Pretending that consuming A.I. content is anything more than insulting is silly. Now, I must first point out that A.I., like computers, are tools. And I’m perfectly ok with you using whatever tools help you the best. Obviously I’m not against computers, here we are right now! I’m writing this on a computer and you are consuming this on a computer. Tools all around.

However it’s quite peeving when people hand me a tool as though it’s a final product.

Ideas

Let’s say I ask for a chair and you hand me some planks of wood, a saw, and screwdriver with screws. Yes, in some odd sense there is a “chair” here, but not in any usable sense. I have to do all the assembly. If I wanted to make a chair I would just go and do just that. I want your final product, not because I won’t ever “build a chair” with you. But because when asking for a chair, it’s a courtesy to be given a actual, assembled chair.

This is quite similar to how people are using A.I. I might ask (wether directly, or an inferred “ask” by trying to view some media) to hear somebody’s opinions. But if all I am returned is some A.I. slop that I have to piece together, that is unacceptable. I want your ideas, not some synthesized text that happenstantially appears as a coherent argument. Contrarily, when I receive your actual words which you have transcribed into some form of media, wether that be written or spoken, I am receiving information that has first passed through your brain to judge it for logical continuity and accuracy, and I can trust that my time may now be focused on discussing the meaning of your statements, not making sure that it even makes sense in the first place. When I ingest A.I.’s content, I am doing all the mental lifting of asserting it’s correctness (I’m assembling the metaphorical chair.)

Why might I feel so deeply about this?

  1. Well, by making me “assemble the chair” you are quite clearly stating that my time is markedly less valuable than yours. See, if you valued my time, you would assemble your thoughts clearly then present them to me. By not doing this you are saying that my “mental compute” is less valuable, so therefor assembling your thoughts should be done in my head, instead of yours.

  2. You are preying on people who don’t understand their worth. And here’s a question for you to think about: “If somebody is consuming A.I. content and they don’t realize, is that bad?” I would answer yes. Most people are not inherently good users of their own time, so by you synthesizing content with A.I. for them to consume, you are:

    1. First stating that consuming their time is an accetpatble practice, instead of encouraging enlightening learning.

    2. Second, you are also so unconcerned with their being that it’s not even worth your time to waste their time.

Art

Super easy example, I’m also no art connoisseur, nevertheless, the Mona Lisa:

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa

From Wikimedia Commons.

Had this been just synthesized by A.I., there would be no point in studying it, besides to make a better A.I. in the future. (And what for even then? You are pursuing improvement into a valueless endeavour.1) Had that been the case we would know absolutely that nobody was thinking anything when it was created. It would’ve been manufactured out of thin air and provides little-to-zero value.1

However, since we know a real human created this piece of art (we aren’t the History Channel with some alien conspiracies out here (at least not right now)). We can ponder what the meaning of Mona Lisa’s smile is, or where the bridge in the background is leading to2. If A.I. were to produce some peculiar results we would just chalk it up to “hallucinations” and nothing more.

Videos

This whole idea boils down to an idea I had heard discussed when I was studying video editing.

“Evergreen content”

This is content (content meaning basically anything) that perhaps doesn’t have massive disruption right away, but will have a “slow burn” of popularity. This is to say that people keep coming back to the content. Perhaps for a forth or fifth view. Of course you can have evergreen content that is disruptive right away, however, in our attention-span optimized consumerist culture, they are drifting towards mutual exclusivity.

What is considered “evergreen” might differ from person to person slightly, we all have a different favorite movie, for example. However, nobody’s favorite movie Marvel movie #319,291 because it’s plot made you think. Or Mr. Beast’s challenge #991,010,109 because it astutely handled existential themes and ideas. Those franchises are just cyclical content machines that are only producing content for the sake of wasting time. Now, you might say that “It’s not wasting time. I’m relaxing”. Wrong, you are wasting time. And I will not waste more of your time proving this, as I already have an article on it.

In Conclusion

Go read something real.

Go view something meaningful.

And create something worthwhile.

Footnotes

  1. There are reasons to have A.I. like any tool. In my case, image generators are helpful to create a first rough draft of an image, which I then go back and trace and edit until I have something basically new. ↩ ↩2

  2. Link to the high-resolution version so you can discover for yourself. ↩

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