Quote o' the Day: Joanna Maciejewska

"You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction. I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

—Author Joanna Maciejewska

I think AI is the worst thing ever to happen to art. Well, actually I think it's the worst thing to ever happen to humanity, but I'll settle for saying just "art."

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

[A tale of two Marks —Ed.]:

Mark Sampson: "Exactly so."

Mark Rouleau (partial comment): "Nonsense. I use AI all the time in photography and it has been a godsend."

[Read the full comment from Mark R. in the main Comments section. —Ed.]

Ed Hawco: "I would flip it around and say humanity is the worst thing that ever happened to AI. After all, AI has some very useful applications, such as a woman with an AI-enabled prosthetic arm that I read about recently, where the AI 'learns' how she prefers to use it. Or the biomedical labs that are using AI to sequence through vast quantities of DNA and chromosome data to find patterns for detecting and treating diseases. No, the problem is people who want to cash in quickly by using it for 'generative' applications. Those writing and imaging applications attract big money without ever considering how they devalue creativity and indeed humanity by making things like learning, skills, and talent irrelevant."

Albert Smith: "Ironic timing...this article came up today in my newsfeeds. Photographer posted a photo in a contest for A.I. photography and placed. He was disqualified after they found out the photo was a real image, not A.I."

Mike replies: Ha! That's a delightful counterpoint, it really is.

PaulW: "Joanna's post sums up my feelings perfectly. Thanks for posting that. For a musical perspective, have a look at Rick Beato's YouTube channel, especially his latest post."

Mike replies: That very video was how I found out about Joanna's quotation! Someone left it in a comment there.

Comments

[Peter Wright]

Unfortunately, I think you are right – about the impact on humanity that is. I found watching the super slick Apple video yesterday to be somewhat depressing. Now it appears that not only will computers be sending me emails (as they do now of course), but the content will have been written by computers as well. My computers will then read these emails and tell me what to do. How long before computers become smart enough to realize that humans are irrelevant and do away with us?

[Graeme Scott]

Brilliant.

Completely agree.

[s.wolters]

In the nineteenth century some people thought that photography was the worst thing ever happened to art. Let’s keep an open mind, but so far I haven’t seen any AI product that moved me.

[Yonatan Katznelson]

The problem with AI is the same as with all technological advances – humans are very clever when it comes to making tools, but not particularly wise about how we use them.

[Andrew L]

The real reason that AI is so focused on art and writing is because its application is so limited that this is all its creators have been able to successfully conspicuously market. It's all about the marketing, creating a product that people will buy, and the less flashy, nuts-and-bolts applications for AI won't drum up cash at the same speed. Tech companies have such an incredibly large appetite for income in order to not only profit but continue making the field an attractive one for workers.

[Mark Sampson]

Exactly so.

[Mark Rouleau]

Nonsense. I use AI all the time in photography and it has been a godsend. I can remove noise with a click of a button. I can remove distracting objects with another click. I can resize old photos from my 3 megapixel camera so I can print them. I can resharpen and deblur previously hopeless photos.

The problem isn't AI. The problem is that we are "storming" stage of new technology, so of course it is being misused and abused. The storming will settle and we will (I hope) discover that we have better tools that will save us more time during editing.

[Stan B.]

Truth is, any new gizmo meant to save us from the time and drudgery of needless work, just bestows us with more time for the drudgery of yet more work.

And while I ain't denying the outright attack that AI can be, will be, and is to all things good and artistic- as per usual, someone, somewhere will be able to do something good and creative with it, as witnessed in what I can only describe as the closet simulation to an actual dream sequence ever recorded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0EDV1HGbrc

[Robert Roaldi]

So an employer can fire a human and replace them with bot instead.

But if an employee programs a bot to do his/her job, will the employer be happy to keep paying that employee?

[Keith B]

My theory: Commercial art, low-grade amateur (in the worst sense) art will become even more distinguishable from art made by an actual person. Even the quality of Motel Seascapes and Dogs Playing Cards may decline...after all, an actual person painted those.

[Jeff1000]

I find myself looking over my shoulder wondering if anything I create will be suspected of being AI. That very thought alone is devastating to a creative person. It seems to me that AI is nothing less than a direct attack on the artist, the individual, a sort of technological communism.

