A thought on photography and AI
Okay so like most people… I am not a fan of AI, the whole water thing is a bust, though avoidable but the more obvious issues are:
A) I fear a generation of young people who use it and then it becoming less accessible.. essentially neutering the working class of their already brittle literacy (frankly I think the whole thing is a brilliant way for the upper class the double down on making the masses incapable of meaningful revolution) of course the opposite is true; people have access to more information that they ever have and an incredible way to access and organise it thought AI. so IDK could swing either way… or both
B) It might take peoples jobs….. it might make it so people get to have better or no jobs, but frankly several years ago billionaires started crying over people not having enough kids and it tanking the economy (they wouldn’t have enough minimum wage slaves to continue profiting off of) and this seems like a way for them to not have to worry about that issue. I doubt it will be the beginning of the revolution from these jobs but the realisation by the ruling class that they no longer need a large uneducated population to enslave anymore. I get the sense the whole data center in peoples neighborhoods instead of like somewhere COLD or reasonable is more so a symbol of this replacement. Almost like psychosomatically putting their new slave on top of their old.. not to be crude lol
C) I’ll wrap this up with my other thought on the whole thing… the one that actually has to do with art and photography. I am an artist… SHOCKER… I used to do illustration and painting, and those began to grow from the pages and into the real world, I make this out of mistakes, I do things only hands that feel can do, a computer may be able to do this at some point, but even computers, their hands and their minds are made by us.. in some weird way they will always be a reflection of us like how a cars parts can be compared to the organs of a body, there’s an echo there. My dad used to say “no one is special… but everyone is special because they are the only one inside their head”. No ones art is special but it all is because it’s from them. Ownership over images only really matters in a world where we have to prove our worth to eat and have a roof over our head. I dont give a shit if a robot echos my art, that sounds dope. I give a shit if I eat and have a home and that that robot doesn’t make art instead of me getting to make art. Also the robot shouldn’t use up all the water we need for the world to go round.
okay the photography part
When cameras were invented it did something really interesting to art, to painters ETC, they no longer were the camera right? So all of a sudden artists were a reflection with an expression, it became about the artist and their world. Cameras became seen as almost scientific proof, which anyone with any education on ethnography knows was used in awful ways. Something AI has done is it’s taken that scientific feeling from cameras, because a picture can now be fake, far more then when someone could photoshop stuff, now more images and information is fake than real on the internet. I think this will do something to photography and photographers in a similar line to what happened to visual artists; not only is it no longer scientific it is now about the photographers artistic expression and who/where/when they are more than ever. AI can mimic a style and photo, but it can’t mimic a moment someone feels, or if it does, if it comes to that place, I actually believe that itself will have its own interesting place in the world……. but like only if everyone can eat.. and have a home… and keep making art.
xoxox Love you tech billionaires pls keep me as a pet xoxo