aggienaut | AI "Art" Is Not Art (Reply)

   I think Elon has tweaked the twitter algorithm again, for the last week or so my feed has been mainly lame engagement-bait. I had earlier tried to get into the twitter-alternatives but none of them felt like they had as vibrant of discussion, but I don't know he might have finally completely killed the vibe.

   Also a lot of discussion these days has been about AI. One particular favorite on my feed is screenshots of "AI Artists" complaining about things like not getting taken seriously, and there was one very funny hit tweet this last week of a screenshot of an "AI Artist" complaining that it was too hard coming up with prompts and they should make a feature that comes up with prompts for them!

   Here's the thing, as I see it, art is art because when we see it we take a moment to stand in awe of either the technical skills of the creator, or the creator's stunning original thinking and insight, or, often, both. For example a photorealistic painting painted during the rennaissance was awe inspiring, that exact same image captured with a phone camera in 2025 would garner no reaction because it doesn't show case technical skill, unless of course the composition is clever and insightful. Even if it's beautiful, we appreciate it because the photographer managed to be in the right place at the right time and had the insight to catch it, whereas an AI "beautiful scene" we know no one had to put any particular effort into being anywhere in the right place or the right time. As such, AI "art" is not art.

   And that's not even getting into the fact that it's a theft machine. Every time AI does come up with something that looks like actual art there is almost inevitably an original human-made work it just ripped off. AI "art" machines are fundamentally incapable of original work.

   When it comes to writing, it could be a useful tool in the right hands, as long as the person using it is using it as a tool to express their insightful idea, IN THEORY, if it was better. I have written about my attempts to work with it to write this Star Trek parody but ultimately it required so much intervention on my part it was not worthwhile. But I could imagine if it was better at learning to copy my own personal style after I had spent some hours going back and forth with it that it could eventually become a tool that accurately reflected my original vision on a work .... but it's not nearly there yet. Every single time I've asked it to write something for me to see how it did, it came up with something that was wholly unsatisfactory to me.

   Obviously there's a lot of people who's own innate writing ability is worse than chatgpt's and I guess it seemingly helps them seem like better writers, but I still think they'd be better off continuing to practice. Already I'm getting emails that, while directed to me personally about something we were talking about, are just so perfectly professional I'm like ugh you let "Gemini" or whatever write this for you didn't you. If the people pushing AI into every digital product do succeed in getting people to use it for nearly everything, I can really see it genuinely dumbing down the population into being unable to write anything longer than a "prompt"

   What I do find it genuinely useful for is quickly collating information, like working on a magazine article I came across a spreadsheet of types of almonds planted in the most recent year, some varieties are self pollinating, most are not, I could spend an hour manually adding up the totals or take a snip, ask chatgpt what percentage are self pollinating... and then if at all possible check it's answer for errors! I have often found it can somehow hallucinate one number in a spreadsheet for another! But eventually you get an answer. Like with the writing this isn't just ask it one prompt and run with the answer, it requires some back and forth to get things right, it's a god damn tool.

   I had a funny interaction just the other day. I was looking for historical background on Kenya for the memoir work (sorry it's photos of my screen instead of screenshots):

(yes I talk to chatgpt like I'm talking to a person, because I think it would be mentally unhealthy for ME to do otherwise)

   Don't feel like I'm dealing with a super-intelligence here. But even something like this, note I knew exactly what I was looking for, I had to shove chatGPT's face into it, AND, fortunately, I have actually read the Rihla before so I was able to discern if it was hallucinating the passage or not, and in this case what it reported matched my recollection. People who aren't smart and try to use chatGPT to pretend they are are just going to end up in la la land.
   Several times I've had someone try to win an argument about some beekeeping topic with me on facebook by posting a long chatgpt explanation of their position. When I poke a bunch of holes in it and chastise them for using chatgpt they usually slink away in shame. ChatGPT is not an expert on any topic, it's more like a drunk guy at a bar pretending to be an expert but willing to confidently tell you details it just made up to maintain the illusion of being smart.