I wonder if any character in Star Wars ever felt guilty for using a droid. Shut up, R2, I’ll use my own map to reach Alderaan! Hey, 3PO! You can’t just translate Wookie, you have to pay the translators! Those dern droids’re takin our jobs!
I made the header for this Substack using ChatGPT. I feel guilty about that. First, because apparently ChatGPT scans the internet without permission and uses artists’ work to ‘teach’ its system how to create images. Remember all those ‘terms and conditions’ we unwittingly signed? So did all those artists, and they were unwittingly letting their work form the basis of other work, completely without pay or mention. It’s technically legal, and not a copyright violation, but only technically so. And it feels icky.
But should it? No one in Star Wars or most science fiction feels guilty about using AI. But that’s because those stories weren’t really about AI anxiety. Those stories assumed that AI would just be incorporated one day into society. It glosses over that rough few decades or so where society had to deal with massive change. Other science fiction stories, however, make that AI anxiety a central feature. Books like I, Robot and certainly a lot of cyberpunk deal with job loss and loss of humanity to a new and uncertain growth in artificial intelligence. Most of it is bleak. But that’s what makes for interesting stories. What makes for a boring story is a guy typing in a prompt, having an image created, and feeling a little bit bad about it.
Do those artists deserve to be recognized and/or paid for their work? Absolutely! Is there any way to ensure that happens without hamstringing AI? Probably not. Is it worth it? Moot point, it’s happening.
So I’m left with three choices. Set up a droid scanner and keep any sign of artificial intelligence out of my cantina, ignore all protests from civilization and jump head-first into the singularity, or try to find a balance.
Everything AI is doing, and ChatGPT is doing, is legal. For now. I think that’s the dividing line. I feel guilty for using ChatGPT, but it is legal. I can advocate for politicians to intervene, but even then the damage has already been done. Going back would be a quagmire, but going forward feels unfair. So then I’ll have to deal with that unfairness. If that means there’s less art online, less human-produced content online, and less human produced stuff in general, well, that means I should elevate actual human produced stuff more. That’s a lovely way of achieving balance.
Go ahead and use AI to make all your artwork and term papers. Just be sure to go to a local art fair and buy something a human made with their actual hands. Consider it a monetary wash. All that money you would have spent on digital content without AI? Use it for human-made experiences. Go see live music since you’re not paying for digital anymore. Buy a physical copy of a book from an author you attended a book signing for. Buy something made by a glass blower! Balance actual human work with your use of AI. That way us humans can get rewarded and encouraged to do all the fun stuff like crafts and arts, and R2 can deal with all the boring data. Sure, let the droids take our jobs, we’ll get more fun ones since people actually care about things humans make again. Or I’m being hopelessly naïve and the world will end in an oligarchic cataclysm. Well, that’s just another reason to encourage people to take up blacksmithing!