3d ago

Okay, this time I want to ask you, do you feel the same as me, or something similar when you enjoy what was created before AI?

When I read generated novels, I don't even feel bad, or rather, as if I'm reading something meaningless and empty. When I look at AI-generated memes, I just don't find it funny. When I listen to generated music I feel like it's dead. When I watch AI generated videos I feel sick, this is clearly for some kind of consumers.

And now I don't read or watch or listen to anything new at all. No, now I watch, listen and read old things and yes, I feel good sometimes I even cry understanding how I could not appreciate something so beautiful before.

Yes, I was once a consumer myself, but it always seemed to me that something was wrong, that everything was somehow not right, and when AI learned to create this fake art, I finally understood what exactly was wrong... There was no soul, there was only sterile garbage and now there is more and more of it. And AI makes it even worse. It is the worst invention of humanity at the moment, or one of the worst. Why is it the worst? Because such inventions always fall into unworthy hands, and I think it's time for everyone to admit it.

Well, now to the main thing, are you also now watching, reading or listening to old things in which there is not a drop of AI and sometimes even tears come to your eyes? Or do you just feel alive?

37 comments

I've pretty much always rejected gen AI so this isn't a problem for me. Why would I want more soulless art in a world that's already commodified it all? No thanks.
I block every gen AI comm I see
- Well, yes, I agree with you. For me personally, the worst nightmare would be if I became an ordinary consumer and ate generated garbage.

The problem is it's slop. I feel nothing but disappointment watching most media these days, it's just so lazy and soulless
Yes, AI turbo charges slop production, but what has made me laugh the hardest over the past few years is AI being chaotic and interacting with real people. I love that a fake anime girl can play Minecraft with a bunch of people, suddenly decide to set everything on fire and cry for help, or hunt down a player for a perceived slight.
I love that another creator designs AI prompts on the spot and puts them and the viewers through challenges.
I love that someone made an escape room game where you must pacify an unhinged AI while trying to accomplish tasks
Some AI art is surreal and incredible, and people use AI with intent, passing a single picture through many different AI stacks with manual configuration
There was even a movie script "written entirely by AI", but in reality it was a writer guiding an AI through creating a screenplay. It was about a writer who uses AI, then discovers it's a far better writer than he could ever be, and the existential crisis he faces as he passes off the AI's work as his own
But then you have something like Star wars, where the new trilogy was so lacking in soul and writing that I still feel loss when I watch any star wars media. I couldn't even bring myself to watch the last movie, I eventually watched someone rewrite the trilogy scene by scene to fix it instead
AI slop is definitely a huge problem, but the real problem is societal. We have a grifting economy, everyone is so scared and desperate they're just trying to exploit a system to "get theirs" while they can. You can't make art like that, you can't even make useful things like that
Creation requires soul, but just like you can hang a paint can and spin a canvas to create beautiful patterns, the artists who do it make hundreds, unsure of how it will turn out, and burn all but the one that speaks to them. If they released all of them, they'd just be kitche slop
AI is the same way - you can use AI to create very quickly, but if you don't inject something into the process you've just made slop
And corporations want you to learn to love the slop
- Well, you think sensibly. But you know, a person, how to say it, is not worthy of possessing great power, he treats it too badly and only makes it worse. Look, it seems like we have such technologies, but we have become even more lonely and anxious than before. Of course, I'm not talking about everyone, but still... Yes, and I consider utopia a sweet lie, there will be no utopia, it is impossible.
  
  There's no closing Pandora's box at this point, but honestly I don't know if it even really matters
  I think AI is a tiny fraction of the true problem. Slop is just a symptom of late stage capitalism. It always goes back to that.
  COVID moved everything online, and billionaires and corporations have enshitified the walled gardens they've managed to lock people into. YouTube is full of slop because they were happy to take the short term ad money. Hollywood is full of slop because Disney bought every franchise with good IP, and no one wants to take a risk. AAA gaming is slop because Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft bought all the big studios and doesn't want to take risks.
  It's all slop because integrity and pride in your work is the enemy of slop factories. You have few individuals creating to create because if you can't monitise your work immediately, you can't survive
  Also, you have a huge wave of anti intellectualism. People don't know how to critically examine media anymore - before AI, clickbait and short form videos of reddit posts over gameplay were already taking over. Disinfo and misinfo was everywhere, echo chambers and the algorithms were already doing far worse to us then AI
  I think if we can fix society, AI won't be a problem. AI isn't bad, corporations - large amalgamations of people that humans don't actually control - they're the threat
  AI is only bad because its powerful at a back time. I might be ok with not allowing it as a service... Maybe if you want AI for something, you use it through an expert with the understanding to set it up for you.
  But regulation scares me, because right now lobbyists would write the whole thing

