I wrote this elsewhere, of art before Gen AI, and I think it fits:
I just wanted to recall for a moment of what it felt like to write before this entire AI business, and to me, why this has always haunted and hurt me so much since.
To me, art has always been magical. It was always the practical evidence of a special soulfulness of humanity, no, of life itself - because I've never really excluded the majesty of whale songs, of bird dances, or fishes arranging rocks beneath the waves from the fundamental aspect of art, and in that sense, the relationship that it has always had with love. To be alone with one's imagination, to have a little bit of inspiration and then to be able to draw from the realm of the dreams and to stabilize it into something that is a little bit of marvelous, and then to stabilize it and deliver it with skill has always been an experience somewhere between meditation, prayer and magic-making, to become part of something eternal and powerful.
I remember being able to turn a phrase here and there, a little better or not, and then accumulating a huge number of ideas and clippings inside of my universe's notes so that I would be able to "discover" things about the universe. Like any writer might tell you, there is the sense of creation but there is also the sense of exploration, as if the world and the people inside had always existed and then you come to get to know them, to feel as them, and to love them - even the worst of them, because of how close you've had to be to each and every one of them.
I miss that.
I miss the feel of the subtle word and the echo of emotion from an empyrean realm, now violated by this monster of words and math; I miss even the ability to write of the future, in a time when the future seems to have become foreclosed to machines; I miss the ability to think of heroes and villains, in a time when people may no longer matter.
So there is a lot of nostalgia for the feeling of the art that way, for the feeling of the magical, and for that sense of the contact with the divine, the natural, and how it all seems to be one and the same. I wonder about the accusations of "gatekeeping" and in a way, it never made any sense, because it was never about keeping anyone else from coming to art; indeed, I would have wished everyone to be able to participate in that sense of the wonder of creation, via that process of imagination and that focus of will, to invest a part of themselves so that it becomes etched into the child-process. As only Vladímir Nabokov could have written Lolita, and only Twain could have written Tom Sawyer, so only I could have written what I wrote. And if someone would have read me, then in a way, he or she would know me and in defiance of time and distance, a kind of soul-connection would truly be. As the quote goes:
"Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul."
That, there, is the soul of the artist in product of the work.
And then there is AI, a monster that is the mimic, that creates words without experience, without life, and without any of that sense of pain or joy. Of course, I despise it. It denies everything that has been the artist - the sense of the self in the work, the sense of life's meaning, and indeed, even the sense of a future.
I have always called it the anti-life equation for a reason. What else could it be, but a thing that kills the very beauty of the soul?
PS:
For artists here that are not writers - which I think is most, I feel like the part which most resembles it is the sketch, to scrawl and to experiment until something appears. I've had an artistic friend who almost complete an entire landscape before realizing that he needed to redo it from scratch, and so that was a discovery too.
Its all a terrible lot of work. Creation isn't easy.
But it is all *so terribly beautiful, because of that effort and that recreation and reimagination.*
Never bought an iPad or iPhone, but I gotta say... this all seems like a rather manufactured drama. All it showed was a bunch of physical representations of things people do with iPads and squished them... into an iPad.
I found it viscerally revolting. I love my iPhone and its amazing capabilities, and I'm glad I don't need to buy an expensive camera to take good pictures. I also love my guitar, my bass, and quite a few treasured paper books. Apple may have thought that those who love physical, tactile instruments are not their core market. The kids will love it. They may even be right about the latter, but many of us who still treasure physical tools for creativity and the process of using them, will likely find this ad jarring.
That's the crux. You're taking an obviously metaphorical thing as if it was not only literal, but well beyond that into some kind of attack. that just doesn't make sense.
That's the way it comes off to me. It's already bad enough that fewer and fewer kids learn to play real musical instruments, let alone actually read a physical book. It feels like Apple just pissing on the grave of soulful art.
You and I are saying basically the same thing: it's not about the ad, but you're projecting a whole slew of things onto what's just a benign ad showing different kinds of apps a tablet runs.
