Excellent piece, Noah. As an artist / writer married to an academic, this obviously resonates. Like you, I have already lost quite a few copywriting jobs and I expect to lose more. My wife was laid off from her position as an English professor, along with 60+ other faculty members, last year.
I think a lot of what you write here is self-evident, or at least I would have thought so a year or two ago. However, as with my other bugbear, Spotify, my greatest concern is not the dominance of the shameless tech billionaire philistines who birthed this catastrophe, but the apologists and accelerationists within my own tribe.
Just as I resigned myself as a young punk rocker to the reality that it would be necessary for me and mine to somehow coexist in an uneasy peace with the overwhelming Goliath of corporate entertainment, I assumed the same would be true for things like Spotify and AI: sure, it was the dominant normie paradigm, but my friends and I knew better, and our egalitarian niche of self-determination would sustain us as we continued to seek alternate paths. But as I watch many of the people (and the kind of people) I once respected as allies and peers so readily capitulate to something that seems to me so clearly vulgar, destructive and wrong, I no longer feel any confidence that there are enough of us to sustain such a niche.
I can’t really express the level of disappointment I feel when People Who Should Know Better take this gullible if-you-can’t-beat-‘em approach to what is now occurring. Where is the resistance, Noah?
Basically, it not the existence of things like AI and Spotify that breaks my heart; it is the disillusionment of suddenly feeling like I am alone at the Alamo.
“When somebody has used Ai to write work that is demonstrably better than Berry’s, and when this better is demonstrably attributable to the use of Ai, then I will speak of Ai with a more respectful tone of voice, though I still will not use it.”
The example I often use is John Coltrane.
While I believe AI is still far from being able to passably replicate a Trane solo, I also think it will happen eventually, and maybe sooner than we think. Because of this, I dislike that so much of the critique I've seen of AI from artists thus far has consisted on dunking on the technology’s ineptness and its many uncanny mistakes. This won’t always be true, and when it isn’t, this is when the rubber will hit the road.
If you were to play me a previously unheard Coltrane solo alongside an identical Coltrane solo made with AI, I will always want to hear the former and not the latter. What it *sounds* like is beside the point. Because what I really want to hear is not a particularly excellent tenor saxophone solo—I can hear that anywhere—but the human agency that jazz music, in particular, makes audible. I want to hear the genius brain of a corporeal John Coltrane making decisions in real time and hear this great artist react spontaneously to his environment; I want to hear in his solo what books are on his nightstand, what he had for breakfast, and how much or how little sleep he had the night before. To try to hear this in an otherwise identical Trane solo made by an algorithm would require a suspension of disbelief of which I am incapable.
I have no doubt that soon I won’t be able to determine in a blindfold test the difference between an actual John Coltrane solo and an AI-derived simulation of a John Coltrane solo, and I bet many Coltrane scholars and former Coltrane bandmates and producers won’t be able to, either. The ability to distinguish between the two, however, is not the point, is it?
I agree. It seems clear to me that an orange and orange flavoring aren't the same thing, even if similar in taste, and this is largely how I see all this stuff. In food, perhaps culturally we can understand the difference better than in art.
I've certainly received feedback from clients, in the past, that was literally "Here is how Ai said you should edit the copy." In marketing it doesn't really matter to me, since the entire framework of the field has long rusted through, but in terms of writing, or Coltrane, the point is to hear Coltrane, not something Coltrane-ish, even if aesthetically "close enough" for the general public.
For me, this all boils down to the fundamental belief that if it makes dollars it makes sense. The idea that winning is winning and only suckers loose–especially for the sake of their values–is so prevalent in our culture. Where we once valued principles and ethics, especially those of us who grew up with role models like Ian MacKaye or Utah Phillips, culture reveres winning, and winners, and it seems for many, the end for most certainly justify the means.
Excellent piece, Noah. As an artist / writer married to an academic, this obviously resonates. Like you, I have already lost quite a few copywriting jobs and I expect to lose more. My wife was laid off from her position as an English professor, along with 60+ other faculty members, last year.
I think a lot of what you write here is self-evident, or at least I would have thought so a year or two ago. However, as with my other bugbear, Spotify, my greatest concern is not the dominance of the shameless tech billionaire philistines who birthed this catastrophe, but the apologists and accelerationists within my own tribe.
Just as I resigned myself as a young punk rocker to the reality that it would be necessary for me and mine to somehow coexist in an uneasy peace with the overwhelming Goliath of corporate entertainment, I assumed the same would be true for things like Spotify and AI: sure, it was the dominant normie paradigm, but my friends and I knew better, and our egalitarian niche of self-determination would sustain us as we continued to seek alternate paths. But as I watch many of the people (and the kind of people) I once respected as allies and peers so readily capitulate to something that seems to me so clearly vulgar, destructive and wrong, I no longer feel any confidence that there are enough of us to sustain such a niche.
I can’t really express the level of disappointment I feel when People Who Should Know Better take this gullible if-you-can’t-beat-‘em approach to what is now occurring. Where is the resistance, Noah?
Basically, it not the existence of things like AI and Spotify that breaks my heart; it is the disillusionment of suddenly feeling like I am alone at the Alamo.
“When somebody has used Ai to write work that is demonstrably better than Berry’s, and when this better is demonstrably attributable to the use of Ai, then I will speak of Ai with a more respectful tone of voice, though I still will not use it.”
The example I often use is John Coltrane.
While I believe AI is still far from being able to passably replicate a Trane solo, I also think it will happen eventually, and maybe sooner than we think. Because of this, I dislike that so much of the critique I've seen of AI from artists thus far has consisted on dunking on the technology’s ineptness and its many uncanny mistakes. This won’t always be true, and when it isn’t, this is when the rubber will hit the road.
If you were to play me a previously unheard Coltrane solo alongside an identical Coltrane solo made with AI, I will always want to hear the former and not the latter. What it *sounds* like is beside the point. Because what I really want to hear is not a particularly excellent tenor saxophone solo—I can hear that anywhere—but the human agency that jazz music, in particular, makes audible. I want to hear the genius brain of a corporeal John Coltrane making decisions in real time and hear this great artist react spontaneously to his environment; I want to hear in his solo what books are on his nightstand, what he had for breakfast, and how much or how little sleep he had the night before. To try to hear this in an otherwise identical Trane solo made by an algorithm would require a suspension of disbelief of which I am incapable.
I have no doubt that soon I won’t be able to determine in a blindfold test the difference between an actual John Coltrane solo and an AI-derived simulation of a John Coltrane solo, and I bet many Coltrane scholars and former Coltrane bandmates and producers won’t be able to, either. The ability to distinguish between the two, however, is not the point, is it?
I agree. It seems clear to me that an orange and orange flavoring aren't the same thing, even if similar in taste, and this is largely how I see all this stuff. In food, perhaps culturally we can understand the difference better than in art.
I've certainly received feedback from clients, in the past, that was literally "Here is how Ai said you should edit the copy." In marketing it doesn't really matter to me, since the entire framework of the field has long rusted through, but in terms of writing, or Coltrane, the point is to hear Coltrane, not something Coltrane-ish, even if aesthetically "close enough" for the general public.
For me, this all boils down to the fundamental belief that if it makes dollars it makes sense. The idea that winning is winning and only suckers loose–especially for the sake of their values–is so prevalent in our culture. Where we once valued principles and ethics, especially those of us who grew up with role models like Ian MacKaye or Utah Phillips, culture reveres winning, and winners, and it seems for many, the end for most certainly justify the means.