Tag: ai

Human Feeling

My good friend Stanley Nelson and I have been discussing AI and the implications for artists and writers.  We agree and then we disagree.  We collaborated on three books, Murder So Wrong, Murder So Strange and Murder So Final, which were centered around a time in Oklahoma City when there was a newspaper war between the established and powerful newspaper and the upstart, The Oklahoma Journal.  We lived there during this time and knew many of the people involved.

We survive collaboration, just barely, and still speak, although there was a somewhat quiet phase right after the books.  Here was our latest email exchange about AI.

Stan.

Once I stopped to study an oil of yours, hung somewhere in your house. I was particularly taken by how you used simple, brief touches and swaths of color to suggest, successfully, a window, a door, a wall, a shadow. It was hard not to compare that with a nude portrait you did decades ago, hung so that it commanded the den in the house in Del City. I found that one far busier with its colors, not quite achieving the impressionism I figured was being tried for, although I never asked about it. I had only taken a junior high-school art class, but I had learned enough to wonder.

This is an opinion, but I should say your representational and sometimes impressionistic art has evolved over time, and for the better. Whether anyone agrees is hardly the point, which instead is about how art gives us a way to gauge someone else’s progress, or even regress, as an interpreter of the world around them. Consider the obsessive study of Van Gogh’s progress as an artist. Much like science, the matter is never conclusive.

So, here is my point: that art is not, nor has it ever been, a matter of instant gratification or product quality, i.e., salability or favorable critical appreciation. The goal of art is personal expression on a scale greater than or, at least, different from the ordinary, and for that a person must be the source. To credit AI for arranging pixels—zeros and ones—so a visually striking picture appears is a bit like giving out prizes to frying pans for not burning the bacon.

My response:

The artist, human or AI, is judged by the results.  You can ponder the artist behind the work, but it is the art itself that sticks in our head.  If we could extract personal expressions in art, then your point would be well stated.  I’m just not sure we can.  I have buried in my basement an accumulation of art that has not been seen by many–you might even call it hidden.  Why, because it was not what I was trying to achieve.  Failures?  No, probably not, those mostly got painted over; this would be “it’s okay, but just not right”.  So, if the result is what matters, soulless, stolen, zeros and ones generated art still must be judged by the result.  Therein lies the problem, the results are awesome.

That’s one of the reasons I think AI writing is not as powerful as art.  The writer is easier to “feel” in writing, I think, than in art (1).  Of course, that is still debatable.  I have played with AI writing, book descriptions and others, and it feels different.  While competent, there is something missing.  Now, you can say the same about art–but I don’t get that feeling with art itself.  It looks great, conveys with subtlety the qualities listed in the instructions.  I’m still going to say the art generated by AI will stunt any on-going development of human artists.  Why do something that is mostly inferior to what can be done with AI.  While it’s sad, it doesn’t change the fact; AI results are better.

I haven’t heard back from Stan, but my gut says he is going to say bullshit (although he doesn’t use that language as much as I do).  If you’re a creative person AI is a threat.  If not your soul, then maybe your pocketbook.  But AI is going to replace many people, people who love what they do, but cannot work for nothing or 24 hours a day.

Even with that pain, I will still say on almost any objective level AI is brilliant.  Maybe an asshole but many creative people (things?) have been assholes, so what’s so different.

I believe that we all will incorporate AI tools into much of our daily lives.  How do we not use that easy access tool that produces such amazing and easy results.  Many of us already have and it will grow because it works.

Are there risks, even existential risks?  Yes.

(1) When I wrote the “feeling” sentence I was thinking about creative writing, such as novels.  It’s possible that technical or business writing will be better not worse when done by AI since there was not much “feel” involved in the human version.

Lost and Found

It’s been a while.  Did I get lost?  No, not really, just stopped writing.  When I’m writing books everything about my day seems to stay in focus.  The book writing tends to keep me engaged and alert in all aspects of my life.  Without that focus I drift. 

So, I’ve been drifting.  What have I found.  I started a new activity.  It’s a website selling stuff.  The stuff is shifting some but mostly it is bags, totes, duffels, some apparel, posters, and some yoga items.  Why.  Mostly because I like to design and play with designs in bold striking colors.  That is my art.  This is some of that, but different—it is using all the tools including AI to create images.  The images are more important to me than the products—so the bag becomes art.  Is it art?  Is it my art?

I really don’t know the answer to that question.  My first reaction to AI creating something was directly related to writing.  I was playing with the tool and discovered it might be more effective at writing than I was.  Or at least faster!  The more I experimented, the more I became disillusioned about my writing.  Do we already have all the knowledge we will ever need and therefore, all new things will just be rehashed from past creations.  AI will learn and spit out the next best seller based on parameters entered by AI “talkers”.  No need for authors.  Fast, easy, and cheap.

I started using AI images to add to this blog.  That was some time ago.  It was amazing.  Enter words and there in an instant an image.  The fascination with the process started to interfere with my writing.  I became enamored with the non-creation of non-original art that was not my art or anyone else’s and was based on past art that was used without permission to teach a computer to create something new.  It was wrong, but the results were so right—and inevitably better than my art, better than my book, better than my blog, better than?

So, I tumbled from the haze into creating bags using my art, and AI generated images.  Probably no logic in that, but it’s a fact; I’m enjoying what I’m doing.

Will I write again?  This post is part of that answer.  You need to write to be able to write.

The web site is www.myusagifts.com.  The company is USA Gifts.  The focus was originally on southwest states and southwest designs.  My fascination with New Mexico continues.  These are printed products based on digital designs.  I’m now creating looks to represent the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Texas, and Oklahoma.  Six states that link southwest designs, Native American images, and Hispanic cultures into a diverse and dynamic grouping of products and looks.

Some recent responses from book readers to new customers have been both encouraging and heartwarming.

It is an ever-changing world, some good, some bad; but still a world we want to be in and find ways to be creative.