This is like is like if people went after Apple in the 80s for promoting throwing hammers at politicians... which sounds like a good time, but not what their famous old ad was about either.
It's just tone deaf to the reality that the digitalization of everything has a lot of people freaked out. I see it as a major failure to read the room.
@(AI + Real Life) x Purpose Apple's 80s ad was about throwing a hammer at IBM, which was at the time the dominant player in personal computing. Pretty much everyone understood that when the ad came out. And perhaps pretty much everyone understands that the new ad is an ad about apps. But that's where the similarity ends.
The 80s ad was about using an Apple *computer* instead of an IBM *computer.* The current ad is about using an Apple tablet *computer* instead of *all that analog stuff that gets crushed.* That is a huge difference for some of us.
Implicit in the new ad is the proposition that an app, or a library of apps, is superior to all that analog stuff. That is a profoundly depressing thought for anyone who believes in something unsubstitutable about live performance, analog musical instruments, the "aura" of a visual artwork, etc.
The gratuitous violence of the ad expresses contempt for the materiality we love. I don't think that's a projection - it's precisely what the ad is about. The whole point is that even the materiality of the iPod Pro itself has become attenuated to a new extreme.
Moreover, the ad is being broadcast in an environment where corporate forces are threatening to use GenAI to make creators obsolete -- witness the recent Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes, for example -- and where pretty much anyone can make truth obsolete. No wonder people are depressed if Apple, which used to throw hammers at Doublespeaking tyrants, declares itself against authenticity.
The internet and consequently AI also feels as if it is an integral part of life, which it isn’t. It’s purely digital, yet our daily lives have become so intertwined with the digital that we don’t see or experience it as seperate anymore. It’s strange and frankly irreversible, although one can still decide to temporarly shut of their devices and just spend some time offline. Digital detox, baby.
On the Apple ad and the Google debacle … both feel to me like they are the product of bad leadership and management than anything else. In my opinion, these incidents reflect not their ideas or ideologies (although many like to make that case), but their inability to pick up on blind spots as a result of overengineered corporate processes and chains of command.
Really excellent piece! I think the path that we are on has been going on for far more than 30 years; its been progressing like a silent disease before announcing itself, with the irreversibility of entropy. I'm not sure how we can reverse the course we are headed on. Technology is a continuum that started thousands of years ago, and as far as I know, we've never voluntarily reversed course. The reason may be that technology and economics have been intimately connected for a very long time. As this connection became stronger, the momentum of technological progress increased until the altruistic voice of technology began to be drowned out by the roar of capitalism.
Don't get me wrong, I do not deny the good that new technologies like AI are capable of delivering. I've learned a lot from my interactions with AI models like Claude. And I don't take the existential threat of AI too seriously; it will sicken us, but not destroy us.
What sickens you will eventually kill you, though. Think of it like sugar or obesity; it won't kill you directly but give it time and heart disease, diabetes and tooth rot will.
This made me think of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar as a "sacrifice"; a moment with artist merit. The ad made me imagine, from the ashes of the guitar, Hendrix picking up an iPad and proclaiming he will no longer bother with flesh and blood Stratocasters. Replacement/one-upping changes an artistic moment into an empty capitalistic one.
A great read, thank you. I am struck by the irony of them being called Apple. The image of a naturally occurring fruit, co-opted in to selling digital experience.
There’s a lot of hand ringing and angst over the way things are unfolding, especially among the creative class because of their sense that all of the hard won authenticity they’ve striven so hard to achieve is now becoming a merely processed commodity for the unappreciative unwashed masses. Perhaps musicians felt this way when sound recordings first became popular. “They’re stealing my music! And they have no right to enjoy it as much as my live performance!” I can understand the emotion, which is not to say that I necessarily sympathize with it. It’s a rug pull to be sure. But the times they are a changing. Humans are just going to have to get used to these concepts and adapt. Humans are routinely disappointed when their deepest held beliefs are shaken to their very core, and shown to be flawed. Historically, there has been a great gnashing of teeth to learn that the earth was not the center of the universe. Most everyone except the flat earthers, who were always a few cognitive steps behind, have moved on. So it is with human capabilities. A lot of human contributions will become increasingly irrelevanter and irrelevanter, and that’s also going to generate a lot of gnashing of teeth. It sometimes it’s helpful to admit that, yes, a submarine also swims (and much better than any human).