[Dogman]

I believe there is enough artificial intelligence running the world today without throwing technology into the mix.

[Tom Burke]

Worse than the Black Death? Or the Holocaust? (Just to mention two catastrophes.) Surely not!

I understand that AI presents challenges and will bring change, but so do lots of things. We’ll cope.

[Dennis]

great quote, she's right! btw we're stuck with it now, just like twitter.

[Dan Khong]

Why would anyone in his right mind would want to give up good natural God given intelligence and intellect for AI?

[Speed]

At best, critics viewed photography as a useful tool for painters to record scenes that they may later more artfully render with their brushes.

JSTOR -- 1856

[William Lewis]

Eh, I seem to recall reading all the doom & gloom from the painters when that new fangled daguerreotypes came on the scene.

And, probably apocryphal but the basic idea is sound for our purpose, before that the weavers shoving their wooden shoes known as sabots into the new power looms and giving us the word "sabotage"...

The shiny new marvelous toy will be chugging up behind no matter where we look for it or not. But as we pass it down to our kids and grandkids we'll all figure out how to use it eventually as a tool.

Just as some of us are still figuring out how use a camera and others of us are still figuring out how to put oil paint on canvass.

[Steve Biro]

While AI shows great promise in areas of medical research, weather forecasting and more, the potential for abuse is infinite.

If you think social media has been corrosive to our society, trying amping that up by an order of magnitude. That’s AI. People soon won’t be able to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

In the meantime, what the tech companies are trying to ram down our throats right now is a collection of gee-whiz parlor tricks. But the financial markets are demanding it. So, ready or not, that’s what we’ll get.

[Kye Wood]

A polarised western population.
A climate and global ecosystem heading to collapse.
Not a single corporation that isn't sociopathic.
Insider trading...

The macro is doomfull.

But the micro is almost changeless. Face to face, people are pretty decent. Funny isn't it?

[Nick Depree]

I can't see AI as anything except automated plagiarism, when it comes to any art-adjacent uses.

[BG]

I think 20 or 40 years from now, historians and anthropologists will conclude that unregulated social media, where companies could specifically direct articles/propaganda/advertisements to individuals based on stolen private data, was the most damaging factor in the early internet era and early 21st century. The danger to children is unmeasurable. The danger to the American republic is unmeasurable.

[Christian]

Very good quote and I totally agree!

But I would say that there is an easy explanation: it is much easier to create an AI that produces something that looks like art and writing than to create one that produces something that looks like clean laundry and dishes!

[Bob Johnston]

I don't think that AI, as it is today and the conceivable future at any rate, is the threat that people think it is. It's hugely over hyped. It does not have the equivalent of human creativity or imagination and it certainly does not have consciousness. Artists are already using it as a tool, which is all it is. Real photography will become stronger and sought after, simply because it is real. The totally constructed images that win awards in amateur exhibitions and which are not really photography but another form of art will become passé and thank goodness for that.

[s.wolters]

The problem isn't that AI produces art at a human level, but that humans produces art at AI level in an astonishing amount.

[Stephen J]

Oh dear, I forgot my point, I think that AI might prove to be a good tool for gathering information, but to complete a document, there is nothing like the human touch, and never will be.

AI is not, and never will be sentient, but may turn out to be a useful aide memoir.

[Sean]

Doing the ironing is infinitely more complex for a machine than knocking up a photorealistic scene or drafting a kid's essay. It’s when those capabilities merge and our “assistance” begins to feel above doing the ironing that we should start looking for Michael Connors

[Sean]

Erm…Assistants ( total AI fail )

[Rich]

Have to disagree here, the worst thing to ever happen to humanity was social media. Temperamentally, we’re not civilised enough to handle it. AI may well end up being the second worst thing to happen to humanity.

[Speed]

We already have machines to do our laundry and dishes. What Joanna wants is machines that put the dishes and laundry in drawers and cupboards and closets.

Joanna needs two dishwashers -- one for the dirty dishes and one for the clean. Same with the washer-drier.

Next Problem?

[E.]

Absolutely. We haven't learnt to use natural intelligence (NI) yet but we're already pushing forward to do without it.
The paradox is that we still exist as species, so maybe we needed just this little push to let the Universe alone for good.

