This is sort of a continuation of the post about what generative AI boosters are missing about art, where I expressed an opinion that even if generative AI eventually becomes capable of creating legitimately beautiful texts or images or musical tracks, people would still treat generated works as “slop” and not want to engage with them.
I believe that the opinion I expressed there is, overall, a harsher opinion than the one I hold on AI-generated software (which I dislike, but can tolerate in specific circumstances). Software, a lot of people argue, is also a kind of art. While I largely agree (pretty much anything other than the most basic piece of software will reflect the author’s views and desires, and can be analyzed as such), I also see that software also tends to have practical needs, and in some cases, a generated tool can be better than having none at all.
As I see it, the people who promote generative AI under a promise that it will “democratize” artistic / creative work or make personal communication easier are misunderstanding a very important thing.
I can see the part of the argument that says that a lot of people have good artistic ideas that they’re simply incapable of properly expressing. I, myself, have a few that probably will not ever turn into complete works because I’m not good enough at writing that kind of stuff. The problem is that even if generative AI is developed to such an extent that it will no longer make errors or have significant negative externalities, a lot of people will still prefer to avoid any artistic content that seems generated.
Lots of people these days are talking about how generative AI technology is
leading workers to lose skills, bosses to trust chatbots more than their
employees, folks at risk to make absurd decisions, etc.
As these models are very capable of providing wrong, yet correct-seeming,
answers, this causes people to accept low-quality results and pass them through,
as if there’s nothing wrong with them, especially when contrasted with asking
questions from other people, who are much more likely to refuse or question
one’s request or take way more time to accomplish it properly.