This artist is passionately anti-a.i.
No Generative a.i. services or LLM’s were used in the production of anything in this portfolio
Generative A.I. is a poison that must be rejected by artists and citizens, and I am not too polite to tell you that even former or current artists using it as consciously as they possibly can should and must be shunned and shamed for indulging the anti-humanist image engine. GenAI is capable of producing work that, in a vacuum, would be considered “good.” That is not and has never been the issue. It is the use of it that is condemnable, not the output – it is unethical at its core.
This page is far from comprehensive, and is not intended to be a manifesto, per se, but…
Much of this is tied directly to the data centers required to run these systems, which are ruining economies, communities, and the environment. There is also the large-scale theft of copyrighted works which were used to train generative models, meaning that use of such models is fundamentally based on plagiarism. There is also the fact that the mass adoption of AI is a grift meant to siphon massive amounts of wealth from the lower classes to the uber-rich – AI is wildly unprofitable, but the astronomical costs are being and increasingly will be paid by working class people, plunging us into mass poverty once the bubble pops and the already-ailing US economy collapses, bringing the world economy down with it.
Yet still, there lies beyond that an even graver threat when the billionaires and trillionaires enslave the lower classes into a new society of techno-feudalism. AI already serves the fascist American takeover as a propaganda machine and by simply reducing our collective capacity for critical thought. There is nothing that fascists hate more than the truth. The truth does not serve them, and they thrive by twisting and obscuring the truth until the average person cannot be sure what is real and are thus easily swayed by the strongest voice declaring what is. The rise and spread of AI has eroded our ability and confidence to identify what is real and what is fake. This means that people are more inclined to believe disinformation and more able to dismiss true information as fake. The fascist thrives in this environment, because it gives people permission to assert a reality of their design by force. Might makes right, in this context, not only in the sense of morals, but of factuality.
We, as citizens of the world, have a duty to protect humanity from fascism and a post-truth society by roundly rejecting AI, its use, its development, the construction of its infrastructure, and its acceptance in society.
What is and isn’t a.i.
Since we live in a time when tech oligarchs are pushing AI with everything they have, and many more are trying to ride the hype train, AI is allegedly in everything. Some of these services are LLM-based, if not merely a thin coat of paint over ChatGPT, but many companies are using the term “AI” exactly as they did with the term “Smart” in the 2010s. This is to say that it means next to nothing, but most often labels tools that are algorithmic in nature. To be clear, no artificial form of true intelligence has yet been created. None of it is actual AI, and thus anything can be marketed as AI.
It is typically unclear how such tools use “artificial intelligence,” whether an “artificial intelligence” helped create their algorithms, or whether they benefitted from the same theft of artist work that genAI systems have. All this is to say that I do sometimes use tools that are labeled “AI,” such as the automatic voice isolator and “Magic Mask” in DaVinci Resolve. If I discover that these tools were created unethically, I will cease, but, as of now, I am operating under the assumption that they have little in common with ChatGPT, Midjourney, OpenAI, et al.
There is also, I think, a delineation to be made with stable diffusion or similar models that run on an artist’s own workstation. Such setups do not contribute to the outlandish power consumption of data centers, and the power they do use is at least paid for by the user (not subsidized non-consensually by society). They might also employ more ethical training practices, potentially using only first-party content, if the artist has enough of their own art to feed it. This is admittedly a gray area. I do not have strong feelings about artists operating in such a capacity. That said, I am not concerned with shielding them from flak thrown at genAI generally. The fight is too important to worry about such edge cases. They do not need AI to live or work, and I would gladly throw their hobby under the bus to save actual lives – their own included.
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A word on NFT’s
This artist is also against the production of art into NFT’s on ethical grounds due primarily to the inordinate amount of electricity required. They are also, it should be noted, dumb, and accomplish nothing that could not be done by other means. The concept of owning a digital work in the same way one owns a physical work is not inherently bad, and offers a way for artists working in non-traditional mediums to make high-dollar sales to collectors the way traditional artists do. The block-chain method, however, is a silly solution that offers collectors little more than a URL, and seems to have only gained popularity because of its usefulness in grifting and money laundering.
If and when I produce a purely digital work that I wish to sell, I have a simpler concept that should appeal to any collector who is interested in art itself, (not an art-based ponzi scheme), and who wants to treat it like a gallery or museum would. It involves a legal contract, the original digital files, and – optionally – a physical installation designed by the artist to display the work.
If you see anything in this portfolio that is not already for sale that you would like to own the digital rights to, you may contact me about it with an offer.