AI makes it easier for the fuckers to crank out BS. Even epic BS like what triggered Swifty. Too, they're by definition closed to anything new, different or off the norm.
What I regret or am saddened by is the lack of an avant garde or mainstream of ignoring of same assuming there's much of one. Just part of the regression to the nation's natural barbaric state.
OTOH, what the digital revolution, so to speak, has brought us is a state where everything from any time is available. Not as good as having a progressive arts environment but a partial, limited filling in of some of the gap.
BTW, have I ranted recently that IMO all Republicans and conservatives are definition insane by one DSM definition or another?
It’s a toy, they think in adds to their own intelligence, they’re too lazy to do the years of work art requires, they have no appreciation of what makes great art great, it’s “Painter of light” level crap and they love it.
And my art buddies have reached a consensus that then push for AI by corporate types is a desire to not pay difficult, possibly subversive creatives, and control intellectual property ad infinitum.
Yup. They don't care about art, they just want to own shit that no one else can have unless they go through them. It's the NFT/Bored Ape-ification of culture.
Reminder that these are the same people who, although they have their own conservative universe, that only they care about, demand to be included in "liberal Hollywood", so they can dominate it too.
Roy, this is excellent. One line jumped out at me, because it sums up modern conservatism, and maybe it *always* summed up conservatism: “…we must accept that the world is just not with us…” This is the heart of what conservatives refuse to do, and they will use ignorance (look at all the big red states on the map compared to the smaller blue ones), denialism (J6 was only a protest that got a little out of hand) and outright lies (Trump won the 2020 election) to claim the world is in fact with them.
And the smarter or more ruthless ones will do what is necessary to MAKE the world be with them, for the world’s own good of course. I think it’s why they’ve given up on persuasion. Fear, demonization, and cheating are not methods used by confident people who believe they have something appealing to sell. And what is AI really but a form of cheating? Go ahead and give the fat old orange man six-pack abs if that’s how you see him and want others to see him. It brings the conservative vision of the world into the physical realm, and like conservatism it can be forced on the unwilling masses.
Lying about how "the world is in fact with them"? How 'bout "Everybody wanted Roe overturned, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, they all wanted it sent back to the states!"
Some other, smarter, person pointed out what's so unusual about this lie, among the hundred or so lies he told in the debate. Because he's not lying about some people you've never met in a small town in Ohio you've never been to, he's lying TO YOU ABOUT YOU. And that's a lot more personal, isn't it?
You might say, "Well, who cares if liberals and Democrats are insulted at being lied about?" but the obvious group here is Republican women, many of whom did NOT want Roe overturned, and who may also hear in this lie "She wanted it even though she says now she didn't."
All true. But at this point does any sane person doubt that Donald Trump is a man who is very familiar with the phrase "you know you want it" when it comes to women?
Even after eight years, he still puzzles me. "Look, I know the liberals and the Democrats didn't want it, but it was the right thing to do" was RIGHT THERE, waiting to be said, but he says this instead. Why? Is this some weird "I drink your milkshake" shit? I know I should give up trying to understand his motivations, his "strategy" when there's clearly no strategy. This shit just makes me tired.
Oh, there's a strategy. Insist that a majority of the country supports everything you do, and never, ever apologize. Gaslighting, basically. And he can keep it up longer than you can fact-check him.
Smart essay, Roy. Come to think of it, Trump’s old Taj Mahal, that crumbling white elephant on the boardwalk, is another early example of the fash fashion you identify..
Thank you for this – I have been wondering what was putting me off so regarding the AI art I see. The garish colors, the weird bodies, & supersaturated reality is all bad enough, but you've pointed out the (what should be) obvious connections to fascist & Stalinist propaganda art, enough just information to push in a certain direction and only that direction.
The worst of it I see in Christian apologetics TikToks & YouTubes, where they're trying to make Bible stories look real.
Reading Roy's piece my brain went to modern day Christianity (or at least its most outloud-and-proud iterations), and the crushing need to convince themselves and everyone else that they have THE answers. Can't simply let the mystery be, or, dog forbid, revel in the mystery. Or let anyone else. Obviously, there are political implications -- we all must obey THEIR god. AI helps them produce the proof.
