Dead Heretic

The use of generative large language models (AI, henceforth, as flawed as the term is) has become a veritable flood. Using AI to make primitive, ugly images was the beginning. AI now can write your Facebook posts, if you are too lazy to do them yourself. AI is also now used in search, even those search functions embedded in social apps. Almost weekly, I find a new and surprising place where AI has been inserted. The use of AI in art creation and, more relevantly to myself and Nasal Bleed, music creation raises some concerning philosophical issues, not exclusively ethical concerns. This article will discuss a couple of these, after a disclaimer. With the deluge of Noahic proportions AI has become, it is vital we as a society take stock.

To be up front, I am no philosopher and have not read much philosophy outside books that explain to me what major philosophers have said. I haven’t read Karl Marx himself, simply because I don’t understand what he’s getting at. However, I have read a number of other philosophers who have kindly taken it upon themselves to explain Marx and others to idiots like me. It is from that second-hand understanding of what Marx said I am writing. However, whatever errors persist in this article, they are mine and mine alone.

Karl Marx made a big deal about the “means of production”. Basically, the means of production is any process that creates an item from which people can profit. That could be anything from a pencil to a factory robotic system. Marx’s concern about means of production was the power control over said means gave people over others. In the time Marx was writing, workers in factories did not have control over the means of production, much as they still don’t in our time. This left them open to exploitation and victimisation by those privileged elites who maintained control over the means of production and so profited from the labours of others. As part of a class revolution, Marx held that the means of production should be put into the hands of the workers themselves. I am pretty sure Marx would have had a apoplectic fit if he saw what state communism committed in his name.

Using AI to create art is not only a lazy, banal shortcut to supposed ‘artistic skill’, as I have said in a previous article, but it also serves to undermine the freedom of expression which is a human right for all people, including artists. This is made even more concerning, because the health of society can be measured in part, by the freedoms its artists have in expressing subversive ideas. It can be argued those countries in which artists do not have the freedom to call authorities into account or question are less than fully expressing the human potential of the citizens they claim to care for so much. AI only serves to undermine freedom of speech and the ability of art to shock and be controversial as needed for any healthy society.

Let us say I, as an artist, wished to comment on the current situation in Gaza. If I wished to make a brutal, visceral and shocking statement against Israel’s continued murder of Gazans, perhaps one of the best ways to achieve this is to make a comparison between Israel’s military and murderous criminals, like the vile Nazi military. Such a comparison was made in the prompt above. By splattering blood all over a Palestinian flag, another layer of meaning is added. Nightcafe blocked the prompt. No reason was given, but the term “Nazi” was the offending word.

Nightcafe has taken upon itself to censor what can be expressed on its platform. As this is a private platform, Nightcafe is well within their rights to make such decisions, as is any other generative AI company. And therein lies the problem. If art devolves to merely AI, then a user’s freedom to say what they feel is needed can be and is severely curtailed. This is because a company controls the means of production. Nightcafe controls their pet algorithm and the user has no power to make certain statements through its output. Nightcafe, Midjourney and others are concerned about the bottom line on their balance sheets. Much like the disgusting parasites who were factory owners in the 19th century, the continued growth in profits is the main driving force behind generative AI companies. For an artist, the message itself is usually the most important aspect of their art.

Juan in the photo above (not his real name) posts his own art on a wall on a street. Juan uses paint, brushes, air brushes and more to create his images. Unlike myself with Nightcafe, Juan controls the means of production himself and, therefore, is unlimited in what he can express through his art. There is no limit to how many ideologues, politicians, oligarchs, or activists he can metaphorically punch in the guts through his pictures. If he wanted to draw Charles Manson as the idealised father figure, he could do just that and no one could stop him. Juan is the sole person in control of the productive process.

Andres Serrano is a real life example of an artist taking on tough topics and viscerally expressing his views in a shocking way that gets a knee-jerk response. Sometimes, society needs to be offended. Sometimes, artists need to shove a message in society’s face and rub salt (possible urine) into its eyes. Serrano did that with Immersion (Piss Christ) in 1987. Serrano put a small crucifix of Jesus Christ in a tank filled with his own urine and took a photo of it. Serrano was, at the time, a man of faith and a Catholic. In a mind blowing media, Serrano was questioning the church and some of the things that were going on in the church. Of course, the wider community of faith reacted in horror, rather than seek a better understanding of the message. However, Serrano’s control of the creative process ensured he was able to construct the art and put it out there. He controlled the means of production. For Serrano, the message was the only consideration. Not the money.

AI risks putting control of much of the artistic process into the hands of a small number of companies and corporations whose priorities are most likely going to differ from people like Andres Serrano, or people like you. By so doing, corporations and companies such as X, Meta, Nightcafe, Midjourney, Suno and more are able to control artistic expression according to their own dictates and worries. They will move to restrict art which might threaten the profits they hope to garner from users. Companies are less likely to break the law of a country which dangles the promise of new markets. I recall Google having to make some major concessions about Tiananmen Square when they had their brief little affair with China’s communist state.

As a society, we need artists who will call out and question things we may feel uncomfortable with. We need to hear from artists who uphold indigenous land rights, not matter how inconvenient it is for a company or government. We need artists who will speak out against a genocide in Gaza. We need artists to question those ideologies that society holds most dear. Without an artist’s control over their means of production, such powers do not rest in their hands, but in the hands of a select few elites, billionaires and their lap dogs in our governments. And these are the last people who should be making artistic decisions for us, no matter how competent they believe themselves to be. Hey, David?

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash