cleithart

Rage Against the Machine

The sensitive person’s hostility to the machine is in one sense unrealistic, because of the obvious fact that the machine has come to stay. But as an attitude of mind there is a great deal to be said for it. The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug—that is, grudgingly and suspiciously. Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes. You have only to look about you at this moment to realise with what sinister speed the machine is getting us into its power.
George Orwell

Samson He Weak

Samson be strong past every other man.
He be strong in him foot
He be strong in him leg
He be strong in him hip
He be strong in him back
He be strong in him arm
But—oh!
Samson he be weak,
He be weak for the woman palaver.
Lorenz B. Graham, How God Fix Jonah

This is from a book that retells Bible stories in West African dialect. The stories are fun, the illustrations phenomenal.

Elisha heals the Shunammite's son — Source

More on Advertising

From The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg:

Advertising, in its ideology and effects, is the enemy of an informal public life. It breeds alienation. It convinces people that the good life can be individually purchased. In the place of the shared camaraderie of people who see themselves as equals, the ideology of advertising substitutes competitive acquisition. It is the difference between loving people for what they are and envying them for what they own. It is no coincidence that cultures with a highly developed informal public life have a disdain for advertising.

Rough Ground

In this post, Alan Jacobs reiterates things he’s said in previous posts that informed my most recent newsletter.

I’m basically repeating here the message of Nick Carr’s book The Glass Cage, and much of Matt Crawford’s work, and more than a few of my earlier essays, but: automation deskills. Art that hasn’t been taken through the long slow process of developmental demonstration — art that has shied from resistance and pursued “the smooth things” — will suffer, will settle for the predictable and palatable, will be boring. And the exercise of hard-won human skills is a good thing in itself, regardless of what “product” it leads to.

The link is worth following if only to see the difference between the architectural sketches of Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry.

Time’s Corner: What is New

This is yesterday’s issue of my newsletter Time’s Corner.

The other day my brother showed me some videos created by Google’s Veo 3 tool. Watching them, I felt like the Spartan king seeing a catapult for the first time: “Here is the death of valor.” What’s the point of struggling to make a beautiful film or portrait or poem if any rube with a computer can do the same thing?

The thing is, I actually like making movies and taking pictures and writing poems. I don’t just like having them. I like making them. At the end of the day, I’m not too worried about Veo 3 personally. So, I’m going to ask a more neutral question: What are these tools for?

Like all tools, AI is decided to make work easier, usually by making it more efficient. They reduce friction. Is there any benefit to reducing friction in creative work?

Alan Jacobs wrote about this a few years ago. The friction between the artist’s ideal and the limits of his tools is a key factor in creating art. Artists need their materials to push back. (This is what always bothered me about that video of Glen Keane animating in virtual reality. “You can do anything you want.” Yeah, but what I want is to not be able to do anything I want.) On the one hand, artists don’t want to make their work more efficient. But, on the other hand, artists can and do adopt new tools. Someone had to invent the lead pencil, after all.

I suppose the answer to my question depends on what you’re going for. In the filmmaking industry, digital video has almost entirely replaced actual film because it’s gobs easier to record, manage, edit, and alter. If you want to make a great-looking movie as quickly and cheaply as possible, digital is the way to go.

But not everyone wants to do that. I recently met a filmmaker here in Birmingham who loves using DVR cameras (remember those?). He makes music videos for bands who want a certain, unconventional look, and DVR gives him that look. (He also mentioned that people behave way differently in front of a camcorder than they do in front of a phone. Pull out a phone and everyone turns away. Turn on a camcorder and they all start mugging and crowding to get into the frame.)

I do most of my writing on the computer because it’s fast and I like the semi-formal look of type on a white background. When I need to slow down and think through a scene or paragraph, I put out pen and paper. (Not pencil. Too easy to erase.) But most of the time, I’m after speed, and the computer gives me that. Could you use an LLM in the same way?

Cory Doctorow has written that his main problem with AI art is the lack of communication behind it. Art communicates via the million micro-decisions made by the artist in creating it. Each stroke of paint (or the keyboard) tells something about the artist’s thoughts. You can create AI art without making very many decisions; hence, according to Doctorow, its uncanniness.

But what if there is intention behind it? If an artist uses Dall-E, or whatever, to make hundreds of versions of his idea, then chooses from among those hundreds, makes adjustments, generates a hundred more, etc. If a poet has ChatGPT spit out a poem about the rain, then changes a word, then another word, then another, chops the whole apart and puts it back together? Does that make it just like any other tool, one step beyond using a word processor?

Let’s say I’m writing a scene and I’m stuck. “What would Jane say in response to Michael’s comment?” I wonder. Being the old-fashioned writer I am, I would do one of the following:

Lean back and stare at the wall for a while
Grab a piece of paper and a pen and start writing one bad line after another, in the hopes of jostling loose a good idea
Go for a walk

It’s very easy to imagine a younger writer developing a different process. “What would Jane say to Michael?” she wonders. She opens ChatGPT, types in Michael’s line, and asks it to generate fifty different things Jane could say in response. She skims the output, selects the best option, copies, pastes, and continues on her way.

There’s much more to say, but this newsletter is already long. Let me add one thing: The problem with using AI tools to make art is that they trick you into thinking that they are creating something new. They aren’t. What an AI spits out may seem new, but it’s an amalgamation of vast quantities of words or images created by human beings. Now, my grad school professors would probably say, “What’s the difference?” All of us our simply parroting stuff we’ve heard or read. We’re just super-advanced LLMs made out of meat. But that’s simply not true. Human beings can come up with new things. (They can make new humans, after all, each with an individual soul.) Machines can’t.

Creating Needs

Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism:

At first glance, a society based on mass consumption appears to encourage self-indulgence in its most blatant forms. Strictly considered, however, modern advertising seeks to promote not so much self-indulgence as self-doubt. It seeks to create needs, not to fulfill them; to generate new anxieties instead of allaying old ones. By surrounding the consumer with images of the good life, and by associating them with the glamour of celebrity and success, mass culture encourages the ordinary man to cultivate extraordinary tastes, to identify himself with the privileged minority against the rest, and to join them, in his fantasies, in a life of exquisite comfort and sensual refinement. Yet the propaganda of commodities simultaneously makes him acutely unhappy with his lot. By fostering grandiose aspirations, it also fosters self-denigration and self-contempt.

It reminds me of my friend Ryan’s observation that commercials are “trying to make you sad.”

Pocket is Buttoned

I was surprised at the relief I felt on reading this. I’ve had dozens (scores?) of articles in my Pocket reading queue for probably ten years, all of which I’ve told myself I’ll “read later.” They’re about to vanish forever. Finally, I’ll be able to sleep at night.

Old Sage

No man appears in safety before the public eye unless he first relishes obscurity. No man is safe in speaking unless he loves to be silent. No man rules safely unless he is willing to be ruled. No man commands safely unless he has learned well how to obey. No man rejoices safely unless he has within him the testimony of a good conscience.
Thomas à Kempis

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