[Stephen J]

Not having heard of her, I imagined a grumpy old woman.

Imagine my surprise.

Not only that, she has Irish parentage, land of the poets.

It is one of my favourite places, but then I am biased, my good lady comes from Na Gorta Dubha (Gortadoo, Co. Kerry).

It is an unusual place, the village is arranged in a circle and is very rural, there is a very small shop, and there are a few one room cottages and a couple of barns, and you can walk to the sea, to fish or to collect good seaweed.

Just off the coast there are some islands, the biggest of which is the Great Blasket, which is where her mother was born. In fact the house where she was born on that island is now the island shop and tourist office.

On a sunny day, the place is serene, but it can be the wildest place on earth when a storm whips up, which is not infrequent. It is the furthest west point of Europe, next stop America.

https://dingle-peninsula.ie/newsite/11-explore-the-dingle-peninsula/blasket-islands-na-blascaodai/53-the-blasket-islands-history-and-heritage.html

Anyway, I digress, Ms. Maciejewska is IMO correct, although AI can be quite good as a note taker used prior to creating an original piece.

BTW; isn’t art and humanity an immutable condition? You can’t have the first without the second and vice versa. Although I understand there are some distant relatives like Orang-utans and Bush Babies that use some basic tools.

[David Brown]

If only the art of science fiction had warned us.

[Collin J Örthner]

I have thought for some time that social media was the worst thing to happen to humanity, now add AI into the mix........

[John Krumm]

I think AI will be hit and miss for some time. Just yesterday I sent out an email for a zoom meeting and the suggested subject was perfect, so why not? Done right, AI might fulfill the promise of computers, to make life easier so we can have more fun. Done wrong, it just recycles bad art more quickly than the worst Hollywood studio can.

[Kirk]

I remember hearing the same thing about personal computers but now even old, cantankerous, crusty guys in house slippers routinely start their days reading the news online, checking their stocks, emailing their friends and paying their bills all at a computer keyboard. Same with smart phones. A.I. will change some stuff while everything else stays the same.

Change is nearly always scary. The worst case scenarios rarely ever come true.

And for savvy investors A.I. is just another product to invest in.

I would have mailed this to you on paper but I couldn't find a stamp...

[Really? I never heard that about personal computers or smartphones. I'm hearing it about about EV's, but that's the oil and gas industry getting AI to do their dirty work for them. --Mike]

[Kirk]

For early adopters the PC "revolution" came complete with endless harangues about jobs being taken away from humans, wholesale. Heard it all the time in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Ditto with smart phones. But then again I live in a city with early, early adopters so we hear, I think, different messages.

The mantra for computers was always "productivity." Which most vulnerable workers translated as = "There goes my job."

[Rick in CO]

Artificial Intelligence? Who writes the "AI" code?

[Omer]

As the Terminator(Arnold Schwarzenegger) says; relax!

[Bruce Vermeychuk]

In fact, the art of science fiction did warn us. “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert A. Heinlein features a self-aware computer leading a revolution. The degree of prescience is actually scary. We were warned.

[Hank]

A new technology that promises so many positives, and also negatives at the same time. Nothing new.
Alfred Nobel invented dynamite.

[Patrick Dodds]

All these people who believe in the Ghost in the Machine and say that AI will never be conscious, never be sentient, can never be creative: I'd love for them to clearly outline the case for the existence of a human soul. Absent this, there isn't really anything to suggest that creative intelligence cannot exist on a silicon substrate.

[Rob de Loe]

AI brings some tools to image editing software that many find helpful. However, I think it also brings major downsides that are nothing but bad news for photography.

If you make photographs that resemble what someone can make with Stable Diffusion or other GenAI tools today using simple text prompts, your photographic future is not bright.

https://www.robdeloephotography.com/Pages/Generative-AIGenerative-AI

[Stan B.]

Warning received Loud and Clear!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/edward-snowden-releases-new-message-you-have-been-warned/ar-BB1ofruA?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=67e832dd4f4545e58e01deaae1881f92&ei=56#comments

[Luke]

I watched Beato's video, and thought "he's complaining about the wrong thing".

And sure enough, third comment down, someone says "Problem is most pop music has already sounded like its made by robots for years".

AI can't improve on the crap it's fed.