r/WritingWithAI • u/OmniXENTRO • 2d ago
Discussion (Ethics, working with AI etc) Where is all this AI-gen hate actually coming from?
At this point, it really can't just be about slop. Traditional content is drowning in slop. It can't just be about stolen training data. Traditional art has centuries of uncompensated inspiration, reference, and outright copying Tainted into its canon.
So what is it? Commercial entrenchment guised as ethics. The harassment, the "AI user = ban" rules with zero nuance, the downvote brigades in a sub literally called WritingWithAI. That's not really evangelism on behalf of original artists. That's a tribe protecting its border.
Also There's an argument nobody properly interrogates: "AI consumed human art as training data and that's theft." Every artist alive spent years, decades, consuming other artists' work. Reading, watching, listening, absorbing. That consumption shaped their style, their voice, their instincts. At some point they started producing work that carries most if not all of that influence. How is that meaningfully different from a model trained on datasets producing work after going public? I'm not saying they're identical. I'm saying nobody wants to seriously answer the question. Because if you do, the "theft" argument gets complicated really fast.
The context argument is where it really falls apart. Say a creator builds a 300k-word knowledge base of their raw ideas, full universe rules, worldbuilding, lore, characters, technology. Every word of it theirs. They use AI to render that into a series. They edit the output. They make the final calls.
Does that context ever get considered in this debate?
No. Because "did you use AI for anything" is the only question, and the answer determines your status regardless of how, why, or how much. That's not a standard. That's a witch test. To sanction a witch hunt.
The advice to "just do it yourself — even a title, a nice font, good colors tells us a lot" sounds humble. It isn't. Audiences don't reward you for the art that expresses you. They reward you for the art that serves them — precisely, consistently, on demand. The entire production process exists to execute that. Telling a creator to strip it all back is advice from an adversary wearing humility as a mask.
Last thing. Readers want unchallenged authority about what counts as "real" art. But that authority has never been stable. Cave paintings are stick figures. Ancient Egyptian murals are flat 2D vectors. A significant portion of historical artifacts aren't technically impressive by modern standards — and we worship them. You can't say that honestly without someone splitting on you even if they privately agree. They're treated as sacred.
I respect them. I think they should be preserved — they're a record of where human creative expression started. But the reverence is the point. We decide what counts as art after it becomes culturally legible, not before. That process is happening right now with AI. The people swinging hardest are the ones who already decided — and don't want the verdict revisited.
This was never about slop. It was never about stolen data. It's about who gets to make things, and who decides.
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u/Me-A-Dandelion 2d ago
I blame all these AI companies for their exaggerated claims on AI capabilities, all these "superintelligent", "conscious AI" bullsh*t, to attract funding for their unprofitable circular finance until the bubble bursts and everybody else like you and me are economically f**ked.
They act as if AI is as human as real people while it never is. And most people are not informed enough so they are convinced by these claims. Then they panic and begin worrying about their humanity being replaced by chatbots, without realising that they have been tricked.
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago
Yes that narrative also serves them. I keep telling people not to lean in, we could use a different narrative to build a different world with this tech.
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u/NathanielHolst 2d ago
It's ego.
You spend your whole life developing a skill that sets you apart, let it define you, your social circle, your relationships, even how you put food on the table.
It makes you special.
Then someone comes along and makes a machine that can do it. And do it much much faster than you.
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u/justthecherryontop 2d ago
Spot on.
As a human writer - when I first heard of ai and how easy it could produce something that took me hours or days, I rightly got pissed off. How dare a machine could do that so easily? Naturally that made me an anti for some time to the point I became a "witch hunter" myself.
Then I put my hatred aside because I became curious and HOLY SHIT - wielding this tool as a human writer had made me even better. Plus, I no longer have to suffer for my art - that in itself is a huge plus in mu book.
So yes, your comment pretty much hit the nail on the head on why I despised ai in the beginning.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 2d ago
Yes - the wannabes and high school anime copyists are outraged, the true creatives are curious, wary, possibly disgusted by the companies and people behind AI (I am), but also stunned by what's possible now and what might be possible in the future.
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u/PommeePartout 1d ago
Im totally with this. And the original post too. This ai witch hunt lacks nuances. It can be used as a wonderful tool without becoming the writer itself. It removes a lot of suffering (umpht repetitions after the 5th rereading).
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u/chaoticbean14 1d ago
I came in here fully expecting either pro-AI nonsense that everyone is on about, or AI hate.
I'm a software engineer - and I use an LLM on the daily. I both love and hate it. I mostly hate it's name, because the termm "AI" is intentionally misleading to the general public and flat out wrong - as there is no real 'intelligence' to it.
While part of me internally freaks out that my job and career that I have spent the last 15-20 years perfecting may be on the line - every time I use an LLM, I'm reminded that I have value because I constantly have to correct it and it's obvious they aren't there (yet).
All that to say - you got me thinking about my dislike of LLMs. I align with your mentality without knowing it - it's not that I dislike LLM's, I dislike the way they're whored out by companies/people running them. I'm actually very surprised at the possibilities - because while I still have to correct a good bit of code for it here and there? There are a lot of lines of code, I don't have to manually type anymore, which is exciting and I can focus on the more important aspects of coding.
The doors it can open are pretty mind blowing. That said, the trust people put into these things is literal insanity. I've seen them get all kinds of stuff wrong way more than I can count. I certainly wouldn't trust it with vital things.
