Hello, it's your host, Andrew here. If you're enjoying Send Me to Sleep so far and you'd like to help support the show, the best way to do that is Send Me to Sleep Premium. Over there you'll get ad-free episodes as well as access to all of our bonus episodes. You can find a link to a 7-day free trial in the description notes. Thanks so much for listening, and here's just a few ads before the show begins. My hope is that by the time you finish listening to this, you'll feel a little bit better in general about the idea of AI. I know that it is something that causes a lot of worry for people. I have certain friends who have admitted to me that they spend more time thinking about it than they feel they would like to, and it's occupying their thoughts not out of interest, but primarily out of worry, which is quite sad to hear. I've always been interested in AI, well I say always, about as long as things like chatGPT have been available to the public, so, you know, over the last three or four years, I've been quite interested in the technologies, and I do appreciate that the worries are somewhat legitimate, and I myself have also felt them. You know, these are paradigm-shifting technologies that feel like they are beginning to change culture, change society very quickly in a way that doesn't seem all too obvious, and the future looks a little bit uncertain. There are a few question marks around what artificial intelligence might mean for us all, as humans, and what it might mean for our future as a society. How does it work with these technologies embedded within it, and especially with how they may change, and how quickly they are already changing? But after thinking about these technologies a lot myself, sort of pondering over the philosophies of them, shall we say, I've come to a few conclusions that make me feel better about them in general, and I'm hoping I can impart some of this to you now. And I'd like to start with talking about AI as a creative tool, because I believe that when you begin to unpack why it is that AI is, at least I believe, not necessarily ever going to be such a threat to the creative heart, or creativity in general. I think it uncovers a foundational truth about AI in general. That helps me feel a little bit better about its place, now that it's here within society, and within humanity's future, as it were. And I suppose to outline the general discussion around AI and creativity at the moment, is this feeling amongst many that this use of generative AI to produce works of what I will put in inverted commas, art, is somehow going to destroy the industry of art on the side of economics. But perhaps more so destroy the spirit of art, and in this world where, in order for art to be seen in the modern day really, it needs to be proliferated in a way that can be economized, monetized in some way. If it can be produced cheaply by these AI, either generating images, or generating text, or generating music, all of these things which are being readily done at a large scale already with AI. If it can be done cheaply and quickly using these tools, then it will somehow outwin genuine human creativity, and there will be less of a place for human art. And this I think is ultimately a falsehood, and though you will already see people making money from art, and I say art just now, and I will begin to caveat myself, and I will attempt to hold the point that I was just about to make in my mind, as I begin to explore something else a little bit further, and that is the fact that I would prefer not to actually even describe what is created by generative AI as art, though these images and these sounds that we describe as AI music, and this text that we describe as AI prose, does in fact appear as art. I do hesitate to describe it as art, and I am now searching my mind for an alternative term, and perhaps that term is something akin to content, because I think content is a word that is used quite often within the industry of online art, and it is a word that implies art that has been created to be consumed for monetary gain, and AI produces things, well I say AI produces these things, people use AI to produce this kind of image and sound and writing, mainly for monetary gain, now of course I'm not trying to attack anyone who enjoys using AI to perhaps bring to life some whim or fantasy of their own, for their own personal enjoyment, I think in a way that is more akin to art than those who try to abuse it for its expediency at producing content, but it is this sort of specific use of the tool to engage in this capitalist flywheel, hamster wheel should I say, of maximal output for a fewest dollars spent and highest return on investment that I am trying to describe here, and so henceforth if I am referring to images, sounds or text produced by AI, I will refer to it as AI content, although I may interchangeably describe human art as content as well, but hopefully I'll be able to make it easily distinguishable as I am talking between the two, now I believe I was trying to make the point that there is a fear generally within culture now that these technologies exist, especially within the communities of art, that perhaps if these tools are being used to create content very quickly and cheaply, audiences will begin to neglect human made art and there will be less room for it in the world, and as I believe I was beginning to say I do not believe this to be true, because of course I think this leads us on to a larger philosophical question which in answering I hope will lead us towards the truth of the matter regarding AI, and that is what is art in itself, what is the distinguishing factor between the content produced by AI and art made by human being, and in my mind I believe the difference to be simply, and this may seem trite or platitudinous in some way, but it is simply the very fact that humans have made it, the qualifier for art is for it to have been made by one who is attempting to communicate something, and this in my opinion is precisely what art is at its core, art is a form of communication, it allows one to impart emotion or sentiment or idea using the abstract, and for it to be received by other people, and I don't know if you know this but there is evidence to suggest, when I say evidence I believe it is quite well known by science and biology that the left hemisphere is in control of language, and is the part of the brain that allows us to communicate with each other using words, and conversely the right hemisphere of the brain does not have that ability, it does not produce language, however it can do something that the left hemisphere