In the wake of OpenAI announcing their latest and greatest GPT-4 model, I realized what bugs me the most about AI culture. It's not the technologies we're calling "AI" themselves, which I think are occasionally exciting and frequently very fun. (I find it less exciting than most people seem to, but I value fun more anyway.) No: the thing that bugs me about AI is the way that its evangelists talk about it.
It's not the breathless tone of voice they use, or the fact that some of them seem to think that AI genuinely thinks for itself—though I do find the latter endlessly irritating. The part that disturbs me is what they seem to view the purpose of AI as. Because they act as if AI is a font of endless content: not creativity, but content. It is the ultimate buffet, capable of feeding them whatever they hunger for. And it's clear that, for many of them, that's the end-all be-all of any so-called creative act: to cater to themselves endlessly, to offer themselves whatever they feel like feeding on.
The goal isn't even to offer up the things AI makes for them outwardly, as if they're the "artists" steering AI to create meaningful material. The goal is just to consume, endlessly, without having to deal with the quirks and foibles of other human beings. To cut out the "middleman," so to speak, between themselves and the things they consume.
That's not a new impulse. (Very little about AI culture is new.) The era of the "individual," whether you pin its start on the youth culture rebellions of the 60s or on the shark-eat-shark mentality of 80s Reaganism and Thatcherism, has relentlessly pursued the dream of individual satiation. And the modern digital age has made this gluttonous self-centeredness extraordinarily clear: every pursuit, whether it's dating or reading the news or (ironically) enlightenment and well-being, has been distilled down to an app model where you, the user, are at the center of the universe. Everything is catered to you, adjusted for your pleasure, presented as if all that matters in the world is what you want—and as if other people are just an irritation to be endured.
Stewart Lee, in his show Content Provider—which is so nakedly about the dehumanization of culture that its "set" is just an ocean of other comedians' bargain-bin DVDs—does a bit about the devaluation of BDSM in contemporary society. His grandparents, he says, had to work for their kinky sex. They had to sneak out to farms and steal burlap potato sacks in the dead of night, so they could carve holes in them and use them for gimp masks. The "potato sack sex mask," as Lee puts it, serves as his stand-in for another era: one where things were worse in many ways, but where people had to commit to the things they cared about, and defined themselves partly by the things they felt were worth inconveniencing themselves for.
"'I'm really into BDSM,'" he says, mimicking a caricature of a modern couple. "'Since when?' 'Oh, since about last night at ten.'"
On the one hand, it's maybe neat that you can "explore" "BDSM" with a couple of impulse-clicks on Amazon. On the other, it's a fundamentally reductive act, one that turns a culture and a practice and a set of values into yet another kind of consumption. And it doesn't end with kink: dating sites like Tinder literally reduce the dating pool to a tasting menu, one that encourages viewing other people as consumable goods. Dating and sex are all-too-often reduced to onanism: we start to view other people, not as opportunities to escape the existential prison of the insular self, but as yet another kind of curated content.
Is it any wonder that people wind up treating each other the same way they treat the media they consume? Gamer culture, in which reviewers are stalked and harassed for giving a AAA game an 8/10 instead of a perfect 10, dovetails neatly with incel culture, whose fundamental issue with women is that they're allowed to deny men sex. On the younger progressive left, individuals and content alike are declared "toxic" for holding mildly disagreeable opinions; keeping those people in your life or harboring affection for those things becomes proof that you, in turn, are likely toxic and ought to be excised. I, the individual, become the ultimate barometer for the rest of the world; my preferences and feelings aren't whims, they're ironclad and resolute, and it's an injustice when the world fails to perfectly cater to me.
(To be clear, when I loop the "younger progressive left" into this, I'm talking about phenomena like Your Fave is Problematic, rather than about when bigotry is rightly criticized and called out for being dangerous. But bigotry is itself a monstrously insular and self-centered phenomenon: the act of being so obsessed with yourself, and so unable to bear the world deviating from you you you, that you label anyone different from you deviant and consider it a justice when terrible things are done to "correct" the "problem" of their existence.)
Is it any wonder, then, that AI zealots were excitedly advocating the possibility that AI would replace porn? Or that some of them have turned to AI chatbots as a substitute for having relationships? This is the end goal of individualism, the final dream of consumerism, the vision that AI advocates are seemingly so breathless over: the elimination of the other person. The dream of a world in which other people are finally unnecessary, so you can live in a world made up of only you.
When people talk about AI replacing composers and musicians, writers and poets, painters and visual artists, programmers and code, they're talking about doing away with people. It's not enough to reduce the world to content farms, algorithmically-targeted products, and TV shows that are literally designed around what Netflix's data tells them will addict people. It's not enough to envision so-called "AI technology" as a tool that could simplify creative processes, removing monotonous drudge work to let artists focus on the parts that really matter. The dream is replacement—because the thought of life involving other people, the thought of a "culture" that you have to particulate in, is unbearable. (And it's no surprise that this worldview makes a perfect breeding ground for white supremacy, violent misogyny, and whatever TERFy nonsense J.K. Rowling and Dave Chappelle keep yammering on about.)
Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to get to watch Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, a seven-and-a-half-hour-long black-and-white film about misfortune that besets a desolate Hungarian village. I've had fun with the horror acquaintances feel at the prospect of such a movie, and it is a little humorous just how unappealing that thumbnail description of the movie makes it seem, but the honest truth is that Sátántangó was a shockingly pleasant, enjoyable, and easy-to-watch film. It moved slowly and intelligently; the slowness made for an extremely relaxing experience, and the intelligence made it engaging all the way through. I found it easier to watch than I've found some films a quarter of its length—and much easier to watch than the hour-long first episodes of certain TV series.
It's hard to explain, and I didn't understand it until I watched it myself... but that's exactly why I went to go see it. I knew I didn't understand, and I knew that a lot of people who'd had that experience did find it valuable and weirdly pleasant, so I went in and let the movie teach me how to watch it. That, in a nutshell, is what I find most valuable about art: not its pleasantness or entertainment value, not even just its sheer craft, but those moments when I grapple with something and discover a new way to experience it, and a new way to experience the world in general. The meaning of art comes about when you put yourself and your preconceptions to the side, distance yourself from your own kneejerk reactions, and consider the possibility that there's something else out there which you haven't... well, considered.
That's the point of culture, really. That's the reason why other people matter. Connection is valuable, not because it means somebody else is identical to me, but because it means we get to genuinely rejoice in each other's differences. The strangenesses of other people is what makes familiarity such a blessing—not as a shelter from the strangeness, but as an opportunity to make a home within the strangeness, and be at peace with it, until one day we realize that we, too, have become strange and new.
That's what I find unsettling about AI culture: the eagerness to replace "strange" with "controlled". The elimination, not of difficulty or toil or obstacle, but of anything that could be perceived as an obstacle, including creative process and consumption itself. ("Make AI read books and tell me what the point of them is" seems to be, unsurprising, a major draw for people who want to have read books, but hate the part where they actually have to read.)
The problem isn't with AI technologies themselves—every time I hear Joe Biden deliver a surreal monologue about Young Sheldon or watch another variant of Unlimited Steam, in which an AI tries to rewrite and perform the "steamed hams" scene from The Simpsons, I am beside myself with joy. The problem, as ever, is with people. The novelties of AI are delightfully novel, but at its heart, the mindset and the culture and the limits and the poisons of AI really are nothing new.
It's not the breathless tone of voice they use, or the fact that some of them seem to think that AI genuinely thinks for itself—though I do find the latter endlessly irritating. The part that disturbs me is what they seem to view the purpose of AI as. Because they act as if AI is a font of endless content: not creativity, but content. It is the ultimate buffet, capable of feeding them whatever they hunger for. And it's clear that, for many of them, that's the end-all be-all of any so-called creative act: to cater to themselves endlessly, to offer themselves whatever they feel like feeding on.
The goal isn't even to offer up the things AI makes for them outwardly, as if they're the "artists" steering AI to create meaningful material. The goal is just to consume, endlessly, without having to deal with the quirks and foibles of other human beings. To cut out the "middleman," so to speak, between themselves and the things they consume.
That's not a new impulse. (Very little about AI culture is new.) The era of the "individual," whether you pin its start on the youth culture rebellions of the 60s or on the shark-eat-shark mentality of 80s Reaganism and Thatcherism, has relentlessly pursued the dream of individual satiation. And the modern digital age has made this gluttonous self-centeredness extraordinarily clear: every pursuit, whether it's dating or reading the news or (ironically) enlightenment and well-being, has been distilled down to an app model where you, the user, are at the center of the universe. Everything is catered to you, adjusted for your pleasure, presented as if all that matters in the world is what you want—and as if other people are just an irritation to be endured.
Stewart Lee, in his show Content Provider—which is so nakedly about the dehumanization of culture that its "set" is just an ocean of other comedians' bargain-bin DVDs—does a bit about the devaluation of BDSM in contemporary society. His grandparents, he says, had to work for their kinky sex. They had to sneak out to farms and steal burlap potato sacks in the dead of night, so they could carve holes in them and use them for gimp masks. The "potato sack sex mask," as Lee puts it, serves as his stand-in for another era: one where things were worse in many ways, but where people had to commit to the things they cared about, and defined themselves partly by the things they felt were worth inconveniencing themselves for.
"'I'm really into BDSM,'" he says, mimicking a caricature of a modern couple. "'Since when?' 'Oh, since about last night at ten.'"