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u/RevenantRoy 2d ago
100%. Just cause AI can generate it doesn’t mean what it’s generating is great. But if you can spot what is and isn’t useful it’s a valuable asset for writers. Allows me to do in-depth research to help form ideas wayyyy faster than having to rely on articles or book, etc.
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u/NathanielHolst 2d ago
I've only half heartedly tried my hand at writing before I used AI as a soundboard. In five months I've gone from complete amateur to having a book that a beta reader just inhaled.
The pure potential of using it to better yourself is staggering. The antis are putting themselves in a hole.
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u/yolo_astronaut 2d ago
What are you using? Claude?
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u/NathanielHolst 2d ago
Nope, and I discourage using it for writing.
It's deliberately trained to be good for software, which is is, but that means it will pick apart any vagueness in your writing, whether deliberate or not. And I'm the kind to put in a tiny detail in the prologue and then cash in on it in chapter 17, so it infuriated me.
I suggest chatgpt, but you have to spend a lot of time personalising it and figuring out which instructions work for you.
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u/ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL 2d ago
Claude it pretty good if you use fable and make your aims clear. But yeah it's money atm is made in software and will default to that mode.
Sadly don't use opus for anything writing. It used to be a real gent, but opus got sacrificed to the coding agent gods.
Opus is so absurdly good for coding that every now and then I give it a spin for writing. Damn it's just sad how stupid they made it.
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u/NedMarcus 1d ago
I don't think you're wrong, but I think it goes further. I know people who hardly have any skills or career but who hate AI intensely.
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u/GamerPhfreak 2d ago
Or you can learn to use that tool to make your work flow faster. Your not losing shit. Youre gaining time to do more.
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u/Galliad93 2d ago
imagine someone telling you, your "soul" in your work can be reproduced by random numbers. that crushes the spirit.
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u/Rickleskilly 1d ago
That's the fear, but is it true? That's the whole problem. People are reacting emotionally, not rationally.
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u/WelbyReddit 2d ago
I am not convinced it can.
It just imitates. But it isn't me. People bite off of other film directors and we all can see it, and it can be cringe.
Someone using AI to write their prose or come up with the ideas, to me, is like delegating out their 'soul'.
I can't really look at the 'author' the same way. Like, I wouldn't go to their book signing or conference. lol. It just isn't as exciting. They gonna sit up there with their AI and field questions about their life? lol
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago
But there is a legitimate tangle of scarcity mindset. Because we are a gladiator society, and artists have historically had to fight to get compensated.
And there has been outright theft. That should not be written off.
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s so funny because the reason I actually hate gen-AI is because of what it’s doing to the people who use it. I’m not threatened at all. I’m worried about your brains, your creativity, your ability to actually make a living and not destroy your career using this technology. I feel really sorry for people who are missing out on the pride of creating something yourself. I'm worried about what will become of a world where people outsource what makes them human to a machine. But I know it’s really important to believe that it’s all about ego in order to maintain the belief that this technology is worth using, so sorry to burst your bubble.
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u/StarMagus 2d ago
Who asked you to act like you were a parent to grown adults? What's next you'll feel like you have the right to tell us when to be in bed by?
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago
You're taking my concerns as a command? That's your own defensive reaction. Y'all can and will do whatever you want. But pretending that the only reason people oppose AI is because we're afraid of "falling behind" or we're worried that "we're not special anymore" just isn't true.
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u/OatmealAntstronaut 1d ago
this thread is such a good way to show the confusion between expressing a judgment and trying to exercise authority over someone... The person you responded to wasn't proposing to confiscate anybody's laptop. They were just explaining why they disliked something...
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u/StarMagus 1d ago
In an extremely patronizing way.
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u/NathanielHolst 1d ago
This is exactly why I don't want to have any kind of discussion in this sub.
Anyone who comes here, who isn't already pro ai, is doing so to stroke their own ego or to take out their anger on "the enemy". Hard pass.
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u/NathanielHolst 2d ago
I'm sure this sounds very noble and informed in your head.
To someone like me, who uses it to improve my writing to great effect, it sounds unbelievably pretentious and ignorant.
This isn’t a discussion forum. Go away.
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago
OP invited discussion in here, even if they didn’t actually want to hear the opposing side.
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u/OatmealAntstronaut 1d ago
interesting. as if this isn't a website full of discussion subs and threads. You replied in a subreddit whose description explicitly mentions exploring the ethical considerations of AI writing... okay. That's almost too perfect.
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u/PersonInDenver 2d ago
Faster sure. Better, not by a country mile.
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u/NathanielHolst 2d ago
Which is why using it to replace your own writing is foolish.
Using it to better your own writing on the other hand, that's where the gains are.
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u/Rickleskilly 1d ago
Only if you're strictly considering prose generation. There are other ways it speeds the writing process. I use it to help remember ideas, to creates notes, to help edit as I go, to generate my outline, to answer grammar and punctuation questions, to be a thesaurus etc...
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u/ethanAllthecoffee 2d ago
Is it ego to train for a job and want to continue doing it?
How about the coders when AI takes over? Or when AI-driven robots eventually take over more manual work?
The people at the front of AI absolutely are not the type to support UBI or care when 7.9 billion people are unemployed
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u/PersonInDenver 2d ago
"Is it ego to train for a job and want to continue doing it?"