cannot, and that is to think in the abstract, to think more helistically to understand metaphor and underlying meaning, so if the left hemisphere were to be the part of the brain that hears a sentence for example like, this room is very hot today, it would receive the words, understand the language in its literal form, and interpret it as was said, and the meaning that would be derived from that would be that the person who is talking believes it to be hot today, but it is the right hemisphere that is fed the whole meaning and phrase, and is able to interpret using myriad other signals from perhaps the person's body language or movements or just tone of voice, and of course context of people and empathy, to hear the hidden meaning behind those words, and it is the right hemisphere that would understand that this person talking would like me to open a window or needs a cold drink, and I say all of this to make my case that I believe it is the right hemisphere, as I say that is much more capable of understanding metaphor, and has long been attributed to the more creative and artistic elements of the mind, and so I believe art is in fact the language of the right brain, where words are the language of the left, and if this is the case then art is indeed a language explicitly used to communicate, to express something inside deep that illuminates the lived experience of one human being or another, and some may argue that art is not always like this, some listening right now you may produce art yourself, and it may be for no other reason in your mind than for the enjoyment of it, you may not be attempting to communicate anything deeper than an expression of the delight in replicating a beautiful landscape in watercolour, but I would have to argue against that sentiment and try and make the case that even art for art's sake as an expression of creation is a form of communication, even if you wish it not to be with anyone else, even if you do not show your art to anyone, this simple act of creation is an attempt at communication with one's self, you could say it were perhaps akin to keeping a journal that you never showed anyone, this act of writing again is another form of creativity that is an attempt to communicate with one's self, although even though there are very many incidences of people creating art for themselves it cannot be denied that art is often produced with an emotional message, and is often produced in an attempt to convey a message to many people, art is often communal, art is often cultural, and thus communicates in a way that perhaps even language cannot as precise and granular as it can be, and so if we see art in this way as a form of communication, then when we think about the kinds of content that AI produce, then truly we cannot see it as art because the act of communication begins and ends with the attempt at a prompt by a human, and goes no further, and so as you look at an image that was produced by AI, there is no lived experience there, there is no heart, there is no emotion or sincere attempt to convey something, it is a homogenized image that meshes together millions, at hundreds of millions of examples of other images in an attempt to mimic what it has processed and learned from, if you could say that, but there is no underlying meaning, there is no communication, there is no context, there is no culture, it is the human existence and the honest and sincere human attempt to create and to communicate that makes art special, and AI is not capable of that, now you could say that the people who input these prompts into the AI to try and produce these things, you could say that they are in fact making an honest human attempt to communicate and put their emotions into something, and they're simply using AI as a tool to produce the thing that is in their mind's eye, and you may have some case for that, but I would say you are losing something considerably in allowing the technology to lose your intention in translation, because surely when you pick up a paintbrush or a pencil or a pen or an instrument and you make those strokes yourself against the string or page, surely there is something more valuable in that human attempt than in the random hallucinations of a machine, surely there is something more powerful in trying, even if the art does not turn out how you might have hoped, I think that is part of the process and the joy and the reason why we can look upon a piece of art that is beautiful and detailed and evocative and draws out emotion in us, and we can appreciate it in that way, because we know a human hand has made it, because we understand the time and the effort and the passion that had to have gone into it for it to exist, I think there is something to be said about the context in which art is created, for example let me introduce you a small thought experiment, if I were to hold up to you now a painting by Van Gogh, it was perhaps not one of his more famous works of art, but one you hadn't seen before, a simple work of art that is perhaps quite pleasant to look at, but no more incredible than any of his other pieces of work, you may have one feeling or the other about seeing it, but if I were to then tell you that this work of art was the last work that Van Gogh ever produced, would that then change how you felt about it, would that somehow create a new context, a new lens through which you are viewing this piece of art, and does it in some way give it more value, or at least a different kind of value, I think most people would say that it does, and I think that has very much something to do with that human contextual cultural element, it is the same conversely if I were to reveal to you somehow remarkably almost impossibly I suppose, but imagine if it were possible to be true that I could tell you now that the Mona Lisa was actually produced by an AI, would that then change the way in which you felt about the picture, you may have even experienced it anecdotally yourself, where you have interacted with something, a piece of art, or so you thought, that turned out to have been produced by AI, did it then make you feel differently about what you had just seen, I remember actually very recently listening to some music on a playlist that I just discovered, and hearing a song that I really rather enjoyed until I began to just subtly hear a layer of something within it that didn't sit right with me, and was reminiscent of other AI-generated music I'd heard in the past, and so I looked up the artist for music and, and, I remember, they were in fact an AI producer, and the feeling was awful, there is something strange and existential