When AI is a tool it can help make art. When humans become tools of AI, it's no longer art.
I personally enjoy a lot of videogames that feature AI, especially roguelikes. I don't think there's any shame in using an automatic spell-checker. Autotune has helped make music better (and worse, any tool can be misused). Automatic subtitles, while not the most reliable, have allowed a lot of video media that otherwise would never have been captioned to become accessible to the hearing-impaired.
I wouldn't write off all new art out of fear of AI. But I also wouldn't read a novel written by AI, either; how did you even end up in that situation, OP? There's so much good literature out there and more every day.
- I personally enjoy a lot of videogames that feature AI, especially roguelikes. I don’t think there’s any shame in using an automatic spell-checker. Autotune has helped make music better (and worse, any tool can be misused). Automatic subtitles, while not the most reliable, have allowed a lot of video media that otherwise would never have been captioned to become accessible to the hearing-impaired.
  It sounds like you and OP are talking about different things. Neither Autotune nor automatic captions have anything to do with Generative AI.
  Edit: * as far as I am aware. Autotune at least was around way before Gen AI. Automated captions too, but perhaps AI has improved those. A quick search wouldn't tell me if any of the AI subtitling tools actually use Generative AI or some other kind of AI.
- Well, you know, I have a certain taste for dirty and bloody and also forbidden art and it is becoming increasingly difficult to find such. In any case, I respect the work and soul of the author and I despise AI on an instinctive level, I can say so. Besides, I know what human greed is capable of if left unchecked.

Just by knowing something was created by AI makes it repelling to me. That’s not to say it can’t generate interesting material, but I so wish this technology didn’t exist in the first place. But, it’s here to stay, and refusing to adapt to it entirely it may not be in our best interest in the long run. It’s possible I have enjoyed content without knowing it was AI-generated too; it’s not always obvious. Not everything made by humans is good either, although I respect the effort the creators put into it. Luckily there is an extensive catalogue of reputable human-made literature and art to choose from that goes back centuries :)
- Well, yes, it is good that there is a lot of worthwhile literature, thank all the gods that we are not in China and a lot is permitted.
  
  China bad, llms bad, its always the same. Liberals prevent themselves from even looking at the target of their ire, and then they assume dumb shit about it.

Growing up in the age of photoshop, I didn’t really care as long as it looked good and the message made sense.
Pretty sure a great art work can be made using AI tools which sends a great message. We just have a lot of sloppy prompts at this beginning stage. Perhaps when it starts costing a lot more they’ll be more thoughtful of how and when they utilize AI.
- What a joke... Okay, for you it is exactly like that, we are too different to understand each other, and I'm afraid there is no point in arguing, I'm tired of arguing already.
  
  You ask if he agrees in your post, he gives an honest and normal answer, and you call him a joke? That's not much better faith than what you're complaining about.

This feels like confirmation bias. You don't recognize the ones that you find acceptable, so you falsely reinforce your belief even when the data might disagree with you. I promise that you aren't as good at detecting AI as you think you are.
- Dude, I know very well that it is extremely difficult or even impossible to recognize, and I don't even try now. Instead, I find nothing better than to enjoy the old and proven. And I don’t think that I’m right about everything, but you know, I think I know a sufficient minimum, at least in contrast to other consumers.

Reading ai work related stuff is not too bad, it’s quite often reviewed by a human anyway.
Watching ai stuff just fucks too much with my brain. It’s how a cat responds to the sound of tape being pulled ( for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo1FE_i_Zhc)
I feel physically nauseous when I watch ai content too long
- The less human effort is put into a creation, the deader it becomes. Well, your nausea is not surprising, you can draw an analogy here with a beautiful dead man in a coffin of flowers, but this does not change the fact that he is dead and the longer you look the more sick you feel.
  
  I get what you are saying. Is not what I’m experiencing though.
  I literally get gag reflex like symptoms. It’s uncann, but in a more organic way.
  First time I experienced this was with the Minecraft genai demo. It looks like mc, it plays like mc, but it doesn’t actually work like it. Whilst I was playing I had to look away multiple times. I think that my brain is expecting something else and just straight up errors out of there when it doesn’t actually follow the core principles. Ai videos tend to have this more often as well

If I enjoy it I enjoy it if I don't, I don't.
I only care about the tools used in creating something out of curiosity or in case I want to do something similar. But I don't automatically dislike anything just because it has been done with one particular tool.
For instance, I have some Ai generated songs in my library because they are absolute bangers. I don't care if they haven't been recorded in a studio, they are cool to listen.
I think is kind of sad when people forbid themselves to enjoy things for political/ideological reasons. That's how minds are closed. Let your mind enjoy whatever it enjoys or it will end up not enjoying anything.