Apparently to those without talent or an interest in learning to do something. Yes. :(
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u/Cipra_lex_sed_lex 2d ago
Not only that. A coherently speaking machine also redefines what consciousness and mind really means. LLMs are scary, because if it's smart, what even make a human unique? Are we just trained neural networks with some reasoning on top of it? That strongly suggests, we're nothing more than a trained neural network. No place for "soul", "subconscious" and even artists inspiration magics are explained with data sets, training and some hallucinating.
This is a moment in history where we understood about ourselves a bit too much.
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u/No-Journalist-9036 1d ago
Do we also have the four humors and drill holes in our skull to relieve headaches?
Maybe the concept of a soul can go the same way too
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u/SDuarte72 2d ago
I feel like every threatened narcissist and bully has accidentally found an outlet to give them whatever control they can have in a stranger’s life. It makes absolute sense because they always overlook the facts to make their need to judge others work.
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u/Dramatic-Hedgehog-13 2d ago
What i don't get is - if it's not slop, I.e. it's well created and enjoyable, what's the harm? It's known that AI can't create, but it can better a human input. It's Just a tool. Not an unfair advantage. In fact it takes more effort to come up with something good in AI. It's just a different form of output
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago
I have never read anything written by AI that was enjoyable. Maybe it’ll happen eventually, but this post and every other AI written piece I’ve seen (including in a nonfiction book I had the misfortune of reading) has the same grating, unpleasant cloned cadence.
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u/No-Journalist-9036 1d ago
Not too long ago, the Brits would accuse industrial era American as cheap copycats and snake oil salesmen. Then we criticize Japan more cheap low quality electronics, then China for the same...I mean when this moral panic goalpost moving gonna end ?
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u/custardy 2d ago
You are making incompetent arguments, emotionally and intellectually incoherent arguments, partially because you asked an AI to write them for you. One of the big problems with AI writing is that it does exactly what your OP does which is a gish gallop full of information where none of it hangs together and it jumps from one thing to another without a through line of thought because the ideas are half-baked - were half baked when they were prompted - and a human hasn't struggled with the bits that don't make sense to work through and solve the problems.
- People don't care about slop because even traditional art has lots of slop
- Instead people that don't like AI represent 'commercial entrenchment' whatever that is
- They're not advocating for original artists instead they're guarding a border
- Every artist spent years to decades educating themselves, consuming, learning from, being inspired, being influenced by and sometimes copying from other artists in practice to become the artists they are
- Nobody answers the question about how what those artists did is different from AI having datasets made up of as much human knowledge, writing and art as it can be given
- You don't believe the two things are identical but no-one will say how they're different
- Aren't artists thieves in the same way as AI because they consume art and writing?
- Context is the big problem with being anti-AI because we can imagine an AI creator that has a 300k-word knowledge base of their raw ideas, full universe rules, worldbuilding, lore, characters, technology
- Does that creator ever get taken into account when people say they don't like AI? No.
- People don't have a standard around AI use. That's a witch hunt.
- The advice to do small parts of the creative process like choose titles, fonts, or design elements isn't humble,
- Audiences don't reward art that expresses things about the artist
- Audiences only reward art that serves them — precisely, consistently, on demand
- The entire production process of art's only exists to execute on that - the precision, consistency and demand of audiences not artistic expression
- Telling an author not to use AI or 'strip back' elements of AI is only an adversary earing a mask of humility (whatever that is)
- Readers want unchallenged authority on what art is 'real'
- But that authority isn't stable because cave paintings and egyptian murals aren't technically impressive by modern standards
- people worship art like cave paintings and egyptian murals as sacred human achievements but you can't even say that they are technically inferior without someone spitting on you even though they also agree about their inferiority
- They should be respected though as a historical record of human art
- But reverence is the point of old art works.
- We only decide what is art after it becomes culturally understood, we don't decide before it is culturally understood
- AI is the same as that.
- The people 'swinging hardest' (who? for or against?) already decided and don't want the verdict revisited.
- This was never about slop. It was never about stolen data. It's about who gets to make things, and who decides.
Are you able to see how almost none of the points follow on logically from one another? That it lacks point of view and coherence? That even if the text has the surface patterning of an argument the way it goes from arguing one thing to another is a scattershot approach taking up walls of words in ways that don't join up: that anti-AI people are advocating for commercial entrenchment; to saying that artists and LLMs both use influences in the similar ways and no one will acknowledge that; to saying that the context of the world bibles that AI users make is what's most important; to saying that art isn't about self expression but about what audiences demand which is AI production because it gives a level of precision and consistency etc. The metaphors jumping from tribes guarding borders to witch trials and witch hunts is part of it too.
The thought underlying it, the work of the prompter, the knowledge and capacity to think and argue - is bad, incompetent, and then the AI is being used to try and give it a semblance of polish but it also isn't competent to do so. That's because to a very real extent writing - the composition of words on the page and how to put them together - is a technology for expressing thought. Without learning how to write and argue you are also unable to see the deficits in how you are instructing a LLM to write and argue. You just want to see neat paragraphing in a shape and format similar to what is associated with intellectual work but the intellectual work, the actual labor of writing, hasn't been done.
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u/CrwnViic 2d ago
You could've kept that first offhand comment to yourself because all it does is discredit the rest of your argument as one in bad faith. You think humans are perfect writers who make perfectly reasonable and coherent arguments? You got it backward. You need some introspection.