I think there was a line in one of Le Carre's Smiley novels: "the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt." Describes modern conservative christianity in a nutshell. Their own version of belief is unbearably threatened by every single person who believes differently or doesn't believe at all.
Your LeCarre quote reminds me of a similar one by I-don't-remember who, something like, "The person who most wants a visitation from God is not the atheist, but the believer."
Well, on the other hand, that wave gave us Giotto et alia. But that was before doubt, with which science has obliged us to live. The reaction is after long suppression, and explosive.
Its kind of weird that AI art so closely follows existing fascist esthetics. The LLMs that assemble it are just crunching randomly scraped art, but it has such a clear and obvious cheezy airbrushed style of its own. There's probably a real interesting story in there.
"It was about the world passing them by." I think this hits it right on the nose. I'll go even farther: it's about the fear that the world is passing them by. With conservatives there's almost always an element of fear, a sense that somehow their world isn't really the correct one, ultimately that they could be WRONG about something--the one thing conservatives can never admit, particularly to themselves.
Trump is thus their perfect representative. He will never ever admit he's wrong.
As for abstract art, I don't know why, but I took to it immediately. Over the years I've become a pretty serious art lover, with very eclectic tastes, yet for me the pull of great abstract artists remains as strong as ever.
It has less to do with the content of AI than that. It's part of the attack of the ruling class on unalienated labor, or, or any work done because you actually enjoy it and might therefore be mentally free of the strictures of the ruling class. They succeeded long ago with industrial labor; they succeeded with farming; and they've been busy proletarianizing pink- and white-collar labor these past few decades. The arts and sciences are the last holdouts of unalienated labor. So the ruling class is throwing everything they can against them, whether by bringing them into discredit as insufficiently profitable or political, by administratively subordinating them, or by inventing cheap substitutes that require no human craft like AI. They won't be satisfied till we're all obedient and miserable, with nothing to brighten our lives but child-rearing and punditry.
Reminds me of the standard right-wing response to complaints by fast-food workers about low pay and bad working conditions, which is to post a picture of one of those order kiosks at McDonalds, gleefully proclaiming "Because you got so uppity, you're gonna be replaced by robots LOL"
It’s also weird that we’re simultaneously told there aren’t enough workers because of slowing population growth, yet automation is going to make everyone unemployed, so shut up and endure your terrible job. I mean, wouldn’t automation free up workers in one area to fill positions in other areas where there are worker shortages? It must be yet another mystery of Capitalism that has not yet been revealed to me, a sinner.
Back when I was going to do my pretentious "criticism" of Marx, it was office jobs that I was going to use as "proof". I've learned since how much like those old factories even white collar office jobs have become. And what's alienation more than working at, say, Barnes & Noble because of your love for books & reading and then never being able to share that love because you're expected to treat books as items to keep stocked?
I liked working with rare and unique media because the skills and resources of a serious cataloger-cum-bibliographer could be brought to bear. I'll hazard that there's never been a better time, assuming one is capable and can get paid to do a good job.
(I don't mean to imply I worked at the highest levels, but I did work in some great settings, like a world-class rare books library. I was more or less put in charge of its reference collection, which was sprawling and fascinating. If only I could do that again!)
Can we all just agree to take a hard pass on the child-rearing and go straight to punditry? 'Cause who has the time to do child-rearing right? Whereas punditry, well, what else is there?
The AI details are what Kingsley Amis calls ‘the Fleming effect” in a 007 adventure; make asides that have some journalistic value and people will swallow the fantasy whole. It’s a technology that wastes vast amounts of energy to create preposterous images of a fat, old, mouthy and dreary piece of golf-trash as Thor, Superman, or a combination of the two. The faces are never quite right, they do expressions human faces can’t do, and there’s something baked into the algorithms that makes me worry that the machines are mocking us.
I wouldn’t say that. I’m thinking specifically of how strangely it renders faces. I’ve seen very effective AI, such as that picture of Putin and Trump blissfully napping together. Imagine something like “A room full of excited people” as rendered by AI.
AI makes it easier for the fuckers to crank out BS. Even epic BS like what triggered Swifty. Too, they're by definition closed to anything new, different or off the norm.
