Is wiping out all life on Earth or, at the very least, the aura of living, inevitable?
In the critical discourse about AI, it is often difficult to parse the dangers because this emergent technology is no one thing with no one function: ranging from Generative products like ChatGPT and Midjourney that are powered by illegally-gathered datasets to AI-centric rebrands of pre-existing programs (not fooling anyone, Squarespace) part of what makes the mass adoption of AI feel inevitable is that it is hard to pin down what it is for, what its use cases will be, and most importantly, is there a case where AI can make life better.
When representatives of the Calgary Library defend programming an AI "Collaborative" Arts Residency, they argue that the program operates A) within the bounds of internal Library AI policy and existing laws and B) with the ARTIST responsible for ensuring that their engagement with AI technologies is conducted ethically.
I've read everyone's comments on this petition and agree that Artificial Intelligence, as it exists now, cannot be considered ethical on five points:
- The companies selling access to AI programs profit off non-consensual data and stolen work
- Said stolen work is laundered through generative AI, where outputs are minimally different from pre-existing work (one AI output is approximately 2.1 source materials smashed together according to a study by the University of Chicago).
- Outputs directly compete with the works of real, local artists and craftspeople, at best eating up attention online and reducing marketing impact and at worse, taking up space in galleries, markets, and arts residencies...
- AI is a technology that exhibits systemic erasure of the voices and agency of minority populations, exhibiting bias toward cultural homogeny or stripping disadvantaged populations of the right to advocate for themselves.
- The infrastructure of AI data centres, as we are seeing in Olds, is an immense risk to urban populations, indiscriminately disrupting quality of life and increasing cost of living anywhere they are built.
- Lastly, environmental harms.
When Millicent Mabi, programming director for the Calgary Public Library, defends the Residency it is always with an air of the inevitable: this technology is already here so we have to learn to embrace it. The reason those comments fall flat is because there is no effort to explain under what conditions this Residency meets an ethical standard for using AI, or even how AI represents a meaningful addition to the creative process.
It's not like artists haven't already been testing AI.
Dave McKean, a prolific collage artist and multi-media comic illustrator, wrote a book entitled "Prompt Conversations with AI" aeons ago (in 2022) where he challenged whether AI would fit into his process. This was before much research on the harms was accessible, back when Midjourney was still a hallucination machine. Even he, with zero qualms about the material barriers between mediums chose not to integrate it further than that conversation, citing AI as a "soulless" threat to the personal, emotional, and human nature of creative work.
"Soulless" is the common cause for "AI-curious" artists to abandon AI. Even the artists I see in my diaspora who generously embraced the flood of AI-users as "arts-curious" amateurs eventually abandoned using AI because they felt, over time, that it was making their creative decisions worse and the art-making process more belaboured - a point supported by multiple studies now, including the MIT Study on Cognitive Atrophy Due to AI Use.
All this to say that it is INSULTING for the library to think that they are spear-heading an initiative that the creative community has been already explored, tested, and found unworthy of integration. In fact, there is a deluge of evidence that AI harms creativity.
Loss of the Next Generation of Artists:
As a children's artist, I think about the effect AI will have on teaching kids to draw; my greatest fear for the future of artists is that AI will allow children to circumvent the boredom, the frustration, and anxiety of creation. Art is not made with short-cuts, it is produced in the space where failure meets innovation. I always say that artistic voice is when we try to replicate our inspiration and FAIL. It is the act of charting the boundaries of our own interests, skills, and passion. To have access to infinite outcomes prompted from wishes sounds like technological Hell.
I cannot understand why the Calgary Library wants to promote a technology that is fundamentally antithetical to the creative act of persevering through failure.
Back that list: How do you make AI "ethically?"
For the artist interested in accepting this Residency, what are the conditions that would need to be met for their engagement with AI to be "ethical."
The closest example I have seen is when artists "train" a local model only on their personal work and/or public domain data. AI always has an immense environmental cost, but this approach mitigates the harms of intellectual property theft and produces an illusion of moral adoption.
Where arguments about AI as an "accessibility tool" unravel is when we look at the COST for an artist assembling and maintaining a localized AI system: is it accessible to expect artists to buy huge hard-drives and NAS storage devices, embrace high electricity costs, and upgrade to state-of-the-arts computers at a time when all of the above have become astronomically expensive?
Does someone with the personal resources to harness "ethical" AI really need a publicly funded residency?
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Thanks to everyone who signed and shared a comment (I read them all!). Let's get this to 2000 signatures!
Please Keep sharing this petition and keep the heat on. AI does not need to be inevitable if it can't prove that it is a net benefit to humanity.
NEWS COVERAGE:
Global News: Artificial intelligence residency at Calgary Public Library raises some eyebrows
CTV NEWS - Local Artists Decry AI Residency
READING LIST:
- "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" by Cory Doctorow