most effective way to do so is to boycott and spread the word about the consequences. I don't expect that a majority of people will do this, and I can live with that fact. I know there are people out there who agree with me, and if we take the steps to be proactive by spreading information and choosing not to support entities which take advantage of it, then maybe we could make a change. Having hope for mankind feels a little foolish, especially when it comes to THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, but what else do we have left?
Thanks for reading my cynical rant to the end. I'd give you a reward for it if I wasn't so god-damn poor. I swear I'll get a job when I feel like it. Promise.