What I regret or am saddened by is the lack of an avant garde or mainstream of ignoring of same assuming there's much of one. Just part of the regression to the nation's natural barbaric state.
OTOH, what the digital revolution, so to speak, has brought us is a state where everything from any time is available. Not as good as having a progressive arts environment but a partial, limited filling in of some of the gap.
BTW, have I ranted recently that IMO all Republicans and conservatives are definition insane by one DSM definition or another?
It’s a toy, they think in adds to their own intelligence, they’re too lazy to do the years of work art requires, they have no appreciation of what makes great art great, it’s “Painter of light” level crap and they love it.
Oh, thanks for bringing THAT up
I have seen a claim that the peculiar over saturated color of so much AI "art" is the sheer volume of dreadful Thos. Kincaid pictures online..
Although I suspect they are training AIs in human anatomy with Francis Bacon sometimes.
"make decisions about their self-presentation"
You spelled 'self-preservation' incorrectly.
Other than that, 222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222marx*
*Sorry, the algorithm is a little jumpy today...
Giving in to fantasies? Tell me, what's the deal?
Could it be conservatives can't cope with what is real?
Living in those fantasies is what they want to do.
But reality will have its way with them and me and you.
Meanwhile, Trump is buff and muscular and strong
Until reality convinces them that fantasy is wrong.
[...]
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
[W. B. Yeats, The Stare's Nest by My Window]
And my art buddies have reached a consensus that then push for AI by corporate types is a desire to not pay difficult, possibly subversive creatives, and control intellectual property ad infinitum.
Embrace the Enshitification!
Yup. They don't care about art, they just want to own shit that no one else can have unless they go through them. It's the NFT/Bored Ape-ification of culture.
Reminder that these are the same people who, although they have their own conservative universe, that only they care about, demand to be included in "liberal Hollywood", so they can dominate it too.
There might be a bit of the culture outside their hellscape universe, and that can't be allowed.
I also like Meredith Broussard on AI. I don't know if she has a substack but she has some good books and YT videos.
Roy, this is excellent. One line jumped out at me, because it sums up modern conservatism, and maybe it *always* summed up conservatism: “…we must accept that the world is just not with us…” This is the heart of what conservatives refuse to do, and they will use ignorance (look at all the big red states on the map compared to the smaller blue ones), denialism (J6 was only a protest that got a little out of hand) and outright lies (Trump won the 2020 election) to claim the world is in fact with them.
And the smarter or more ruthless ones will do what is necessary to MAKE the world be with them, for the world’s own good of course. I think it’s why they’ve given up on persuasion. Fear, demonization, and cheating are not methods used by confident people who believe they have something appealing to sell. And what is AI really but a form of cheating? Go ahead and give the fat old orange man six-pack abs if that’s how you see him and want others to see him. It brings the conservative vision of the world into the physical realm, and like conservatism it can be forced on the unwilling masses.
Lying about how "the world is in fact with them"? How 'bout "Everybody wanted Roe overturned, Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, they all wanted it sent back to the states!"
Some other, smarter, person pointed out what's so unusual about this lie, among the hundred or so lies he told in the debate. Because he's not lying about some people you've never met in a small town in Ohio you've never been to, he's lying TO YOU ABOUT YOU. And that's a lot more personal, isn't it?
You might say, "Well, who cares if liberals and Democrats are insulted at being lied about?" but the obvious group here is Republican women, many of whom did NOT want Roe overturned, and who may also hear in this lie "She wanted it even though she says now she didn't."
All true. But at this point does any sane person doubt that Donald Trump is a man who is very familiar with the phrase "you know you want it" when it comes to women?
"Ah, playing hard to get, are we?"
Because "impossible to get" is not in some men's vocabulary.
I forgot to add, he's saying "playing hard to get" as she attempts to gouge his eyes out with her car keys.
Tubby believes to his very core that Jean Carroll loved it, and that’s no doubt for him biggest shock about the verdict.
Oh, absolutely. "How could they have gotten it so wrong?" he asked himself. The smooth surface of his narcissism is self-perpetuating.
2 marks for "smooth surface of his narcissism'".
I disagree. Like other rapists, he gets off on dominance, being able to do things to her she doesn't want. He's a sadist.
I’ll accept that.