On the one hand, it's maybe neat that you can "explore" "BDSM" with a couple of impulse-clicks on Amazon. On the other, it's a fundamentally reductive act, one that turns a culture and a practice and a set of values into yet another kind of consumption. And it doesn't end with kink: dating sites like Tinder literally reduce the dating pool to a tasting menu, one that encourages viewing other people as consumable goods. Dating and sex are all-too-often reduced to onanism: we start to view other people, not as opportunities to escape the existential prison of the insular self, but as yet another kind of curated content.
Is it any wonder that people wind up treating each other the same way they treat the media they consume? Gamer culture, in which reviewers are stalked and harassed for giving a AAA game an 8/10 instead of a perfect 10, dovetails neatly with incel culture, whose fundamental issue with women is that they're allowed to deny men sex. On the younger progressive left, individuals and content alike are declared "toxic" for holding mildly disagreeable opinions; keeping those people in your life or harboring affection for those things becomes proof that you, in turn, are likely toxic and ought to be excised. I, the individual, become the ultimate barometer for the rest of the world; my preferences and feelings aren't whims, they're ironclad and resolute, and it's an injustice when the world fails to perfectly cater to me.
(To be clear, when I loop the "younger progressive left" into this, I'm talking about phenomena like Your Fave is Problematic, rather than about when bigotry is rightly criticized and called out for being dangerous. But bigotry is itself a monstrously insular and self-centered phenomenon: the act of being so obsessed with yourself, and so unable to bear the world deviating from you you you, that you label anyone different from you deviant and consider it a justice when terrible things are done to "correct" the "problem" of their existence.)
Is it any wonder, then, that AI zealots were excitedly advocating the possibility that AI would replace porn? Or that some of them have turned to AI chatbots as a substitute for having relationships? This is the end goal of individualism, the final dream of consumerism, the vision that AI advocates are seemingly so breathless over: the elimination of the other person. The dream of a world in which other people are finally unnecessary, so you can live in a world made up of only you.
When people talk about AI replacing composers and musicians, writers and poets, painters and visual artists, programmers and code, they're talking about doing away with people. It's not enough to reduce the world to content farms, algorithmically-targeted products, and TV shows that are literally designed around what Netflix's data tells them will addict people. It's not enough to envision so-called "AI technology" as a tool that could simplify creative processes, removing monotonous drudge work to let artists focus on the parts that really matter. The dream is replacement—because the thought of life involving other people, the thought of a "culture" that you have to particulate in, is unbearable. (And it's no surprise that this worldview makes a perfect breeding ground for white supremacy, violent misogyny, and whatever TERFy nonsense J.K. Rowling and Dave Chappelle keep yammering on about.)
Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to get to watch Béla Tarr's Sátántangó, a seven-and-a-half-hour-long black-and-white film about misfortune that besets a desolate Hungarian village. I've had fun with the horror acquaintances feel at the prospect of such a movie, and it is a little humorous just how unappealing that thumbnail description of the movie makes it seem, but the honest truth is that Sátántangó was a shockingly pleasant, enjoyable, and easy-to-watch film. It moved slowly and intelligently; the slowness made for an extremely relaxing experience, and the intelligence made it engaging all the way through. I found it easier to watch than I've found some films a quarter of its length—and much easier to watch than the hour-long first episodes of certain TV series.
It's hard to explain, and I didn't understand it until I watched it myself... but that's exactly why I went to go see it. I knew I didn't understand, and I knew that a lot of people who'd had that experience did find it valuable and weirdly pleasant, so I went in and let the movie teach me how to watch it. That, in a nutshell, is what I find most valuable about art: not its pleasantness or entertainment value, not even just its sheer craft, but those moments when I grapple with something and discover a new way to experience it, and a new way to experience the world in general. The meaning of art comes about when you put yourself and your preconceptions to the side, distance yourself from your own kneejerk reactions, and consider the possibility that there's something else out there which you haven't... well, considered.
That's the point of culture, really. That's the reason why other people matter. Connection is valuable, not because it means somebody else is identical to me, but because it means we get to genuinely rejoice in each other's differences. The strangenesses of other people is what makes familiarity such a blessing—not as a shelter from the strangeness, but as an opportunity to make a home within the strangeness, and be at peace with it, until one day we realize that we, too, have become strange and new.
That's what I find unsettling about AI culture: the eagerness to replace "strange" with "controlled". The elimination, not of difficulty or toil or obstacle, but of anything that could be perceived as an obstacle, including creative process and consumption itself. ("Make AI read books and tell me what the point of them is" seems to be, unsurprising, a major draw for people who want to have read books, but hate the part where they actually have to read.)
The problem isn't with AI technologies themselves—every time I hear Joe Biden deliver a surreal monologue about Young Sheldon or watch another variant of Unlimited Steam, in which an AI tries to rewrite and perform the "steamed hams" scene from The Simpsons, I am beside myself with joy. The problem, as ever, is with people. The novelties of AI are delightfully novel, but at its heart, the mindset and the culture and the limits and the poisons of AI really are nothing new.