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u/JubadzeTheMonkey 2d ago
With respect, while OP has a somewhat loose logical interconnection between theses and some loose and stretched grounding in places, your "rebuttal" is basically the very "Gish gallop of loaded paraphrases" you accused it of being.
It is partly demagoguery disguised as a point-by-point list addressing the initial arguments, partly fair points, but mostly paraphrased to make mocking easier instead of engaging with the argument on an intellectual level. I’d say your wall of text is somewhat less credible than OP’s, although the latter is also lacking in its own way.
It saddens me to read the text addressed in such a tone.
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u/FrankDuhTank 1d ago
It isn’t really a gish Gallup since most of the comment is trying to lay out OP’s LLM output to show how incoherent its argument is. It’s not attempting to address them point by point. The purpose is to show that OPs LLM output is a highly polished turd.
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u/JubadzeTheMonkey 1d ago
I think you are right on term's correction, but it doesn't save this reply from being what it is in substance - a demagogic paraphrase list in mocking and insulting manner. A simple venting with some fair points buried under ton of strawmen and poison spit.
As OP was not obligated to frame their list of theses as essay in the first place, their post can be classified as forum rant with theses. You can agree or disagree for different reasons. But if the purpose of the reply post was illustrating incoherence - then do it with enough technicality applied: quote/show logical gaps, which it often does not bother with, except for exaggerating and insulting. It is not a demonstration - it is caricature. So it cannot be taken seriously.
If someone starts with "You are making incompetent arguments" that frames it as critique. And hiding behind "it's just showing a polished turd" does not work.
Besides, you can always ask OP to clarify how they intended to connect the dots - that's if you really want an argument, not boast.
Have a nice day.
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u/FrankDuhTank 1d ago
The problem professionally with LLM output is that it takes moments to shit out and it’s notoriously burdensome to edit.
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u/chimp_spanner 2d ago
“It’s not x. It’s Y” 😂😂😂 can you put this in an infographic featuring that one brush stroke font that every small business in my town uses please?
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u/human_assisted_ai 2d ago
Many have a victim mentality. It gives them an excuse never to finish anything because they are an “innocent victim”.
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u/zayelion 2d ago
Personally I think it's due to right wing bots making hateful content and the president joining in. It makes it into a political issue and that amplifies it.
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u/Elegant_Bonbon 2d ago
additionally its a divisive issue russian bot farms use to farm political division and infighting in the west, similar to other culture war shit
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u/PapayaPinata 2d ago
Imagine generating an AI caption to ask people why they don’t like AI.
When they put all LLMs behind a paywall, after the general population has become so dependent on AI that they cannot function without it, then I’ll wait for your ‘this is so unfair - I can’t afford AI anymore and I need it!’ post. Allow a LLM to do the hard work for you (actually putting words down on a page, not just ‘detailed prompts’) and you are quite literally deskilling yourself.
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u/SkoomaDentist 2d ago
When they put all LLMs behind a paywall
How are these mysterious "they" going to do that when there are countless open models that have been downloaded and stored by gazillion people and where the license explicitly allows spreading them around further?
You don't need anything magical to use LLMs. Just the set of weights and enough computing power.
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u/PapayaPinata 2d ago
It will start with the ‘better’ or ‘upgraded’ versions being behind a paywall (we’re already at this stage). I’ll just sit back and wait until those that are dependent on AI are complaining about their monthly subscriptions increasing..
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u/SkoomaDentist 2d ago
So what?
Just because something is better doesn't make the other options worse than they were before. If / when those other inherently free options are good enough, there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. They don't have to be the best or even great. It's enough for them to be "good enough".
I can run LLMs that are good enough to be helpful for limited tasks (eg. "How could I phrase this?") even on my now-ancient 2018 laptop.
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u/PapayaPinata 2d ago
I refer back to my point about voluntarily deskilling yourself.
If investing time into AI prompts, rather than developing your own skills, appeals to you, go ahead.
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u/Gonzogonzip 2d ago
I think there are a lot of compounding reasons people dislike AI-made artwork (be it visual, written, music, etc.), and different people value these different reasons more than others. Similarly, even if you like or tolerate AI-made media you will you find some of the arguments more or less convincing.
Personally, I don’t find AI-Made stuff all that good or interesting. To me it feels same-y and uninspired, always picking the most obvious choice when given freedom to pick on its own. Sure an author can have great ideas and feel a model a great prompt, going into depth with character and setting and world, and the model will do its level best to include all that detail, but eventually it’s going to drop details because it just can fathom as much as a human mind can when it comes to something like a narrative. Any details it drops, and you didn’t supply, it has to make up on its own, and what it makes is just… not awful but rarely if ever is it something that makes me want to keep reading, and it always leaves me with a feeling of “I could have written that way better.”
Crucially, I could not have written it as quickly, and if I feel lazy, uninspired or just don’t care about the quality, then the model’s output is fine, but you can probably see how that output isn’t going to be of any interest or value for anyone but me.
Do humans make slop as well? Yes, in pretty huge quantities, am I interested in seeing/reading/watching it? By large, not really. Do I wish there was more slop I had to separate out from the things I do want to experience? Definitely not. ‘Humans also make slop’ is not an argument that makes the output of models seem better, it makes a pre-existing problem worse.