He likely still believes she loved it and is just trying to get a portion of his piece of the pie
If you're a celebrity, they let you.
Come to think of it, THAT should be his campaign slogan.
Even after eight years, he still puzzles me. "Look, I know the liberals and the Democrats didn't want it, but it was the right thing to do" was RIGHT THERE, waiting to be said, but he says this instead. Why? Is this some weird "I drink your milkshake" shit? I know I should give up trying to understand his motivations, his "strategy" when there's clearly no strategy. This shit just makes me tired.
Frightened narcissist power play is always a good bet.
True! It's important not to overthink these things, if you value your sanity.
He really hates to think that anyone could disagree with him
Oh, there's a strategy. Insist that a majority of the country supports everything you do, and never, ever apologize. Gaslighting, basically. And he can keep it up longer than you can fact-check him.
Smart essay, Roy. Come to think of it, Trump’s old Taj Mahal, that crumbling white elephant on the boardwalk, is another early example of the fash fashion you identify..
I really like your term “fash fashion.” Not depeche mode, but “mode fasciste.”
Mode Droit De Seigneur
Right turns only. Worked for J. Edgar!
De Trop as Will and Idea.
Thank you for this – I have been wondering what was putting me off so regarding the AI art I see. The garish colors, the weird bodies, & supersaturated reality is all bad enough, but you've pointed out the (what should be) obvious connections to fascist & Stalinist propaganda art, enough just information to push in a certain direction and only that direction.
The worst of it I see in Christian apologetics TikToks & YouTubes, where they're trying to make Bible stories look real.
Reading Roy's piece my brain went to modern day Christianity (or at least its most outloud-and-proud iterations), and the crushing need to convince themselves and everyone else that they have THE answers. Can't simply let the mystery be, or, dog forbid, revel in the mystery. Or let anyone else. Obviously, there are political implications -- we all must obey THEIR god. AI helps them produce the proof.
I think there was a line in one of Le Carre's Smiley novels: "the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt." Describes modern conservative christianity in a nutshell. Their own version of belief is unbearably threatened by every single person who believes differently or doesn't believe at all.
Good observation about fanatics. Always beware of zealous converts.
“The fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt” — so is the narcissist.
Isn't a narcissist a fanatic about themself?
Yes and no.
Your LeCarre quote reminds me of a similar one by I-don't-remember who, something like, "The person who most wants a visitation from God is not the atheist, but the believer."
Not Yogi?
Well, on the other hand, that wave gave us Giotto et alia. But that was before doubt, with which science has obliged us to live. The reaction is after long suppression, and explosive.
Its kind of weird that AI art so closely follows existing fascist esthetics. The LLMs that assemble it are just crunching randomly scraped art, but it has such a clear and obvious cheezy airbrushed style of its own. There's probably a real interesting story in there.
You go first...
"It was about the world passing them by." I think this hits it right on the nose. I'll go even farther: it's about the fear that the world is passing them by. With conservatives there's almost always an element of fear, a sense that somehow their world isn't really the correct one, ultimately that they could be WRONG about something--the one thing conservatives can never admit, particularly to themselves.
Trump is thus their perfect representative. He will never ever admit he's wrong.
As for abstract art, I don't know why, but I took to it immediately. Over the years I've become a pretty serious art lover, with very eclectic tastes, yet for me the pull of great abstract artists remains as strong as ever.
Well, you know we just have to watch some Hannity or read some Sowell and we'll wake up from our lefty delusions. Conversion therapy for politics.
I defer to Clement Greenberg.
https://artsolido.com/2017/02/08/avant-garde-and-kitsch-by-clement-greenberg/
I've wondered if later on in the song when Bob talks about -
"An’ here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice"
he may have foreseen, 50 some odd years ago, we may be forced to live through a second Trump administration.
Oof.
It has less to do with the content of AI than that. It's part of the attack of the ruling class on unalienated labor, or, or any work done because you actually enjoy it and might therefore be mentally free of the strictures of the ruling class. They succeeded long ago with industrial labor; they succeeded with farming; and they've been busy proletarianizing pink- and white-collar labor these past few decades. The arts and sciences are the last holdouts of unalienated labor. So the ruling class is throwing everything they can against them, whether by bringing them into discredit as insufficiently profitable or political, by administratively subordinating them, or by inventing cheap substitutes that require no human craft like AI. They won't be satisfied till we're all obedient and miserable, with nothing to brighten our lives but child-rearing and punditry.
