this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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Someone on bluesky reposted this image from user @yeetkunedo that I find describes (one aspect of) my disdain for AI.
Text reads: Generative Al is being marketed as a tool designed to reduce or eliminate the need for developed, cognitive skillsets. It uses the work of others to simulate human output, except that it lacks grasp of nuance, contains grievous errors, and ultimately serves the goal of human beings being neurologically weaker due to the promise of the machine being better equipped than the humans using it would ever exert the effort to be. The people that use generative Al for art have no interest in being an artist; they simply want product to consume and forget about when the next piece of product goes by their eyes. The people that use generative Al to make music have no interest in being a musician; they simply want a machine to make them something to listen to until they get bored and want the machine to make some other disposable slop for them to pass the time with.
The people that use generative Al to write things for them have no interest in writing. The people that use generative Al to find factoids have no interest in actual facts. The people that use generative Al to socialize have no interest in actual socialization.
In every case, they've handed over the cognitive load of developing a necessary, creative human skillset to a machine that promises to ease the sweat equity cost of struggle. Using generative Al is like asking a machine to lift weights on your behalf and then calling yourself a bodybuilder when it's done with the reps. You build nothing in terms of muscle, you are not stronger, you are not faster, you are not in better shape. You're just deluding yourself while experiencing a slow decline due to self-inflicted atrophy.
Everyone who uses AI is slowly committing suicide, check ✅
The people who commission artists have no interest in being an artist; they simply want the product. Are people who commission artists also "slowly committing suicide?"
If we're going with the "suicide" analogy, I'd say that AI is suicide like eating fast food/takeout every night instead of cooking for yourself is. It's an easy shortcut, but you are probably missing out on vital nutrients (in the case of AI, that would be critical thinking skills or potentially missing out on finding a hobby that you actually really enjoy). You could instead learn to cook yourself (which some people really enjoy and find as a meditative kind of experience), hire a nutritionist to make a meal plan, or even go to a restaurant instead.
Personally, I don't think it's a great analogy, and there's a much better basically 1 to 1 relationship between Gen AI and retail therapy/fast fashion. They're all bad for the environment, rely on worker abuse in many different forms, and all work to further our dependency on corporations and enrich their owners.
People often make the argument about Gen AI "democratizing" art, but that's nonsense. Art was already "democratized" by easy access to not just tools like a pencil and knowledge, but by the fact that even before the internet art was the most easily accessible it has ever been in history. You could go to a store and buy a canvas to put on your wall in the 50s. A century before and that would've been something only the wealthy could think of doing by hiring an artist to make a custom piece. People complain about artists charging too much, and yet a large portion of artists charge below minimum wage for commissions.
And that's not to say that I hate AI for the sake of hating it. I hate the implementation of it. Gen AI is just a more complex version of the Gaussian Blur tool in Photoshop. But it's fed with effectively stolen labor and robs artists of potential clients, people from possibly discovering a new thing they love doing, and clients from developing a working relationship with the artists that they commission. There's a great post that Temmie of Undertale fame posted recently about how when Toby can't describe what he wants animated he'll act it out and so he danced around with a broom to show her how he wanted the idle animation for an old man to go. That's the kind of stuff that can come up in the commission process. Obviously that's not gonna happen to everyone, but half the fun of art is the collaboration. It's like playing a co-op game.