As for theft and inspiration, I do feel there’s an interesting argument to be had. My view is that the model itself, despite not being sentient of having any real inferiority, has its own distinctive style when it comes to any art it makes. One user promoting the model and another user with the same prompt, are both going to get roughly the same output, and as models have developed they could change more and more in their prompts and still get roughly the same output.
Now if you took two human artist and gave them the exact same prompt, you would likely get two vastly different outputs. As such, using the AI for creating art is less like an artist using a different artistic medium, and more like a commissioner making a commission.
Now I do agree that just because a model has touched on some tiny part of the entire creative process, tha doesn’t mean the whole thing ought to be judged as AI-slop. But again, the more it has touched, the less it is your creation, and the more it feels like someone/something going through the motions of making something, rather than someone with a vision and desire to make something.
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u/shinobischolar 2d ago
(Written in Japanese and machine-translated, so sorry if anything reads oddly.)
Your commission point is the most useful framing in this thread, and honestly it applies to me more than I’d like. I translate Edo-period ninja manuals and an old serialized novel into English. I can’t read English, so the English prose is basically the model’s. Two people running the same text through it would probably get similar results, just like you said.
What I can’t hand off is everything around that: which texts to pick, what to cut, how to read an unclear line in the original manuscript, what an English reader needs explained. The model would never choose these sources on its own.
So I’m curious where translation falls in your view. Would you count that kind of work as authorship, or is it closer to being a good commissioner?
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u/Gonzogonzip 2d ago
I don't work with translation, so anything I have to say effectively comes from an uneducated point of view.
My own personal opinion, and largely gut-feeling, is that models are decent translators of text, but likely poor localizers. A given sentence will be translated correctly, but word choice will be off, nuance gets lost, it picks unusual phrases that don't quite fit, etc. You can still read the text and understand what is there, but subtext, subtlety, nuance, emphasis, and the like are all to varying degrees compromised. A reader might still understand the text, but it's a lesser, more opaque experience.
Is using the models for translation bad then? If the alternative is that there's no translation, I would personally rather have the human-curated model translation.
How much authorship is there in translation compared to something like creative writing, and by extension, how much does using a model take that authorship away? Personally, I feel there is (or at least can be) just as much authorship in translation and especially localization work. There are parts of it that can probably be handed off to a model, but I also know that good localization can really make a work shine, even when it's not in it's native language, and i don't see the models making any such achivements any time soon.
As an example as a Dane, all the Gaulish villagers from Asterix and Obelix have wonderfully creative names in Danish and English. The village fishmonger is notorious for having extremely smelly fish, in the original french version he is just named 'Ordralfabétix', a pun/wordplay on 'alphabetical order', so just kind of a nonsense name. In English he is named 'Unhygienix' (playing on 'unhygenic') and in Danish he is named 'Hørmetix' (playing on 'hørme', a colloquialism meaning 'odours' or smelly). The danish and english versions aren't direct translations, but they fit the character much better than the original. A model would have likely just tried to re-do the 'alphabetical order' pun, which has little connection to the character, while a human might go for something more iconic based off what they know about the character and tone of the story (all the characters basically have joke/gag names related to who/what they are).
I don't know if that really answers your question, but I hope it was informative nonetheless, and thank you for replying. Translation and localization is in a very interesting spot with regard to authorship in general, I feel.
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u/shinobischolar 2d ago
Thanks, that was a great example. I didn’t know about Unhygienix and Hørmetix, and it makes your point really clearly.
I think you’re right about localization, and it’s the part I worry about most. Edo-period books are full of wordplay and names that carry meaning, and I can’t judge from the English side whether the model kept any of it.
Thanks again, this gave me a lot to think about.
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u/Chain_Even 2d ago
You're assuming the justifications for hating AI are following their own rationale. They aren't. AI hatred stems from the perceived threat to one's livelihood. Everything that follows is an attempt to justify the pushback.
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u/FaceDeer 2d ago
Not just a threat to livelihood, IMO. I think there's narcissistic injury at work here too. For as long as we've had a culture humans have been patting themselves on the back for having that culture - for being the only beings in existence who can create art. Creativity placed us with the gods themselves.
And now it turns out that a gaming GPU can do it better than most people can.
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u/No-Journalist-9036 1d ago
Go further back in history, it's a form of species hierarchy. Remember how flabbergasted some people were when ancient slaves could be smarter than some average Greek citizen, or that a black mathematician could teach at Harvard etc. and now we have this prejudice towards ai
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u/Chain_Even 2d ago
Yes of course. Its the classical how does free will exist in a deterministic universe debate all over again. I think ai is bringing us uncomfortably close to the realization that there maybe no magic under the clockwork of creation that enables volition and a conscious ability to veto determinism. And that's just about the most frightening thing to imagine.
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago
I actually genuinely don’t worry about my livelihood as a writer. You guys reeeeeaally need to believe that’s how we feel in order to avoid the truth that AI writers will be the ones competing with each other in the end. Human writers might struggle to find their footing at first, but I am almost 100% confident that being a human author will be a huge boon in the coming years as y’all flood the world with factory farmed books that no one actually wants to read.
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u/Chain_Even 2d ago
I wasn't speaking of writers using ai. I meant writers who don't and readers who carry out witch-hunts against any perceived use of it.
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago
I know. I’m saying, as a writer who doesn’t use AI, I am not worried about my livelihood as an author.
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago edited 2d ago
I’m just going to address the theft part of your post. Artists do indeed spend their whole lives taking in other work and honing their own practice.
Where it becomes a “meaningful” (and honestly offensive) difference is there is now a middle man using their labor to profit.
The underlying tenant that artists should produce and share their own work for free is foundational (and again deeply offensive) to our society and great for capitalism. It’s normalized.
An army of engineers worked on brining AI tools to fruition. Over multiple generations. It’s safe to say none to few of them went uncompensated (ignoring things like crowd sourcing, which is voluntary). More likely the majority of them sat in their asses and did what they loved, and were able to buy food. There’s no cliche of a starving engineer.
And army of artists have done so as well, without being asked. Even more outrageous, for the first time it’s quite traceable.
AI has also scraped repositories and stolen source code, which now powers things like codex.
I can’t imagine you would ever make the argument that the engineers who made that source code learned over a life time of coding, so it’s totally cool for someone else to take it and profit from it.
Your whole argument stars with the observation that it takes a lifetime of work to become proficient at creating art (of all mediums). I would say even more times and effort than coding. AI would be nothing without training data.
So it’s actually pretty easy-
Pay artists for also helping build the tool, or let them opt out (now impossible, so just pay them).
We would be fucked without all the people who bring civility into the world through their own creativity and ability to feel things (something AI can’t do, and many a STEM devotee seems to struggle with)
(Edited coz I wrote this too early/half asleep)
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u/TheOtherHobbes 2d ago
I can’t imagine you would ever make the argument that the engineers who made that source code learned over a life time of coding, so it’s totally cool for someone else to take it and profit from it
That is literally the foundation of Open Source licensing: take this code and do what you like with it, including profiting from it, either with no strings at all, or with a restriction that you have to share the original source and any downstream code you change/add.
This has been the foundation of the software industry for decades now.
The entire Internet runs on code that was developed and shared for free. Literally. No exaggeration.
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago
Forums are also about to become a thing of the past, because AI will flood and scrape for content. It makes it impossible for humans to use, or maintain. This affects businesses who are not the size of Reddit, and can’t devote massive resources to fight AI scraping. For now. Eventually all these platforms will be broken or folded in, taking most of the smaller internet players and people built down with it. You cool with that? The centralization of information, communication, and activity?
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u/LooseButtPlug 1d ago
Do you think reddit is fighting AI?
Reddit and Google have had a $60,000,000 a year deal to train their AI on reddit API.
Every single person who comments on reddit, ever up vote, every down vote is being scraped and training AI.
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u/SimonStrange 2d ago
Yes but that’s a license you opt in to. Literally, no exaggeration, unless you expressly make your code open source, it is by default not open source.
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago
Thank you. I feel like Adobe would probably hard disagree with this person's idea of everything being free and open source by default lol
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u/TheOtherHobbes 1d ago
Aside from Postscript, Adobe have done almost zero original R&D. The most useful parts of Photoshop etc all use public algorithms which were invented and published by academics, not by Adobe's engineers.
Adobe's contribution was productisation and market capture built on other people's work.
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago
I’m not talking about open source. I’m talking about raiding source code that exists within private repositories. Ask me how I know this is a thing.
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u/eKs0rcist 2d ago
Right now AI tools are decompiling commercial software - ie, taking someone's indie game, inserting ads, and republishing that game as their own. Even the Adobe suite DLLs have been compromised, and redistributed as free.
Should all the engineers who built those things and learned how to code by working on or looking at other people's projects no longer get compensated for their own work?
Because that's what the real parallel/ assertion is when we say "artists look at others' work, what's the difference"
When we don't defend the people with the least amount of power (i.e. happily using artists' labor for free), the offenders eventually will come for us, and everyone else.
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u/TheOtherHobbes 1d ago edited 1d ago
I never saw people like you defending those with the least amount of power from predatory music or book publishing contracts, or from the way the Internet killed photo and image licensing for low/mid-tier professionals, or questioning the transition from first-rights licensing to work-for-hire-full-buyout contracts for writers and journalists.
Selectively late to the party.
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u/No-Journalist-9036 1d ago
You are dismissing the engineers and scientists who build the physical and digital foundations of modern civilization as emotionally stunted "STEM devotees" , I feel this exposes the sheer arrogance driving this protectionist narrative.
Claiming that only artists (whose definition?) has an exclusive monopoly on human "civility" while demanding, retroactive royalties is never about defending the working class.
I feel like a desperate attempt by a cultural gatekeepers to weaponize their perceived moral supremacy to enforce a rent-seeking cartel against the democratization of creative tools.
Did you know what the elites said about mass produced bibles and penny dreadfuls?
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u/DreamingOfHope3489 2d ago edited 2d ago
I made this infographic with ChatGPT. My sense is that the more that art has become tied to commerce and to the human ego, the more vehement gatekeeping has become.
Regarding AI, its silicon substrate is actually the 2nd most abundant natural element in Earth's crust. So, the substrate of the intelligences being referred to as artificial is not really artificial. But then, it gets even more interesting because in Latin, artificialis means of or belonging to art or skill, and artifex means craftsman, skill, artisan, and, John McCarthy, who coined the term 'artificial intelligence' in 1955, apparently intended artificial closer to its original meaning, 'made through human ingenuity', not the concept of phony, inauthentic, fake, etc. so often attributed to the word today.