Well-stated, thank you. Ideas like these should underpin anything else that we say on the topic of AI and aesthetics.
Reminds me of the standard right-wing response to complaints by fast-food workers about low pay and bad working conditions, which is to post a picture of one of those order kiosks at McDonalds, gleefully proclaiming "Because you got so uppity, you're gonna be replaced by robots LOL"
It’s also weird that we’re simultaneously told there aren’t enough workers because of slowing population growth, yet automation is going to make everyone unemployed, so shut up and endure your terrible job. I mean, wouldn’t automation free up workers in one area to fill positions in other areas where there are worker shortages? It must be yet another mystery of Capitalism that has not yet been revealed to me, a sinner.
It's quantum-mechanical in its perplexity. Like Shroedinger's Immigrant, collecting welfare while stealin' our jerbs.
I initially read "jerbs" as slang for gerbils, which I think is just as appropriate under the circumstances.
I wonder where it came from? Might be a variation on "Erhmahgerd", under the general category of "internet slang for how dumb people talk."
Objection! Assumes punditry is a bright spot, which it's demonstrably not.
Back when I was going to do my pretentious "criticism" of Marx, it was office jobs that I was going to use as "proof". I've learned since how much like those old factories even white collar office jobs have become. And what's alienation more than working at, say, Barnes & Noble because of your love for books & reading and then never being able to share that love because you're expected to treat books as items to keep stocked?
It helps to work in a big library and realize just how much of what people have to do there is more and more glorified data entry.
I liked working with rare and unique media because the skills and resources of a serious cataloger-cum-bibliographer could be brought to bear. I'll hazard that there's never been a better time, assuming one is capable and can get paid to do a good job.
(I don't mean to imply I worked at the highest levels, but I did work in some great settings, like a world-class rare books library. I was more or less put in charge of its reference collection, which was sprawling and fascinating. If only I could do that again!)
"They won't be satisfied till we're all obedient and miserable"
They won't be satisfied then either. The hole in them where their soul doesn't exist can never be filled.
"child-rearing and punditry"
Can we all just agree to take a hard pass on the child-rearing and go straight to punditry? 'Cause who has the time to do child-rearing right? Whereas punditry, well, what else is there?
Whoa.
The AI details are what Kingsley Amis calls ‘the Fleming effect” in a 007 adventure; make asides that have some journalistic value and people will swallow the fantasy whole. It’s a technology that wastes vast amounts of energy to create preposterous images of a fat, old, mouthy and dreary piece of golf-trash as Thor, Superman, or a combination of the two. The faces are never quite right, they do expressions human faces can’t do, and there’s something baked into the algorithms that makes me worry that the machines are mocking us.
"technology that wastes vast amounts of energy"
God, please nobody tell me what the greenhouse gas emissions were for "Donald Trump as Cowboy Astronaut."
Do we need to count DJT's farting in this?
It's hard enough being a scientist these days, I'm staying far upwind with a back-of-the-envelope estimate, it'll just have to do.
The total erasure of meaning superficially resembles mockery?
I wouldn’t say that. I’m thinking specifically of how strangely it renders faces. I’ve seen very effective AI, such as that picture of Putin and Trump blissfully napping together. Imagine something like “A room full of excited people” as rendered by AI.
Or "Twelve Angry Men"?
And once again we ask "What, precisely, is it that men in particular have to be angry about?"
Funny how AI gives Lumpy Shit President more facial expression than reality.
But even AI can't get normal, healthy human laughter out of him.
Although researchers are working on a version of JD Vance that can go into a donut shop and order some donuts without creeping everyone out.
We may see this in our lifetimes!
I do like his half-distant, thought-adjacent gaze, with simultaneous detached, what-the-fuck-am-I doing-here vacant panic look...
Fills the bill for purposeful fantasy without requiring even a hint of artistic skill, as in the old days. https://germanhistory-intersections.org/en/germanness/ghis:image-206
Yoicks.
To be fair, if you push the machines too far, they will school you and you better damn well learn the lesson the first time.