Alchemists in the medieval period apparently believed it was possible to turn matter into gold – or, at least, were attempting to find out whether it was possible to do so through an early, rudimentary version of what eventually became alchemy.
Typically, alchemists tried to convert lead into gold, primarily because lead was common, and gold was not.
Gold was precious, and if you had an unlimited supply of gold (or a less limited supply of something else like lead, In gold), then you can make yourself rich-
—or at least that was the theory.
Personally, I’ve always wondered why alchemists didn’t think about it a little more.
Of course, this is easy for me to say, with my 20th century education, which included things like the economics of supply and demand. But I have always felt that it would be counterproductive to boost the readily available supply of gold into the market, as the price of gold would immediately decrease in direct proportion to the supply.
A real-world example of this phenomenon: salt. Salt was once a prized commodity because it was very difficult to extract and transport, and so Everyone It was needed. Of course, it was not on the level of gold, but still rare and essential enough to make it highly valued.
However, salt is virtually disposable today, for the simple reason that it is incredibly common. Modern technology has made it easier to obtain and less necessary to obtain. Supply increased; Demand decreased; What was once priceless is now virtually everywhere.
Nowadays, people are not trying to make gold from other substances, but they are Are Taking a slightly different version of alchemy: making art with AI.
The materials are different, but the idea is the same: If AI owners can bypass the intensive process of purchasing art, or music, or video, or any other type of creative content, they can make their own gold, in a way.
Except: It won’t work that way.
In fact, it’s already doing a lot of work Adverse way.
The public response to AI-generated art may have initially been one of astonishment or joy. But the more time goes on, and the more this new cheap content floods the rhetorical market, the more the reaction becomes decidedly negative.
To be sure, the output of generic AI is novel, and it can sometimes be enjoyable. But what is this Not there. Now there is more: Precious,
An ever-growing segment of the population can now smell AI art. It’s obvious, when you know what to look for. it sticks. Its clearThis is immediately distasteful, people are active Avoid When they can, and immediately devalue everything associated with it.
I wouldn’t be entirely alone in saying that an otherwise excellent blog post can be ruined for me, simply because it has an AI thumbnail image. A song I might have liked is dead to me once I find out an AI made it. Artwork that I previously found interesting becomes instantly and irreversibly meaningless to me as soon as I discover that AI had something to do with its creation.
The market has been flooded for a long time. For several years now supply has been outstripping demand by several orders of magnitude.
Generative AI has not been able to create that figurative gold, because gold is rare and difficult to obtain, and that rarity is what makes it valuable.
Art is valuable because it is not easy to make.
And I am interested in art-We Are interested in any and all forms of art-Because Humans have created it. That’s what makes it interesting; WhoThe Howand especially Why,
The existence of the work itself is only part of the issue, and realizing an image out of thin air makes the point of the art disappear, in much the same way that putting a football on Waymo to run up and down the street for a few hours would make the point of the game disappear entirely.
The struggle that created the art – the human beings who felt it, processed it, and created it in this unique shape the way only they could – is an integral part of the art itself. The human story behind it is the missing, unique component that AI can’t reproduce.
This is what I and many others find so disgusting about generic AI art; It is missing the literal soul that makes art interesting in the first place.
We care about art because it is a form of connection with other human beings. Otherwise, we won’t care Who Made a painting, or when, or how, or why. We won’t care which artist sings the song, or whether the song is about an experience we can relate to.
I can enjoy a book or movie or TV show without thinking about how it was made, but ultimately, inevitably, I want to know. More About how it came to be, the writers behind it, and the people who helped bring it to life.
If it weren’t for this, we certainly wouldn’t be watching interviews with creators, or reading about their stories, or being interested in the origins of their work. We wouldn’t have entire genres of videos dedicated to those stories, like we have now.
There can be no such thing as a famous artist if art can be so easily separated from the person who created it.
the art is really interesting Because A human being made it through a long, arduous process that may be unique only to them. The human story behind the art is as much a part of the work as the paint or notes or words or any other part of the medium.
And no, I’m sorry, but I’m definitely rooting for you to get to the last piece. does not count-
-Not that it matters. I’ve strayed a bit from the topic, but whether AI-generated art is actually art is not the issue, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. Despite this, there is a lot of flooding in the area.
AI-generated content is everywhere; it is inevitable; And so it has reduced itself to something less than useless.
AI will undoubtedly displace countless workers, as bosses with more power than taste become omnipresent. still:
AI will never completely displace creative people, because the moment AI can mass-produce any kind of creative work, that work will no longer be worth producing in the first place.
It will be toxic; A trend that has reached its peak is already rotten.
The more gold you make, the less the value of gold.
However, good luck with that leadership.