about it, but mostly quite sad that I had enjoyed it, and that in some way it tarnished the music and I've not listened to it since, because it makes it less valuable to know that it was not produced by human hands, or by a human mind, should I say, a human spirit, and so for this reason I have a lot of confidence in the continued resilience of the human spirit in producing art, for truly I don't think people would be capable of stopping if they wanted to, there is something within us that yearns to create art, and as I say, I think that is because when we do it, we are communicating, it is a voice for that silent part of our brains that is shouting out from the inside to be heard in its wonderful, strange, sometimes surreal and abstract way, and we recognise this in art, and we definitely prefer it, we want art to be made by humans, and I think the generation of images by AI, nobody is becoming very popular, and I don't think we'll disappear anytime soon, but I think culturally we will begin to see it as a fun trick that can be used for certain menial applications, but in terms of creating real art, art that makes you feel something, art that you can appreciate and want to get behind, it will always have to be saved for people, for humanity, and you can already see a huge pushback to AI art, there is this now popular term, Slop, that goes around the internet, and I believe AI Slop as a term was officiated by the Oxford Dictionary this year, and you can see why, because it says something poignant about the time we live in, and that is that we have become fatigued, we've become tired with things that are inauthentic, things that lack a deeper substance, I think since the beginning of the internet age we've relished most about this amazing connected web of ours, that we are able to share the most authentic elements of people, I remember in the early days of the internet when one could share a home video that was poorly filmed, and with awful scratchy audio, that depicted a sweet moment with a mum and a child, or perhaps something hilarious that someone's dog did, that by today's standards of internet virality would seem utterly mundane, but would be shared around by millions purely for its wholesome authenticity, and I think that is something that we still enjoy about the internet, and something that we still crave, although that may at least in part be beginning to change, but I think genuine human connection is something that is built into humans, and that we're not likely to want to reject anytime soon, and so this is why art will be safe, and I think this is why overall humanity will be safe, of course the other discussions going on at the moment I've had, AI will begin to slowly replace us, replace our jobs, replace our positions, may even replace our relationships in the future, and again for the very same reason, I cannot see this as being true, because if you have true human connection, and you take that on one hand, and then on the other you have something that very much looks and sounds like human connection, and may in fact be more doting than the people around you, may be more aggrandizing, will say nicer things to you as AI often does, but you know it isn't real, it's very very hard to engage with, it's like trying to take a dream seriously, now I'm not denying that there are people in this world who do take these things seriously, and have began to slip away from true human connection, even today, at present, these ideas of running away with a virtual boyfriend or girlfriend, and forgetting about your human relationships is not a speculative future premonition but something that in fact happens now, now I do think this will be reserved for the few, and the many, we'll always prefer human connection, because that is why these tools were created in the first place, to some degree or other, although there is something to be said about these tools having been created for commercial reasons, for monetary reasons, for much more sinister reasons, I think this is another reason why people are rejecting these technologies, I haven't even touched upon the potential moral debate to be had, I say to potential, I think within my mind there is no argument to be made to say that, these technologies are not foundationally immoral, in that they take works from artists who have worked so hard to refine a craft, and then earn revenue from that without any recompense, it is at the very least against the rules of capitalism, and at the very most, and the injustice to the human creative process, it is the antithesis of collaboration, and so I guess in a roundabout way what I'm trying to say is, human connection will always be the primary want of human beings in a society, and so AI cannot have a destiny where it takes over our culture and our relationships and our ideas, because at their most base level, they will feel groundless and synthetic, and I think we will be moving into a time soon where people are pushing back more, and if you are someone who feels overwhelmed by these changes, who feels overwhelmed by seeing the words AI plastered everywhere, it seems like you are unable to interact with anything without some element of new large language model or image generation integrated with it, then you too can take solace in the fact that you are a part of a society who is beginning to say no to these things, and that you as an individual, and on top of that we as a society have the option to do away with these things, and the way that we do that is to refuse, because as I say ultimately these technologies are being produced at breakneck speeds by very wealthy billionaires whose companies are essentially just trying to race to the top for their own financial gain, but they will cease to do so if financial gain no longer seems feasible, and so refuse to use these things, you are well within your right to do so, my dad told me many years ago that the only way you can truly vote in our society is with your money, and that phrase had a profound effect on me, because the longer I've lived since he said it to me, the more it seems to be proven to be true, the biggest changes that happen in our society seem to be based around some such market, and so I've always taken that quite seriously, and it is true if we do not invest our money or attention, because of course you must remember your attention is worth more perhaps than money to some of these companies, it can be invested and should be invested wisely, so if we do not invest our money or our attention in these things, our culture will turn away from them, and I do truly have faith that in the long run we will,
