Elinor Nauen

The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.

~ Ted Chiang

I found this in Austin Kleon's essential substack. He goes on to say, "To be fair, I think we'd been doing a pretty good job at lowering our cultural expectations prior to the popularization of A.I.! In fact, I think one of the reasons the results of A.I. are so acceptable if not exciting to so many people is because they've been trained on the never-ending slop of online 'content' and the homogenous output of, say, mainstream Hollywood or reality television."

I have artist friends who love playing with AI to create images to accompany their words, & vice versa. The results look to me like adult coloring books, quite honestly, but I have my own time wasters so who am I to judge. 

"Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings," said John Baldessari, and before him, W.H. Auden wrote, "Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings." The great artist has what Auden called "the gift of double focus," and what Keats called "negative capability" — an ability to see things through different lenses, to not only deal with uncertainty, but to use it as the fuel for one's work.

~ Austin Kleon

Kleon is the author of Steal Like an Artist & several other books on creativity. I'm a subscriber to his blog for its many kind, thoughtful insights & suggestions.