Now you’re not sure how you feel about it?
It’s up to you. There’s a traditional wooden drinking cup called a kuksa that is popular with outdoors types. It’s carved from a solid block of wood. You can buy them, but it’s more “bushcrafty” if you make one yourself. Further, you’re supposed to use only hand tools, no power tools. OTOH, one that you order online was probably milled by a machine. It’s hard to tell them apart though.
Is there a philosophical difference? Up to you.
I like this comparison. Made me realize that it’s all about human connection.
I think the origin of the handmade cup is what matters here, same with human vs. AI content. Did you make the cup yourself? You’ll have memories and pride attached to the cup. Did someone make it for you? The cup will remind you of that person, it will have meaning because of who it’s from. Content you or someone you care about makes will always “feel” different than something made by a random person online.
If you don’t personally know the people making the cups, would a “handmade” label at the store make it more meaningful than if you knew it was likely made by a machine? It’ll still just be an object that you don’t have a direct human connection with, just like the random content you see online. It might “mean” more to you to know a human created it, but if you can’t tell the difference, it still serves the same purpose. The cup lets you drink. The content entertains you or makes you think, react, respond.
I wonder if part of my instinctual “fuck AI” reaction is a reflection of the imaginary connections my brain thinks it’s making with other humans on the internet. Talking to AI feels meaningless… but, for all I know, you are AI. I’m still taking the time to type this. We may never interact again, I may never know who made that handmade cup I bought from the store.
Are we connecting as humans right now? Or is my monkey brain just experiencing this as “this is a moment where I am communicating and that is good”? Can we subconsciously recognize the difference between “real person” and “imaginary person”, or are our brains just satisfied feeling like they’re communicating with someone?
Let’s say you like to do dorodamgo- Japanese art/hobby/whatever of making mud into polished balls.
Let’s say you make one ball of good clay… and another out of poop.
They look the same, but one is just clay and the other is utter shit.
Can only speak for myself. I use AI tools almost daily to help me pursue my hobby. I find it very useful for that. But when I enjoy art produced by a human, on some level I want to connect with the human experience that produced it. Call it parasocial if that helps. But I’m always at least a little interested in the content creators, not just the content.
I know some people consume content like a commodity or product. I’m not judging those people at all. But I’m generally not like that myself. I want to know the story behind the creation.
“When”, but that could be 1,000 years from now or maybe only 10 … but then, when this truly happens, those system will have become sentient.
So, at that point, when that happens, then yes, there truly won’t be any difference.Sapient maybe, sentient implies that it has feelings, I’m not sure that Silicon-based “life” really can feel emotions.
there is nothing more or nothing magical in carbon atoms that makes them superior when it comes to relaying/processing/genarating signals.
AI is fundamentally incapable of challenging an idea that it has never seen challenged,or reimagined before.
Yes. I’d rather pay a person to make art than a corporation.
Philosophically, yes. One is created with intent, one is created to mimic intent. Human made works can challenge norms and explore entirely new ways of thinking about a subject. AI content is essentially trying to take everything relevant to a given prompt, blend it together, and give you something that meets your expectations.
Now as far as is it practically the same, that’s where things are going to start getting sticky. If an AI makes a piece of art that resonates with people the same way that a human created piece of art does, those feelings are just as genuine. There is no practical difference. We’re seeing that right now with AI generated music. Just this week an AI country song hit #1 on billboard. The people that enjoy that song enjoy it regardless of how it was made. Personally, I think that country is kind of a low hanging fruit since it has effectively been following the same formula for a couple of decades, but it’s a great proof of concept.
From an article about the song: “AI artists won’t require things that a real human artist will require, and once companies start considering it and looking at bottom lines, I think that’s when artists should rightly be concerned about it,” she added.
That quote explains all political theatre currently making the rounds. UBI or soylent green - which will win out?
In the US? Soylent green all the way. If we had any ability to constrain capitalism from destroying art for profit, AI wouldn’t essentially be a legal IP theft machine.
We thought it was bad when iheart took over all of the radio stations and the record labels started making bands to sell derivative music to the masses. AI is going to destroy any remaining ability for small artists to make profit off their work. It already has in quite a few spaces.
There is no practical difference. We’re seeing that right now with AI generated music.
Last night, some account spammed multiple communities and they got upvoted and some users replied, apparantly didn’t realize it was a LLM bot (like 20 posts within a few hours, un-human). I also didn’t notice at first glance, now I kinda feel like shit for even responding lmao. 2026 is gonna be even more cooked.
Yeah man, were rapidly approaching a point where society is “post-evidence”. Seeing isn’t believing anymore and a very large chunk of our society is built on the idea of proving things with audio/photo/video based evidence. I fear that our systems aren’t protected against the volume and physical accuracy of what’s becoming increasingly arbitrary to generate at home and at scale.
The legal system has some standards for evidence, but public discourse certainly doesn’t.
AI music really caught me off guard. One day I was looking for something very specific to vibe to. I wanted instrumental power metal, like Dragonforce but no vocals. And I found that in Metal Mastery, a YouTube channel. I liked it so much I looked into it more, turns out it’s AI and the guy is very upfront about it and all. But I would have never known if I wasn’t told. There’s also nothing that really fills that niche either, so I still listen to the albums now and then.
I still think it’s problematic to be making money off of AI music due to the nature of how the systems are trained. I do think it’s significantly better when people are upfront about it in the way you describe. I have a huge problem with Spotify boosting it on their platform with no mention of the artist being AI anywhere, though.