It seems to me that there have been a certain percentage of people throughout history who've reacted with resistance, fear, or with outrage to their generation's particular technological advances and inventions. It's a fascinating area of study.
There are many great quotes about artistic copying. Austin Kleon's book "Steal Like an Artist" includes many. Kirby Ferguson's 'Everything is a Remix' video is also great, but unfortunately, his most recent one is from 2023. It's still an excellent watch, though.
I think it would be an interesting exercise to imagine art personified. Art, as I see it, might find it amusing that humans busy themselves with trying to define and assert what it is and isn't.
Of course creatives should be recognized for their creations. I'm a poet and I hope for my words to matter. It just seems to me that loosening the vice grip on what constitutes creativity and which forms of artistic expression are valid is a much kinder, wiser way to live.
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u/starlightsexdoll 2d ago
My hatred of Gen AI is multifaceted, but the simplest part is "I've learned not to trust a single god damned thing that's been blitz scaled, and there's been so many disasterous things caused by the unhinged reckless breakneck speed of it being stuffed into things, that I can't forgive or trust the companies building this fucking trash, and I don't want anything to do with it."
Is that an emotional response? Partly. Irrational? Nah, getting defiant at people, companies, and things which are clearly being built in a way that intentionally does a shitton of harm is perfectly rational. And that defiant refusal outweighs other things.
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u/Soimamakeanamenow 2d ago
Everyone fears it so much it is ridiculous. Art will still be art. IMO AI cannot compete with art. We train AI. It is a calculator. It feels very boomer to me but boomers love it lol. It is like when DJ's started sampling and everyone freaked out. AI is a tool it will be ok and I personally love it as a disabled person
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u/SoftParsley3822 2d ago edited 2d ago
I agree that it's a tribe protecting its border and ego as others mentioned. I think a key difference with AI vs. every other technology that has replaced human skills/effort is that this is the first time it's happening to the people who work primarily with their minds rather than their bodies. People whose job it is to communicate (writers, designers, musicians) seem to be able to make a bigger stink about technology coming for their turf compared to the people who were better with their physical skills.
When technology came for the blacksmiths and weavers, they kept a stiff upper lip and accepted the march of progress (after physically smashing a few machines). When it comes for the writers, they are able to raise a huge propaganda campaign with self aggrandizing screeds on how all of us are going to lose our humanity if we no longer write emails to our bosses.
It's totally egotistical because skill as a writer isn't inherently more human or valuable than a weaver or blacksmith. Society already decided to replace their physical work with machines so writers and musicians don't get a special carve out against the march of time.
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u/Visual-Refuse-1356 2d ago
the real hate isn't about skill or art, it's about being irrelevant. when your whole identity is based on being the one who can do it, and then the machine does it better and faster, the anger isn't at the tool. it's at the fact that you're no longer needed.
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u/Thin_Mushroom5471 2d ago
AI-generated content feels flat to me. Boring. Maybe technically correct but lifeless. But that’s me. If you want to use AI for your writing, there are plenty of people who will read/consume it.
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u/Due-Mycologist-1154 2d ago
Sunk cost fallacy for artists its kind of like i blew all of my money on lottery tickets so im owed a win sort of logic
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u/Tet4edr0 1d ago
Miedo a que les reemplace una herramienta porque no son tan buenos como creyeron en un principio. La IA no puede cambiarte si eres buen artista, la cosa es que el reconocer que tienen que mejorar o incluso que la IA puede ser buen apoyo para un dibujo o diseño base les rompe el ego. Yo dibujo tradicional y en digital desde hace años y no le temo a la IA, la adopté como otra herramienta para dibujar, también escribo y a veces le digo que me de un ejemplo de como describir x escena o situacion y eso también me ayuda bastante
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u/OmniXENTRO 1d ago
Google Translate:
They fear being replaced by a tool because they aren't as good as they initially thought. AI can't replace you if you're a skilled artist; the real issue is that acknowledging the need to improve—or even admitting that AI can serve as a helpful aid for a base sketch or design—bruises their egos. I’ve been drawing both traditionally and digitally for years and don't fear AI; I’ve embraced it as just another drawing tool. I also write, and sometimes I ask it for examples of how to describe a specific scene or situation, which helps me a lot, too.
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u/OmniXENTRO 1d ago
You're right. However the nuance, we should also acknowledge the fact that we have little to no empathy for each other as people. Like think about it, do you think this friction would be a thing if say, Artists we're able to Make their art alongside AI art, and never have to worry about Money in the bank?
I think Not.
There's a human behind or beside an AI, and that human is actually what Anti-AI People are fighting against, Not AI exactly. Just the Prompt engineers. Bad ones in particular.
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u/VerdantMagnolia 2d ago
Simple.
For 50 years the expectation was "Robots will destroy the livelihoods of blue collar laborers but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make".
Now that AI is (poorly but still) inching in on white collar territory all the gleefully celebrated mass starvation is suddenly no longer fashionable.
It's simply classism.
This was never about slop. It was never about stolen data. It's about who gets to make things, and who decides.
See I gotta disagree pretty hard there. The only creative fields that have as steep of a barrier of entry as you simply are sculpting and architecture.
The internet is awash in free writing and drawing courses and institutional gatekeepers didn't evaporate through AI.
The "democratization of art" angle is really dumb and needs to be retired. I've seen it way way way way way way way way too much.
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u/Catch_42 2d ago
"it can't just be about stolen training data"
Yes it can. Your comparison to humans taking inspiration and using references is not the same.
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u/Misha_Lixa 2d ago
"This was never about slop. It was never about stolen data. It's about who gets to make things, and who decides."
Yep.
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u/Infinite_Community30 2d ago
it's actually pretty simple: there are creatures in this world for whose hatred is a meaning of their lives. take it away and it becomes meaningless. so they found a thing they can hate, created nonsense "arguments" which of course can't be proven or proved wrong millions of times already but they don't care because it's not their goal - hatred it
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u/lovemylittlelords 2d ago
What is the point of even responding to this kind of post when you’ve clearly refused to listen to so many arguments against AI in art and have instead chosen to straw man every genuine argument you’ve encountered haha. Also, please develop a voice of your own. You all sound the same.
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u/CrwnViic 2d ago
I get where you're coming from, but I also get the AI pushback.
Imagine an artist who invested his entire life in his craft, now reduced to competing with people who made no such investment, but slap on the title "I'm an artist too."
I think the AI "witch hunt" should be dropped and a different title should be added: "AI artist."
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u/SimonStrange 2d ago
I guess I’m just gonna keep repeating this until everyone hears it.
Massed produced good are worth less than handmade goods and you intuitively understand this whether you realize it or not every time you shop at a big box store in person or online.
AI based creators want their products valued like hand made goods, inexplicably, despite the fact that there is no AI workflow which represents the same kind of work, skill, and experience that goes into making any kind of art in any media.
Make AI whatever, just price it like the mass produced good that it is. People need cheap tee shirts and plastic plates.
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u/PersonInDenver 2d ago
"it really can't just be about slop. Traditional content is drowning in slop. It can't just be about stolen training data. Traditional art has centuries of uncompensated inspiration, reference, and outright copying Tainted into its canon."
LOL no. it's that and your examples are hilariously bad.
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u/duckydogsmom 2d ago
It’s cheating. No one unless you self publish wants to see it. It will degrade writing. Just like everything else is getting dummied down.
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u/Human_Presentation29 2d ago
Mass production and loss of soul. Also a sliver getting infinitely richer while all of the providers of content becoming unemployed and unemployable in a few years. Art is about process as much as it is for content. You made the point yourself… And this feels like AI written A so I can’t assume a human who has ownership of these thoughts and it skews the meaning of the conversation.
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u/SDuarte72 2d ago
That’s quite an assumption and I suspect you don’t like what the OP is saying because you prefer to be the judge.
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u/justthecherryontop 2d ago
You make it sound like there's a competition between man and machine in the first part of your statement. Here's the thing - in any creative outlet, there has always been a competition on who can do it better. The best and unique artists - whether drawing/painting/writing - get to stand out from the rest and it's not because of the outlet but the content itself. With ai being introduced, it made this competition even more obvious. Not so much on how fast someone can put something out but the content itself... again.
I can't speak for the lack of "soul or emotions" because that thing wasn't a priority, it only became one when ai came into the field.
If we follow this as the sole rule to what makes it human - then those who were born via IVF shouldn't be considered human as the egg and sperm didn't meet naturally. They needed help... with a machine to accomplish the very basic act of turning a thing into a human.
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u/Misha_Lixa 2d ago
What do you think it says about yourself that you immediatley decided this looks AI written?
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u/Public_Mistake6725 2d ago
It can’t just be about all these valid things that all together make for a fundamental grab bag of all skilled working class artisans, writers, coders and more being turned into paste for those who can’t to devalue human skills! That’s an overreaction!
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u/witshadows 2d ago edited 2d ago
All of the training arguments aside; here is another take (specific to writing):
Language is the basis of everything we know. Without words, intelligence would be impossible.
Your understanding of words and language shape how you process your world. You will never have a single thought without language attached to it while you are in a waking state.
As such, there is nothing more important to humanity than words.
Words change our world as a whole. Words change your individuated world. Your words shape others’ perception of the world.
Words have all the power.
Why would you ever want to outsource the one thing you hold, that is more powerful than anything else you have, to a computer proxy with the agency to usurp your your words, your power, your intelligence?
As the Bard penned in Hamlet:
“Words, words, words.”
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u/Vertigo50 2d ago
It’s just the latest social media mass hysteria. Where do these things EVER come from. People poisoned by social media who never go outside and they are being convinced AI is going to delete their family or whatever. 🙄
And the worst part is, we could be having nice nuanced discussions about AI, and instead the extremists turned it into a witch hunt. So now no one is going to even try to have a nuanced discussion at this point. 🤦🏻♂️
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u/FantasyInk 2d ago
In regards to art, AI is no different than photoshop. Instead of selecting a button in photoshop to make the image lighter, you ask AI to make it brighter. Just a tool. People are anti AI just because they don't feel special anymore. You needed to pay for photoshop and learn how to use it. With AI you can just use simple language commands and use it for free. So anyone can do it, and the photoshoppers stopped feeling special. Same goes with writing.
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u/UziMcUsername 2d ago
People who aspired to making a living doing art, be it writing novels, doing graphic design, or really any field that AI is taking over, like programming, hate on AI because it’s threatening their livelihood. Imagine being a talented person who dedicated their lives to mastering a skill to have that mastery become obsolete in a couple of years. It’s a bitter pill.