Everything related to art (photography, movie, music, graffiti or whatnot...) Has to be none AI for me to enjoy. I put it on the same hate level as ads (radio, tv, internet...).
However, I found out how good it can be to help me out to put together some scripts in python or bash. Not because it's good at doing those things but because I do not have time to learn proper python or bash :/. Though I do agree it only works well for small things.
Maybe, those who love AI generated art feel the same way as I do with AI generated code? 🤷‍♂️
- Who knows. But I get it. Either way, I just don't like the idea of using AI for bullshit instead of useful things, making people's lives worse and depriving even more people of creative income, forcing them to go back to the regular jobs they worked so hard to escape. That's just fucking capitalism. It's like a dog finally escaped to freedom trying to be a wolf and then his owner forced him back into the cage again.

What a world we live in where this is even a thought someone has.
You should know that little media is being made today that will stand the test of time. It used to be, that when someone was angry or proud or excited, when they were full of emotion that had to be expressed, they would write book or a song or paint a work of art. Now, those emotions can be unloaded instantly on TikTok giving the person the satisfaction they needed. And perhaps some people do still do this but you won't know about it because the corporations that have historically funded such people full of emotions to express are now dumping money into works their board members know to already be popular.
I'll add something that I'm personally struggling with. There is so much content available today that staves off any opportunity for boredom that I have little time to spend doing the things I know are more fulfilling. Like, when I get done work, I just plop on the couch and watch YT instead of taking a nap or reading a book or drawing. And now my attention span is shit so it's a struggle to just sit still and do something requiring more than a few minutes of attention. I mean, I literally have a book called Dopamine Nation on my coffee table that I've yet to read more than a couple chapters of.
You and I may have two different problems but I think they're booth seeking the same solution: rediscovering our humanity.
- Dude, we live in a strange world where fantasies become reality, although not always, although usually with a catch. Humanity as compassion and mutual assistance to one's own kind is a great joke in the modern world. It looks like people are being dumbed down on purpose so that they become pathetic puppies who are happy to become [Bad Word] in order to be safe.

I don't think for me its just ai. I sorta stopped liking anything made in modern times at some point. Not exactly sure when but like the last new type of stuff that I went out of my way to see is like the original avengers arc movies and by endgame I was really just coasting on momentum, legion, first season of doom patrol, titans, american gods. Basically around the time of covid but just before. I have been excited by some things but enjoyed only a few. The boys and invincible are like the only things since 2019 I have liked that I can think of.
- Well, I also think that the point is that most movies and the like are sterile and boring, and also harmful to the correct and safe content for consumers and people with fragile psyche, etc. But content like "The Boys" is controversial, but it usually has a lot of realism and dirt, which you won't find in sterile projects, I think that's why you liked it.
  If anything I liked "Terrifier" especially the third part it was such a thrill especially to look at people's comments like: What are you talking about, this should be banned and the author should be put behind bars, he broke my psyche! Although there was a warning not for the faint of heart but who cares about warnings...
  So you will find little good stuff because it is banned and the authors of such things usually have problems later, so few people take the risk and create something worthwhile with dirt and realism.

I felt the same way already with all the content targeted at The Great Algorithm for maximum doomscrolling effect. AI is just making it easier for those people. The human part was lost already.
- Yeah, man. But there's nothing you can do, the strong do what they want, I'm talking about the bad ones, by the way. Besides, most people like it, and they don't know what real art is, which makes you rethink yourself and your life in one evening.

I barely tolerate most movies, songs and novels (a collection of greedy suits might have a pair of working neurons between them but they still count as people!) and already consider it slop (at least they're fun sometimes, like books by Dan Brown); 'AI' hasn't even begun to make anything coherent, let alone interesting... 🤷
- In what sense do I not tolerate reading? Or is it the cruelty? In any case, you can speak to me sincerely, I will not be hypocritical and will listen to you as it is, or, in extreme cases, I will simply ignore you, if, of course, you respect my opinion.
  
  ??? Aneurysm or AI slop? For the sake of your honour, I hope it's the former.

37 comments