[NetBehaviour] Moar AI

[marc.garrett]

Hi Rhea,

I enjoyed reading 'Complaint in the Age of its Operationalization. '

I am encouraged that you find much of anything related to Musk cringeworthy.

"They are cringe because everything Musk does is cringe. They are yet another product of a needy, try-hard, middle-aged man-child nerd’s desperation for love and attention, to be one of the popular kids, even and especially as a de facto dictator. If the gap between power and the expression of desire defines cringe, Musk is the Black-Scholes-being-hit-by-negative-prices of cringe."

The man-child's power to demolish anything he fancies is a harsh reminder that people and communities online are vulnerable when they rely on the master's tools to build shared values on platforms built by corporations. It's a warning that if we rely too heavily on these corporate platforms and tools, we risk cultural erosion and the loss of years of hard-earned, mutually beneficial relationships with others.

"When considering the problem of fakes in art, Goodman uses examples of forged paintings being revealed in order to argue that we cannot know which features of an artwork will affect its authenticity in the future. These aren’t a matter of chemical or radiological analysis of images, although these developments have certainly revealed an increasing number of fakes in recent years. Rather it is a matter of looking at the artwork and considering it in a different light."

Social media platforms have been flooded with the AI-generated trend dubbed the “Ghiblification” "with people transforming personal photos, memes and even historical images into visuals reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s art style. Users also generated and shared other iconic visual aesthetics — from Disney, Pixar, Lego, The Simpsons, and Dr. Seuss, as well as vintage styles such as those of Rankin/Bass (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) [...]. The real danger of current AI trends lies not just in fakes, ethics or automation but in the silent heat rising from countless overworked servers. As AI use skyrockets, so does its environmental impact, and that's a growing concern we can no longer afford to ignore.

"We are not entitled to live off the epistemic passive income from our investment in a romantic understanding of human uniqueness."

Completely agree. Deals with the nature of our knowledge in its own right is 'probably' as akin as anything in its own right, art, technology, sex, war, food, etc. Everything is attached to a set of other elements, never in the singular. That purity died along with the romanticism of genius propped up by deluded visions of post-modernity and colonial defaults. However, these romanticisms still exist in our everyday lives and networked forms, rebuilding from the top down and reproducing the backward, masculine defaults and structures promoted, funded, and maintained through technological protocols and their underlying elite systems.

"It is a failure of critical imagination to simply object to a product’s fulfilment of the limited terms chosen for its initial promotion. It is like a cat chasing a red dot on the floor and feeling pleased with themself when they catch it. While screaming at anyone who points out that the dot is coming from somewhere and that lasers have other more interesting uses."

My position is not as a puritan or an absolutist. I know that if we’re going to be using networked technology these days, AI will be involved in some way. However, I see AI's massive shift in our culture worldwide as a political form of digital colonialism. Still, it would be disingenuous to ignore that technology has always been used to exploit others, simultaneously bringing positive benefits. My job here is to identify the positives, negatives, and grey areas of this accelerating, ubiquitous medium, which many people use daily in various life activities.

My guide or critical palette for assessing and navigating through all this is an assemblage of chosen methodologies that help me understand where the works I’m examining sit within a broader cultural context. For example, I view these artworks from a permacultural, political, ethical, class, and intersectional perspective. Alongside these key elements, I bring years of working with art, technology, and social change to the table.

My focus is: What are these artworks doing, and are they doing what they claim to do? And if they are doing what they say, what does this mean, and is this enough? What would the work look like if the artists took their propositions and intentions towards a more critical awareness, openness and ethical standing? This isn’t to suggest that by critiquing this work, my peers, allies, and I hold all the answers. At what cost are these artworks made? By examining the function, aesthetics, technology, motives, and narratives (abstract, conceptual, or not) of these artworks more deeply, we can better understand where the artists stand creatively, ecologically, politically, and culturally. This will help me reflect on my and others' relationship with art and AI and what that relationship truly means.

Wishing you well.
Marc

On Friday, 28 March 2025 at 03:52, Rhea Myers via NetBehaviour <netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org> wrote:

> Slop, ghibliization, and the cringe of the Musk administration -
>
> https://rhea.art/2025/03/27/complaint-in-the-age-of-its-operationalization/
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