#and then those good intentions get bogged down by The System of it all all over again

[ghostcrows]

the way people talk about and view mental illness has always been under this veil of sympathy and understanding but really when that energy is most needed it all just vanishes. we have 200 more specific terms for certain symptoms and 2000 more videos on how to stop procrastinating and how to deal with rejection sensitive dysphoria and 50000 new videos on how it's In Your Brain and it's Hereditary and it's Homemade by your Primary Caregivers but people still dont really ...get it. they just dont. the resources available are so hollow. its empty promises. suicide hotline that just gets you insta-detained. therapist you talk in circles with for a third of your income per session. housing program with a wait list that only gets longer. this insistence that you build up a support system with no support. this quietly depleting time frame you have (or feel you have, this very real pressure) in which to get your shit together before you're just another sad statistic. always having to wait until you're at the brink of complete self destruction to get help, and by then. how much damage is already done

it's all just casting shadows on the wall

[catblgog]

Topic: AI

In a reading for my science fiction class I found an interesting excerpt that details how emotion informs the technology that humans create. I found it relevant to my own considerations of how AI art is missing something.

“An educational system that teaches us only about our tools—the how-to of them, their creation, their maintenance—and not about their function as facilitators of our desires, is, in essence, no more than a school of toaster repair. You can be the best toaster-repair person in the world, but you will cease to have a job if toast is no longer a desirable food item on the human breakfast menu. “The arts”—as we’ve come to term them—are not a frill. They are the heart of the matter, because they are about our hearts, and our technological inventiveness is generated by our emotions, not just by our minds. A society without the arts would have broken its mirror and cut out its heart. It would no longer be what we now recognize as human.” (Atwood - Scientific Romancing)

I looked an an article about AI art and the issues of copyright, but I got a bit bogged down in the details since it got complex. I thought this line was interesting though. “Under traditional copyright law, creative works are granted protection based on the principle of originality, which requires human authorship and a modicum of creativity” (link to full article)

That article also had a list of AI artists who were using AI in ways that I found to be more intentional / creative and less the blatant theft type of digital art.

I also found a wonderful forbes article that pointed out a lot of issues with AI art which was a good find. (link to article). It brought up an interesting point of how Google searches are getting bogged down with fake AI images (misinformation and general internet ruining vibes). Another good point was how water wasteful ChatGPT is. This was one of my favorite lines from the article, “The technology is a solution to a problem that never existed. Artists, as much as they like to complain about the struggle of the creative process, enjoy making things. The creative process is incredibly rewarding, even if the final piece doesn’t match up to the original vision." This was another great line, “When we immerse ourselves in art, we experience a touch of the unique perspective that an artist brings to their work, the smeared fingerprints that makes art worth talking about.” And there was mention of an event that I saw another article talking about, which was when the renouned Studio Ghibli guy, Miyazaki was shown AI art and in response said, "I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself."

I tried to find some info on AI misinformation / how it's changing memes but didn't have a lot of luck. But those are topics that I would want to look into more later.

I looked into AI art and issues with theft and found some interesting things. My favorite lines from this article were “There is no transcending of the source material, just a mechanized “blending together,” and “It kind of boils down to: what is art? Is art the process, is art the human component, is art the conversation? All of that is out of the picture once you’re just generating it.” I also saw a blog post that had found a website where you could tediously opt out each image of your art that had previously been used in something, but only for future use. So anything it was in already, was too late. And they also mentioned the big idea that if artists aren't getting rights for their work, they won't get paid for their work either. It makes me think that in the future if AI art is stealing too much maybe people will be less inspired to bother making new art. So a stalling out in creativity may happen. Or not. Maybe people will use AI in a good way to supplement their ideas instead of just stealing.

My favorite thing that I found in researching was that a random subreddit had voted 2 years ago to totally ban AI art from it and when I checked the current rules, it was still banned. So there is hope somewhere at least.

My mind map from class

Overall there are some interesting avenues for this topic, but I found research a bit tedious due to how many clickbait type articles that come up whenever I try to Google anything about it. Also it was hard to wade through the rhetoric since everyone has such an opinion with what they're saying about AI art. And even though I had a lot of ideas on my map thing, I had a hard time approaching how to research them and find relevant information that was related to them.