Bookish Thoughts: Where Do We Go with AI?
So, like, do we just live in a cyberpunk world now?
This is the final installment of my mini AI series. You can also see my breakdown of how AI works and who the major players in AI are currently, with commentary on their legal issues and controversies.
Why does this even matter?
The blunt and reasonable question about AI in the creative space is this. Why should you even care?
AI is not a threat to the arts, but those who control it are. That doesn't mean we are powerless.
Unless your net worth reaches eight figures and above and you own some part of AI companies, I have a blunt but reasonable assurance. You are not in a position to control AI software.
I assure everyone reading this that I will not waste your time on a rant featuring plans and dreams shinier than a guillotine blade. This blog reviews monster romance by someone who knows a bit about the technology landscape to pay the bills.
Most of us want to pay our bills, and we should also be able to engage in some fulfilling work.
So if you are so out of control, now what?
The good news is that AI itself is not the real issue. It is a tool much like a knife, which can be used to make a stir-fry or stab someone. It comes down to context. We may not own the metaphoric knife business, but we can choose how we use the knives available to us.
Know and strategize how you use AI tools.
It is the responsibility of creatives and those who claim to support creative endeavors to be discerning consumers.
Not all AI software and companies are the same. My previous AI article breaks down different major players and spells out current controversies (or lack of them) connected to those businesses. I have no interest in setting Adobe as a company on a platform. Still, they have made efforts to be transparent about their AI's training data and avoid accusations of scrapping (stealing) training data for their generative art tools.
By contrast, OpenAI, MidJourney, and Stability are mired in litigation right now. MidJourney has even been mired in controversy, accusing Stability of scrapping its data. They know that just taking training data without permission is wrong, or they wouldn't be fighting amongst themselves like this. However, until legal regulations enforce transparent data governance, little besides consumer demand will stop them.
This is not to dismiss the possibilities of generative AI's usefulness. It could synthesize a creative professional's ideas or act as a research assistant. This is to emphasize that AI software consumers must be concerned about the transparency of these companies' training data.
Even in the face of extreme competition for clicks and attention, AI's seeming shortcuts will not help you overcome that. In my time as an obsessive reviewer in the past couple of years, the key to dominating indie publishing is being a community-builder.
Embrace peers as community, not competition.
I will share an open secret about technology, even the most bleeding-edge stuff. Building software or hardware is easy. Building a community is hard. Community is what will make you succeed. The same goes for any kind of art. Good art, trendy art, shocking art…whatever type of art will be like a tree falling in an isolated forest unless it builds a community of people around it.
Even if you churn out AI-generated stories with AI-generated art at the same rate, your audience consumes them with enough spice to make the ghost of Hugh Hefner blush. What kind of community is that? Is it sustainable? Does it look to your work as a mark of quality? Are you giving them anything they couldn't just do themselves? I am not saying there isn't money to be made. I comb through r/eroticauthors on Reddit frequently. Some can tell you they have gotten some money out of it. However, it will not offer a sustainable career as a creative. Again, it would be best if you had a community for that.
You jeopardize your community-building efforts if you do not exercise wise judgment about what AI tools you use and how you use them. You are also leaving opportunities on the table if you do not take advantage of collaborating with authors and artists instead of generative AI. You may have come up in your careers or fandom through Kindle, DeviantArt, Etsy, Discord, YouTube, or whatever. You may see MidJourney/Stability/etc. as another tool like those. These companies are not designed or intended for your success, though. They are designed only for their success. Your network of fellow human beings with whom you have built connections and trust would intend for you to succeed.
Find and support efforts to diversify and innovate the marketplace.
The only way the creative economy can hope to survive and thrive is through innovation and diverse competition. We have a tool belt of ways to push for that.
This could be because I grew up in 90s America with idealized thoughts of how capitalism works. However, I still maintain that an innovative marketplace is a healthy marketplace. A signature characteristic of descriptions for late-stage capitalism is businesses ceasing innovation because they are big enough that they no longer need to be competitive. Instead of consumer-concerned innovation, they put their majority efforts into marketing and PR to maintain consumerism activity.
Companies like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Google play with that line of a healthy marketplace and a dominated one. These specific companies have been so brazen in their absorption and deals with AI startups that the FTC is investigating these activities over antitrust concerns. AI is likely to become like most software in our technology marketplace. Very few will ultimately control it.
Fighting overbearing economic forces is not new, even if commercial generative AI is (relatively) new. I strongly recommend Chokepoint Capitalism by Cory Doctorow, who breaks down the creative landscape and where large tech companies are pressing boots on our necks. Some of this comes down to legislation. Some of this comes down to finding ways to band together and build competitive places to share and earn a living from our art. Some of it comes down to being chaotic where we can be.
I do admit to enjoying being a little chaotic sometimes, especially for those who try to be sneaky, like well-funded tech companies who would rather take something for free than pay artists for the value they produce. In the spirit of that effort, I once again recommend the efforts of the University of Chicago, which has produced two unique free and open-source software tools for visual artists, Nightshade and Glaze. Both modify the metadata of visual art to make it useless and sometimes even harmful as training data for AI.
Conclusions
From where I sit, the problem with AI is the problem with most tech advances. The humans are what make it a problem for other humans. Specifically, greedy egos who see humans as raw materials meant to be streamlined and reduced for profit are the problem.
I also have some darkly humorous hope to share with my fellow arts and humanities lovers. The Arts and Humanities are so useless in this modern age of technology that SV tech bros have been driven to spend billions of dollars doing something many a visual arts or creative writing major has done during an all-nighter running on nothing but caffeine and terrible judgment. I still find the undergrad's half-done work more meaningful than anything AI-generated.
AI is here. We cannot wish it away. There are ways we can and should choose to use it.
Housekeeping
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Love this post. I also work in tech and it’s hard watching the tech side of things happily explore LLMs and SLMs while also being part of the creative community and watching folks lose income and and have their livelihoods jeopardized to the point that they aren’t sure they want to make anything anymore.
The sad thing is, we’ve been using products for years based on creative algorithms. Any editing software, any formatting software, any digital art software falls into this (like previously mentioned) For at least ten years, maybe more. But these things helped more than they hurt, at least from what we could see.
When computers first integrated into the workforce, it changed how so many things were done that it often displaced workers until the workforce learned how to use them to their advantage. LLMs/AI is the same course altering event. And it won’t be the last in our lifetime. Tech is moving faster than ever. We’ve only had computers in consumer hands for 50 years, what will another 20 or 30 bring?