Raw LLM Responses

Root of Art and Humanity: The most fundamental argument you make against AI products as art stems from the "human experience" and subjective abstraction from reality behind art as compared to mathematical, systematic processing that's behind AI products, the use of which "cheats" you from humanity. My issue with his argument is twofold: neither does the use of mathematical, systematic processes dehumanize a product nor do AI products lack the subjective abstraction of art. You mention that you're unsure if using an inhuman hammer to build a house makes the house "lesser", but I think it's abundantly clear that it doesn't. Decreasing costs enables the creation of utilitarian, commodified non-art, but does not disable the creation of non-utilitarian, fantastic art. With AI significantly decreasing the cost of image and text generation, plenty of slop (entertainment) is able to be created, but this decrease in cost alone doesn't prevent the creation of art. A total removal of human input, like uncritically viewing untouched nature would not quality for art due to the lack of human abstraction. This is not AI. AI is trained from human inputs, and using human-made code, mathematically extrapolates from a human input to generate its product. It is a human-made tool at its finest, not a natural, inhuman phenomenon. If using information were an ethical violation, then this would violate the "human" criterion of "human abstraction", but I'm reasonably confident that intellectual property is not a valid form of property given property is a human right. If you don't believe human rights exist as objective laws of reality, then the "human" criterion would not be violated regardless of whether AI plagiarizes or steals intellectual works. Cost Theory of Value: I often hear that art is valuable because it's scarce and/or costly. I'm not exactly steel-manning this stance, but I'd argue the Marcus Aurelius quote steel-mans it for me. It eloquently masks the root that cost (difficulty) defines human existence (as opposed to staying warm under your covers). While Goggins and Aurelius certainly find value in difficult things, difficulty itself is not the root of value. As humans with subjective experiences, the root of value is subjective--unique for all humans. It's likely that someone struggling to find value can find it by embarking on a brutal odyssey, ruthlessly pursuing unattainable ends before finding peace at heart accepting themselves and how they've grown, as the commodification of stoicism into manosphere-esque "sigma grindset" memes shows, but this is just one value that may subjectively work for some people. It's the subject themself that creates their own value--it just so happens to be costly. Using the objective laws of physical and human existence, you can extrapolate some guidelines for what good art looks like or what goes into it, but this is like measuring something in a fishtank with a ruler above the water outside the tank. The water is subjective human experience, distorting how objective laws impress upon our consciousness. That's not to say there are no objective laws pertaining to consciousness, but they also barely describe the variance between subjective values. Imagine the impact IKEA had on woodworking as art. IKEA replaces much of the expensive non-art carpentry, and maybe even replaces some artful carpentry with non-art carpentry, but it doesn't at all prevent someone from finding purpose picking up the hobby, and some IKEA pieces can be artful or used in artful ways. Insofar AI is like IKEA for thought, I have no doubts people will still argue, talk shit, and think even if the singularity can do it faster and better for cheaper. A realistic AI singularity would provide more actionable, thought-provoking, and mystical environments to provoke subjectively artful endeavors should it not annihilate the universe or whatever. The "quality" problem indeed misses the mark for a fundamental AI critique, but to call it inhuman or anti-art is also amiss. It is uniquely a "tool" for thought, but not special among the other tools humans have created to better our lives.