So we must be on guard for where hyper-optimization is warranted as opposed to where it is not warranted. Personally, I sense that we are long way from the best kinds of hyper-optimization. For example I would very much like to have every single one of my mitochondria hyper-optimized for great function. I’m looking forward to that day although I don’t think it will be tomorrow. But I’m looking forward to it nonetheless, as it will repair my degenerative condition. Is that too much to ask?
I also am quite dubious that you can create something like Wagner‘s Ring Cycle after lying down a simple prompt of a few paragraphs or pages. Perhaps eventually we can, but only using the Wagner corpus as a training reference. But will it be compelling? Or will it just be an exercise in what can be done? As an intermediate step, I’d kind of like to see the tens of hours of that opera redubbed into English that makes melodic and aesthetic sense. Then I could probably get through eight hours of it instead of three. Sure, the music is nice, but I just can’t process all that German. Seamlessly effective language dubbing should go huge and expose the world to every other quality work out there. Is that hyper-optimization? I’m not sure if I care. I’d really like to consume some great content from around the world and from through the ages, and I’d also love to be able to see my Chinese friends watch the Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind, seamlessly dubbed into Mandarin. Is that too much to ask?
I also have a creative streak and I’d love to see my creative ideas brought to life, in spite of the fact that I haven’t trained for 10,000 hours in most fields (except aviation). I have perhaps something like 100 little ditties that I have sung into my voice memo app over the years. I think they could make some really catchy tunes, even though in their raw incarnation, they are only conceptual frameworks. Yet I’m looking forward to the day when I can have an audio program sort of like a Midjourney diffusion program take my musical concept files and completely flesh them out in any and every way that I see fit. Since I’m conceited enough to believe that I actually have some talent crafting a few sticky jingles, I’d like to see a project like that brought to life. Is that hyper optimization, or is that just a new tool? Is that too much to ask?
Yet consider how powerful these tools will be in the hands of the staggeringly talented. The cream will rise ever higher.
Yet I’m not so naïve as to not grasp that technology does have potential for the pitfalls of hyper-optimization. I don’t think that any spouse would be pleased to learn that their actual physical lovemaking is about to be hyper optimized. Mmmm, super efficient love making? Slice me a super thin piece of that pie! No calories.
So let’s talk about sex. I see that it falls into two relatively distinct categories.
1. Sex as folded into the act of making love. This doesn’t necessarily or typically have a beginning, middle or end. It can start when a guy mops the floors. Making love and being in love should not have the rigidity of clearly defined algorithms with clear definition. Attempting to craft it that way would be folly, or at least be unsuitable to the core of human desires. Lovemaking will never come from a prompt.
2. Sex as a means to tap lust and gratification in a hedonistic way. We’ve all been there. These events do have a beginning, middle and end, whether they’re derived from swinging or porn. There is of course a potential to hyper-optimize this activity. Whether that’s good I suppose that depends on the agenda of the user(s). There are times in the consumption of porn, when the beginning, middle and end is tightly compressed (or shall we say hyper-optimized). I peripherally recall, seeing an ad for a porn product that makes the claim that you won’t last three minutes before climax. Well, if that’s the goal? Sometimes you just have to get to sleep fast because you have to go to work early in the morning. Personally when I’ve climaxed I’m done with porn. Not true of love making. Consumption of porn shouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Yet it’s nothing like lovemaking, except that both may overlap in the stimulation of fantasy and genitals.
I wrote this elsewhere, of art before Gen AI, and I think it fits:
I just wanted to recall for a moment of what it felt like to write before this entire AI business, and to me, why this has always haunted and hurt me so much since.
