Post

Had that discussion this week and to explain "what's art?" I tried to explain the basic artistic act of selection - what's to include, what's to omit - but they didn't even know Marcel Duchamp and his Readymades.

I recently tried to explain why a small child's drawing of a pig will always be 1'000'000'000% better than a generated AI image of a pig. And it basically boils down to "the kid *wants* to draw a pig!"

I mean, this is how our daughter drew pigs when she was 4 and I couldn't love them more!

You can consume something amazing without having the first clue as to why you enjoyed it or how it was made but you cannot *create* something good without purposefully, intentionally shaping it that way.

Of course, there are happy accidents, discoveries along the way and you can even, sometimes, get lucky with no experience or plan (but I would wager, just the once). But without intent driving your decisions, you will never cook, sing, write, draw, paint or create anything worthwhile.

And this is what the people championing AI don't seem to grasp. It's all missing intention & people can feel that, even without knowing why. Even when it drapes itself in the stolen skin of competence, it's all empty inside.

There is a woman I know who uses AI to produce graphics. She has no traditional graphics skills. On one hand, I don't know if I have the right to tell her that she can't get the ideas in her head out onto a screen. I don't want to use those tools as I want MY picture in MY head on the screen.

I don't debate them any more as I'm putting my point across and they are putting what I type into a prompt and getting ChatGPT to 'argue' with me. They are just copying and pasting everything and I find it supremely creepy at best.

I stopped engaging with people on linkedin because of this. It's amazing how you can *instantly* tell that's what they're doing, though.