With an ideology like “adapt or die” made to seem compatible with democracy, many AI tech companies have made AI domination synonymous with noble values and systems we strive to uphold in society. According to the New Yorker, an AI company exec stated “musicians who resist being ‘democratized’—giving creative agency to their fans—will be left behind.”*
Somehow, democracy has become its antonym of do-or-die authoritarianism. On the other hand, they claim that art reduceable down to “nothing but copying,” even calling the best quality art “stealing.” Art made by humans is made to be akin to what a machine can do in a factory, and now “the factory” is in place in the form of AI programming, there is no need for the most of the “drudgery” of the creative process, which to them is “nothing but copying” anyway. Somehow, creativity is synonymous with the exact opposite of what creativity is—in fact it is not about originality at all, and thievery should be a highly regarded value.
Things we cherish to be the pinnacle of human development—democracy and the humanities—they tell us—are not what they seem. They have little to do with human dignity and respect, authenticity and honesty, thoughtful and heartfelt expression of deep feeling, meaning, or inspiration. Instead “democracy” and “the arts” are merely about going to the lowest common denominator of human behavior: do-this-or-die fearmongering, copying, stealing, commodifying—in other words, creating the kind of society we had been trying to evolve away from, the kind of society that democracy and the humanities were supposed to elevate ourselves above.
Democracy and the arts—and in fact humanity in itself—are stripped of all their nobility, sophistication, and humaneness. After all, to them, they are all just really the opposite: vapidity and banality, just the same as commercialism. Thus, they are nothing but a means to the bottom line, and the faster we get to it, in the eyes of these companies, the more “democracy,” “art,” and “humanity” we apparently have.
The business-side of life is not inherently wrong, and pragmatism is a part of life. However, to these companies it is no longer one avenue of life that needs to be balanced out by the other areas of life, it is made to be the prime determinant: “adapt or die” really means “if you do not abide by us, you are dead.” Democracy and the humanities are the needed counterbalance to the business side of life, providing a sense of value in process, depth, the intangibilities of life, and human rights and values, but they are now made out to be the same thing as the bottom line.
Have we seen this before, where words mean their opposites? “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” the pigs tell us in Animal Farm. The ones that claim they are bringing us to the next great paradigm-shift in societal change often like to speak in contradictions. They do not want us to think too much about it, otherwise if the public has cognitive dissonance from trying to make sense of what they are saying, they cannot control us with their language.
If people start seeing past the incongruency in their propaganda, then they deflect and point to the ways democracy and the arts are already being corrupted anyway, and make an argument of inevitability: they are simply expediting a trend that is already going downward. There are bad actors already, so might as well make bad acting much more prevalent and accessible, and make it even more mainstream. What they do in their minds is destiny—either by saying they are bringing the next paradigm shift, or simply continuing allowing the bad in the current paradigm get worse.
They want us to march over to the lowest denominator of human behavior with them, but we do not have to march with them. They can speak in contradictions, but we do not have to mindlessly absorb what they say, and we can point out what does not make sense. Authoritarianism does not come only in the form of government, but in companies; it can exist in any type of organization. We do not have to believe that the goals of autocracy are inevitable. It is part of the autocrat’s playbook to make such claims, time and time again. The truth is, that playbook has not always succeeded, which is why democracy and the humanities still exist, even if they need some brushing up.
They want us to become jaded and apathetic, so that we cave into their demands. Let us not take democracy and the humanities for granted. Yes, they had been damaged, but they are far from dead. Think about the life they provided us—we owe something to them to keep them alive. What is claimed to be inevitable in life is really what we chosen to give up on.
*Kyle Chyka, “Is AI Art Stealing from Artists?” New Yorker, 2/10/2023.