To me, art has always been magical. It was always the practical evidence of a special soulfulness of humanity, no, of life itself - because I've never really excluded the majesty of whale songs, of bird dances, or fishes arranging rocks beneath the waves from the fundamental aspect of art, and in that sense, the relationship that it has always had with love. To be alone with one's imagination, to have a little bit of inspiration and then to be able to draw from the realm of the dreams and to stabilize it into something that is a little bit of marvelous, and then to stabilize it and deliver it with skill has always been an experience somewhere between meditation, prayer and magic-making, to become part of something eternal and powerful.
I remember being able to turn a phrase here and there, a little better or not, and then accumulating a huge number of ideas and clippings inside of my universe's notes so that I would be able to "discover" things about the universe. Like any writer might tell you, there is the sense of creation but there is also the sense of exploration, as if the world and the people inside had always existed and then you come to get to know them, to feel as them, and to love them - even the worst of them, because of how close you've had to be to each and every one of them.
I miss that.
I miss the feel of the subtle word and the echo of emotion from an empyrean realm, now violated by this monster of words and math; I miss even the ability to write of the future, in a time when the future seems to have become foreclosed to machines; I miss the ability to think of heroes and villains, in a time when people may no longer matter.
So there is a lot of nostalgia for the feeling of the art that way, for the feeling of the magical, and for that sense of the contact with the divine, the natural, and how it all seems to be one and the same. I wonder about the accusations of "gatekeeping" and in a way, it never made any sense, because it was never about keeping anyone else from coming to art; indeed, I would have wished everyone to be able to participate in that sense of the wonder of creation, via that process of imagination and that focus of will, to invest a part of themselves so that it becomes etched into the child-process. As only Vladímir Nabokov could have written Lolita, and only Twain could have written Tom Sawyer, so only I could have written what I wrote. And if someone would have read me, then in a way, he or she would know me and in defiance of time and distance, a kind of soul-connection would truly be. As the quote goes:
"Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul."
That, there, is the soul of the artist in product of the work.
And then there is AI, a monster that is the mimic, that creates words without experience, without life, and without any of that sense of pain or joy. Of course, I despise it. It denies everything that has been the artist - the sense of the self in the work, the sense of life's meaning, and indeed, even the sense of a future.
I have always called it the anti-life equation for a reason. What else could it be, but a thing that kills the very beauty of the soul?
PS:
For artists here that are not writers - which I think is most, I feel like the part which most resembles it is the sketch, to scrawl and to experiment until something appears. I've had an artistic friend who almost complete an entire landscape before realizing that he needed to redo it from scratch, and so that was a discovery too.
Its all a terrible lot of work. Creation isn't easy.
But it is all *so terribly beautiful, because of that effort and that recreation and reimagination.*
Some people believe in magic. Others believe in the illusion of magic.
Never bought an iPad or iPhone, but I gotta say... this all seems like a rather manufactured drama. All it showed was a bunch of physical representations of things people do with iPads and squished them... into an iPad.
I found it viscerally revolting. I love my iPhone and its amazing capabilities, and I'm glad I don't need to buy an expensive camera to take good pictures. I also love my guitar, my bass, and quite a few treasured paper books. Apple may have thought that those who love physical, tactile instruments are not their core market. The kids will love it. They may even be right about the latter, but many of us who still treasure physical tools for creativity and the process of using them, will likely find this ad jarring.
That's the crux. You're taking an obviously metaphorical thing as if it was not only literal, but well beyond that into some kind of attack. that just doesn't make sense.
That's the way it comes off to me. It's already bad enough that fewer and fewer kids learn to play real musical instruments, let alone actually read a physical book. It feels like Apple just pissing on the grave of soulful art.
You and I are saying basically the same thing: it's not about the ad, but you're projecting a whole slew of things onto what's just a benign ad showing different kinds of apps a tablet runs.
This is like is like if people went after Apple in the 80s for promoting throwing hammers at politicians... which sounds like a good time, but not what their famous old ad was about either.
It's just tone deaf to the reality that the digitalization of everything has a lot of people freaked out. I see it as a major failure to read the room.
