 |
| Done with Chat GPT in 2 minutes |
- The discovery by Copernicus that earth isn't the center of the universe, "only a tiny fragment of a cosmic system of scarcely imaginable vastness." Astronomy destroyed our illusion of a safe and stable home at the hub of the universe and left us in an unbounded, decentralized universe where even basic directions such as "up and down" no longer had absolute meaning. It was the beginning of centuries of warfare between science and religions.
- The discovery that humans evolved from primitive primates rather than originating in a divinely appointed spot at the top of creation. The discovery that our fossil trail led not from the Garden of Eden but from a frightened cynodont hiding in the mud rattled faith in humanity's special protected status. The cultural battles from this humiliation continue to rage today in legal, educational and scientific circles.
- The discovery that humans aren't intrinsically rational beings but instead are heavily influenced by the irrational activity of our subconscious minds. Psychological sciences shed new light on human nature, transforming our notions of free will, motivation, guilt, identity, responsibility and more. Based on these discoveries, laws have been rewritten. Educational practices have changed. Novels, plays and later movies were written around the new understandings.
Years ago I asked on this blog whether AI might become the source of our fourth great humiliation, resulting in comparable social and cultural upheaval.
It's not too soon to conclude that the answer is "yes." Our status as creators has long been viewed as central to the glory of being human. If art becomes a fast, cheap and effortless commodity created by machine, it would be another great blow to human dignity and worth.
So the question for discussion is: what's a suitable artistic response to this fourth humiliation?
During the lifetime of Copernicus, artists used allegorical representations of high concepts to deal with big issues. For example, today's artists might look to Mattias Gerung's 1544 The Baptism of the Antichrist:
 |
| From left to right: NVIDIA, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta AI |
Wry humor is always a good bet, even on the gallows. Here is how the prophetic Carter Goodrich welcomed in the new millennium:
Then there's the juvenile response: a "Fuck AI" tee shirt. I doubt any long term satisfaction can come from this approach.
.jpg)
One of the most interesting creative struggles about the battle between man and machine is Phil Hale's series of paintings of Johnny Badhair. Hale painted more than eighty paintings of a ballet between a solitary, half dressed figure and a machine in front of a universal blue sky. Hale's machines were a sinister metallic conglomeration of sprockets, blades and cables-- an excellent visual representation of John Henry's steam drill, or of AI.
Each new painting in this series became a fresh experiment with an uncertain outcome. The paintings are powerful, even savage, and yet at the same time they are riddled with ambiguity; sometimes it seems one combatant has won, but that lasts only as long as the next painting. It's never too clear what they're battling for or who the victor will be.
I wrote an essay for Hale's 2016 book, Let's Kill Johnny Badhair, in which I quote from Peter Viereck's prescient 1947 poem, Prince Tank:
During the fourth and fifth world wars, the tanksWill still obey, still seem to serve their humans...The sixth war they will serve more sullenly--And suddenly will know their day has come.The birthday of the Prince of all the tanks.And then will humans all be jitterbugs,Migrate like locusts from their dance-hall doors,And sing with insect-voices metal shrill:"Our god is born!" and roll to him like grapesTill all their frenzy begs his metal treads:"Love us to death, love us to death" the dayCreation's final goal, Prince Tank, is born.
These are all possible artistic responses to the fourth humiliation. None of them so far will be enough to, in the words of Flaubert, "move the stars to pity" for our dilemma. We won't get off that easily. But at least it's a place to start thinking.
5 comments:
The T-shirt is a meta-joke: the hand with extra fingers alludes to the typical error early models produced. So the joke is that the the image is actually AI generated.
The first two of Freud's humiliations weren't for "the human race". European Christians more like it. Even then, Christians would not blink an eye at the idea that there are hidden forces inside pushing us to do stuff without us noticing.
I do not think AI will be a great humiliation, we came to be used to machines outdoing us at stuff. And we believed in i-ching and astrology, so a device providing answers without us understanding why won't break us.
Everything will be drowned in the practical consequences, as the values and meaning of concepts are violently re-negotiated.
Freud was wrong. The Medievals didn't see the world as the center of the universe, they saw it as the bottom. The dreck, the gross, falls down, the pure floats up. Center of the Earth? Hell. And far above the earth? Heaven, the vault of stars, the Quintessence. Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme in the 14th century thought it was strange that earth was immobile while heaven rotated around it. Surely heaven would be still, and the earth move on its axis? They had to abandon the interesting idea as a rotating earth conjured many physics problems that they didn't have the theories to deal with, but this was a step away from the static geocentricism, once you start thinking of the earth moving on its axis, it's a step in the right direction.
Copernicus was worried that by making the earth into a planet, he might be seen as elevating it, not demoting it. He had to make it clear that under his cosmology, earth would not be promoted above its station.
Not the first time freud would be catastrophically wrong about something.
And as for AI, well, let's see what happens when all those loans have to be paid back.
xopxe-- Yes, I got the "meta-joke" about the multiple fingers on the tee shirt, although I wasn't quite clear whether the joke was on AI because it does (or did) such a crappy job with hands, or the joke was on people who despised AI but were addicted to using it like everyone else. I think the second version is funnier, but both seem hostile to AI to me.
As for the great humiliation, it's already here, and it metastasized while we were sleeping. I know authors who worked long and hard writing books that made them proud, only to discover that half a dozen AI books popped up on Amazon with similar plots and misleadingly similar titles. They were created by the push of a button by people in lawless countries to siphon off sales. Here's a heartbreaking story of some poor guy on Instagram who announced the release of his book in September, only to find that someone took his description, converted it into a 230 page book in a matter of minutes using AI and posted it on Google books long before the real book could come out: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DZLGHSOTyb9/ . I know well established illustrators who have lost important business because an art director can tell Midjourney, "create an illustration in the style of [Artist X] " and get an image that, while not quite perfect, is good enough for 75% of their readership and is free. It robs the artist of the fee and simultaneously degrades their artistic reputation because of the flood of mediocre approximations of their work now appearing on the market. When the pay is gone, you'd be surprised how fast humiliation follows.
Finally, I must disagree with you that Freud's humiliations were for European Christians. The great benefits and accompanying drawbacks of science may have started with European Christians in the 14th century but then spread around the entire world. Copernicus' discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe is true for everybody, not just European Christians. Evolution is true for everybody, not just European Christians. The lessons of psychology are true for everyone, not just European Christians. If they weren't true, the rest of the world would not have been so quick to embrace western science and technology.
I love this post. Deep stuff.
dermot wrote: "The Medievals didn't see the world as the center of the universe, they saw it as the bottom. The dreck, the gross, falls down, the pure floats up. Center of the Earth? Hell. And far above the earth? Heaven..."
I think you're conflating two different systems. Yes, on a spiritual level, heaven and the afterlife are superior to life in the material world. However, that has nothing to do with the firm medieval belief that the earth was the center of the physical universe. Check out the history of "geocentrism" on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentrism) or look it up anywhere else (including ChatGPT which will tell you "Ancient and medieval societies accepted that the Sun, planets, and stars revolved around Earth. The geocentric model was reinforced by religion, philosophy, and everyday observation.")
Not only was Freud correct about the common belief that the earth was the center of the universe, but more to the point, there's no question that Copernicus (and then Kepler and then Galileo) delivered a great culture shock. Philosophers were unnerved by the implications of the discovery. Pascal wrote, “The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me.” In 1633 the Church placed Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life. It wasn't until 1992 (359 years later) that the church apologized and admitted Galileo was right.
Post a Comment