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I Am An AI Hater

(anthonymoser.github.io)
443 points BallsInIt | 2 comments | 27 Aug 25 19:10 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jkingsman ◴[27 Aug 25 19:49 UTC] No.45044262[source]▶
I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it.

One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote:

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE ART.

Hate is an emotional word, and I suspect many people (myself included) may leap to take logical issue with an emotional position. But emotions are real, and human, and people absolutely have them about AI, and I think that's important to talk about and respect that fact.

† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

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randcraw ◴[27 Aug 25 19:57 UTC] No.45044367[source]▶
Picasso's Guernica was born of hate, his hate of war, of dehumanization for petty political ends. No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. It must forever parrot.
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perching_aix ◴[27 Aug 25 20:20 UTC] No.45044662[source]▶
To honor the "spirit" of OP's post:

I looked up Picasso's Guernica now out of curiosity. I don't understand what's so great about this artwork. Or why it would represent any of the things you mention. It just looks like deranged pencilwork. It also comes across as aggressively pretentious.

What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?

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jacquesm ◴[27 Aug 25 20:25 UTC] No.45044721[source]▶
That a human made it to express their feelings.
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perching_aix ◴[27 Aug 25 20:27 UTC] No.45044744[source]▶
What do I care? Can't even tell what feelings are supposedly being expressed there.
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jacquesm ◴[27 Aug 25 20:31 UTC] No.45044802[source]▶
That goes for all art. It either stirs you or it doesn't. I find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjstsWoQiw to be one of the most beautiful pieces ever recorded, others can't listen to it and think it is bland and a terrible recording.

You can't argue about taste.

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bonoboTP ◴[27 Aug 25 22:01 UTC] No.45045878[source]▶
I don't think this is just taste. The painting was made in a specific historic context and commemorates the bombing of Guernica. Without knowing that context, it may be appreciated as a disembodied visual artifact, but that's not how art really works or ever worked. An influential artpiece usually states something relevant to the historic moment and intellectual Zeitgeist of the time.

You may like the music of Zombie by The Cranberries, but I'd say it belongs to the complete appreciation of it to know that it's about the Irish Troubles, and for that you need some background knowledge.

You may like to smoke weed to Bob Marley songs, but without knowing something about the African slave trade, you won't get the significance of tracks like 400 years.

For Guernica you also have to understand Picasso's fascination with primitive art, prehistoric cave art, children's drawings and abstraction, the historic moment when photography took over the role of realistic depiction, freeing painters to express themselves more in terms of emotional impressions and abstractions.

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1. perching_aix ◴[27 Aug 25 22:39 UTC] No.45046210[source]▶
I don't consider context a clear win. I'd argue that there's also quite the disconnect sometimes between what a work is about and why it's popular.

Let's take Zombie by The Cranberries as an example. I really liked this song as a kid, still do, I think it has a great sound. The difference is that I now speak English, can understand the lyrics, and could look up the historical context. Ever since I did so, listening to it has never been the same, and not in a good way.

There are also examples which are not going to be so specific to my opinions. Kendrick's Swimming Pools was a house party staple, despite the song carrying heavy anti-alcoholism messaging. The contrast is almost comical.

For a different example, let's consider temporal contextuality; you describe Guernica being reliant on this. When I try to think of an example, I'm reminded of vague memories of shows with oddly timely subtitles. Subtitles that referenced things that were very specific to the given cultural moment, basically memes, but vanished since. It's not a good experience, and I'd say it would be reasonable to chalk such a thing up as a critique, rather than something worthy of praise.

This is also why I half-seriously referred to the piece being "aggressively pretentious". Rather than coming across as something I'm just genuinely missing the context for, it comes across as something with manufactured sophistication (which then I am indeed missing the context for, but unapologetically). This might still be a mirage, but I think with how pretty much stereotyped this experience is at this point, I'd imagine there's got to be some truth to it at least.

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2. bonoboTP ◴[27 Aug 25 23:02 UTC] No.45046375[source]▶
If you value art for aspects that don't require intellectual or historical context knowledge then the best music is bubblegum pop and the best literature is pulp fiction and smut. And indeed people who most lack such context (teens) tend to like those most.

This is not to say that eternal themes aren't important. But art is a kind of social technology that mediates between people in given cultural contexts. Part of "the great conversation" across the ages, the part you can't express in logical essays or propositions. And the eternal themes pop up in different "clothes" at different times. Once you have the key to unlock them, you do discover the same human nature and human problems operating underneath as ever.

And the beautiful cathedrals are not simply beautiful for beauty's sake but their art often conveys very specific theological claims, often hotly debated at the time. Or the choice of subject may have been outrageous or novel at the time but mundane to us now.

Liszt's music may move us even today, but we can't quite appreciate it in the same Lisztomania way as it was then, when it was fresh and novel.