Beautifully put. The destruction of humanity for AI rot is rarely clearer than in this video.
@(AI + Real Life) x Purpose Apple's 80s ad was about throwing a hammer at IBM, which was at the time the dominant player in personal computing. Pretty much everyone understood that when the ad came out. And perhaps pretty much everyone understands that the new ad is an ad about apps. But that's where the similarity ends.
The 80s ad was about using an Apple *computer* instead of an IBM *computer.* The current ad is about using an Apple tablet *computer* instead of *all that analog stuff that gets crushed.* That is a huge difference for some of us.
Implicit in the new ad is the proposition that an app, or a library of apps, is superior to all that analog stuff. That is a profoundly depressing thought for anyone who believes in something unsubstitutable about live performance, analog musical instruments, the "aura" of a visual artwork, etc.
The gratuitous violence of the ad expresses contempt for the materiality we love. I don't think that's a projection - it's precisely what the ad is about. The whole point is that even the materiality of the iPod Pro itself has become attenuated to a new extreme.
Moreover, the ad is being broadcast in an environment where corporate forces are threatening to use GenAI to make creators obsolete -- witness the recent Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes, for example -- and where pretty much anyone can make truth obsolete. No wonder people are depressed if Apple, which used to throw hammers at Doublespeaking tyrants, declares itself against authenticity.
The internet and consequently AI also feels as if it is an integral part of life, which it isn’t. It’s purely digital, yet our daily lives have become so intertwined with the digital that we don’t see or experience it as seperate anymore. It’s strange and frankly irreversible, although one can still decide to temporarly shut of their devices and just spend some time offline. Digital detox, baby.
On the Apple ad and the Google debacle … both feel to me like they are the product of bad leadership and management than anything else. In my opinion, these incidents reflect not their ideas or ideologies (although many like to make that case), but their inability to pick up on blind spots as a result of overengineered corporate processes and chains of command.
Really excellent piece! I think the path that we are on has been going on for far more than 30 years; its been progressing like a silent disease before announcing itself, with the irreversibility of entropy. I'm not sure how we can reverse the course we are headed on. Technology is a continuum that started thousands of years ago, and as far as I know, we've never voluntarily reversed course. The reason may be that technology and economics have been intimately connected for a very long time. As this connection became stronger, the momentum of technological progress increased until the altruistic voice of technology began to be drowned out by the roar of capitalism.
Don't get me wrong, I do not deny the good that new technologies like AI are capable of delivering. I've learned a lot from my interactions with AI models like Claude. And I don't take the existential threat of AI too seriously; it will sicken us, but not destroy us.
What sickens you will eventually kill you, though. Think of it like sugar or obesity; it won't kill you directly but give it time and heart disease, diabetes and tooth rot will.
And sugar and fat was what we wanted, right?
This made me think of Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar as a "sacrifice"; a moment with artist merit. The ad made me imagine, from the ashes of the guitar, Hendrix picking up an iPad and proclaiming he will no longer bother with flesh and blood Stratocasters. Replacement/one-upping changes an artistic moment into an empty capitalistic one.
Believing in machines is infectious. Just run the ad backwards, and get back to creating organically
A great read, thank you. I am struck by the irony of them being called Apple. The image of a naturally occurring fruit, co-opted in to selling digital experience.
The pros and cons of a hyper-optimized world.
There’s a lot of hand ringing and angst over the way things are unfolding, especially among the creative class because of their sense that all of the hard won authenticity they’ve striven so hard to achieve is now becoming a merely processed commodity for the unappreciative unwashed masses. Perhaps musicians felt this way when sound recordings first became popular. “They’re stealing my music! And they have no right to enjoy it as much as my live performance!” I can understand the emotion, which is not to say that I necessarily sympathize with it. It’s a rug pull to be sure. But the times they are a changing. Humans are just going to have to get used to these concepts and adapt. Humans are routinely disappointed when their deepest held beliefs are shaken to their very core, and shown to be flawed. Historically, there has been a great gnashing of teeth to learn that the earth was not the center of the universe. Most everyone except the flat earthers, who were always a few cognitive steps behind, have moved on. So it is with human capabilities. A lot of human contributions will become increasingly irrelevanter and irrelevanter, and that’s also going to generate a lot of gnashing of teeth. It sometimes it’s helpful to admit that, yes, a submarine also swims (and much better than any human).
So we must be on guard for where hyper-optimization is warranted as opposed to where it is not warranted. Personally, I sense that we are long way from the best kinds of hyper-optimization. For example I would very much like to have every single one of my mitochondria hyper-optimized for great function. I’m looking forward to that day although I don’t think it will be tomorrow. But I’m looking forward to it nonetheless, as it will repair my degenerative condition. Is that too much to ask?
I also am quite dubious that you can create something like Wagner‘s Ring Cycle after lying down a simple prompt of a few paragraphs or pages. Perhaps eventually we can, but only using the Wagner corpus as a training reference. But will it be compelling? Or will it just be an exercise in what can be done? As an intermediate step, I’d kind of like to see the tens of hours of that opera redubbed into English that makes melodic and aesthetic sense. Then I could probably get through eight hours of it instead of three. Sure, the music is nice, but I just can’t process all that German. Seamlessly effective language dubbing should go huge and expose the world to every other quality work out there. Is that hyper-optimization? I’m not sure if I care. I’d really like to consume some great content from around the world and from through the ages, and I’d also love to be able to see my Chinese friends watch the Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind, seamlessly dubbed into Mandarin. Is that too much to ask?
I also have a creative streak and I’d love to see my creative ideas brought to life, in spite of the fact that I haven’t trained for 10,000 hours in most fields (except aviation). I have perhaps something like 100 little ditties that I have sung into my voice memo app over the years. I think they could make some really catchy tunes, even though in their raw incarnation, they are only conceptual frameworks. Yet I’m looking forward to the day when I can have an audio program sort of like a Midjourney diffusion program take my musical concept files and completely flesh them out in any and every way that I see fit. Since I’m conceited enough to believe that I actually have some talent crafting a few sticky jingles, I’d like to see a project like that brought to life. Is that hyper optimization, or is that just a new tool? Is that too much to ask?
Yet consider how powerful these tools will be in the hands of the staggeringly talented. The cream will rise ever higher.
Yet I’m not so naïve as to not grasp that technology does have potential for the pitfalls of hyper-optimization. I don’t think that any spouse would be pleased to learn that their actual physical lovemaking is about to be hyper optimized. Mmmm, super efficient love making? Slice me a super thin piece of that pie! No calories.
So let’s talk about sex. I see that it falls into two relatively distinct categories.
1. Sex as folded into the act of making love. This doesn’t necessarily or typically have a beginning, middle or end. It can start when a guy mops the floors. Making love and being in love should not have the rigidity of clearly defined algorithms with clear definition. Attempting to craft it that way would be folly, or at least be unsuitable to the core of human desires. Lovemaking will never come from a prompt.
2. Sex as a means to tap lust and gratification in a hedonistic way. We’ve all been there. These events do have a beginning, middle and end, whether they’re derived from swinging or porn. There is of course a potential to hyper-optimize this activity. Whether that’s good I suppose that depends on the agenda of the user(s). There are times in the consumption of porn, when the beginning, middle and end is tightly compressed (or shall we say hyper-optimized). I peripherally recall, seeing an ad for a porn product that makes the claim that you won’t last three minutes before climax. Well, if that’s the goal? Sometimes you just have to get to sleep fast because you have to go to work early in the morning. Personally when I’ve climaxed I’m done with porn. Not true of love making. Consumption of porn shouldn’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Yet it’s nothing like lovemaking, except that both may overlap in the stimulation of fantasy and genitals.
You keep using that word "tool."
It is not accurate. The same goes for the mild equivalence toward human irrelevance.
"Well, people have died before so extinction is fine" is the equivalent and inaccurate logic.
Sorry to be pedantic but there's no such thing as'mediums' only media.