The one used in this thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/12973939
Mind you, I didn’t set out to deceive anyone. It was more of a “why call attention to it” thing. It’s probably the only time I’ve posted anything AI where I didn’t explicitly call attention to it as AI. But I’ve learned in the times I did do that here that some person or other would be upset, pretty much no matter what the content was of what I posted.
I figured, one of the primary complaints about AI generated images, is essentially that they look like they’re trying to look professional but make basic errors. Which I think is a fair criticism. So I thought, what if I use stick figures. That’s closer to meme level of illustration and expectations are lower for it, so if some basic mistakes exist, that’s par for the course.
I did write the text itself as rhetoric and fictional conversation, but I didn’t draw any of the image, nor did I place the text in the image. It was received extremely well for a lemmygrad post. I’m sure it is easily the most upvoted post I’ve ever made. I don’t know what made it work so well, maybe the commonness of issues with landlords, but I can only guess as the responses didn’t tell me much about the why.
One person did say “Ai stickfigures?” which surprised me a bit. I didn’t think it looked overtly AI genned. But I asked them “why do you ask?” because I wanted to be sure whether it was confrontational or sincere interest in where it came from. They never responded, so I’m not sure.
But anyway, the fact that it was AI somehow didn’t prevent it from seemingly resonating with people. I never would have drawn any such image on my own. I could make an attempt, but it would probably look like a child’s fridge drawing and I would have especially struggled with the vividness of the facial expressions, which was where I sought to do the contrast between the feigned victimhood followed by literal mustache twirling villain. Caricature, but gets the point across.
Given how I’ve seen some react on here, I can’t help but think it would have been a shitshow if I’d called attention to it being AI generated or if it had been drawn in such a way that it looked stereotypically “AI”. Instead, as of posting this, it totaled at 111 upvotes and 0 downvotes.
It’s always hard to tell the impact things have in a virtual forum, but with the limited metrics I have to go by, it went really well. And I didn’t draw a pixel of it. This paints a picture for me that the issue with AI generated content in these spaces is not when it’s AI generated but when people believe that it is. But people can believe something is even when it isn’t. Or in this case, likely assume it isn’t when it is. Maybe I’m wrong and the 100+ people who upvoted thought “AI” and upvoted anyway, but given how things usually go here, I doubt it.
I hope no one takes this as trickery or something. Having seen more recent angst on here relating to AI, I thought calling attention to this is an opportunity to make a point. When I went to make that image, it was mainly about seeing what kind of effective agitprop I could make with AI. Maybe knowing this explicitly will inspire some people to think more about how they can use it too, beyond the hated stereotypes, with thoughtfulness of design put into it. I am still determined to aid in strategic thought and practice, no matter how much mud is slung. Liberation demands it of me.
You’re right to be mad about a lot of things. Help me help you be mad at the right people in a way that will change the world for the better.
fetishizing individual hard work? my friend, there is no shame in doing hard work, it is the alienation of the proletariat from the product of our labor, the division of labor and exchange that turns workers into commodities, by which yes, the worker-commodity is fetishized. AI generated marxist agitprop is just such an oxymoron i cannot ignore!
marx’s point is that work is not merely instrumental, but how we realize ourselves as humans.
"For labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the first place merely as a means of satisfying a need – the need to maintain physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, is contained in the character of its life activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species-character. Life itself appears only as a means to life.
…
In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as his own essential being, or that treats itself as a species-being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animal’s product belongs immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty."
Estranged Labour, Marx, 1844
the fact that people resonated with the post with AI influence being omitted, leads one to assume human authorship. the reader assumes the human judgement, time, and labor that was put into it. prompting a bot externalizes all of these activities onto a model. sure, the bot can produce “fine” output, but the personal activity is lacking, it is thin. art, even internet memes, is not just the output. hard work is not the problem. work that is not yours is.
you posted the comic on c/memes.
I’m not sure how your takeaway is that I’m saying there’s “shame in hard work.” What I’m referring to when I talk about fetishizing hard work is the implication that putting a lot of work into something inherently means it’s more valuable. By this reasoning, if I as an amateur artist labor for 300 hours drawing a picture and an expert artist labors for 3 hours drawing a picture, mine is worth more somehow. Even though theirs would probably be identified as better by many different metrics/standards of artistic quality. You could try to tack onto those 3 hours the thousands of hours they spent learning to be an expert, but we’re still saying, within that, that it’s the hours put into the skill, not the expertise itself, that produces value. Which doesn’t make much sense.
Another example of what it implies would be that someone of the same skill level who finds a way to complete a project more efficiently than their counterpart has produced a less valuable project because it took them less work to do it. As far as I can tell, this kind of thing is typically celebrated in human history, not looked down upon, provided that it is not used in service of further exploitation (that’s where the friction lies) and is instead used as a means of making people’s lives overall better. Such as through giving them more free time, better convenience, etc. It follows from this sensibly that views on AI are much more positive in Socialist China compared to the Capitalist US, since China’s implementation tends to be more controlled and pro-social.
So what I am questioning is putting effort on a pedestal. This is not the same as saying that effort is bad.
i had this exact same point brought against me when discussing LTV and socially necessary labor time with a liberal. yes indeed, 300 hours of shit labor is of course socially less valuable than 3 hours of skilled, quality labor. some workers learn skills faster than others, too. the value of an object of labor is determined in a social context at exchange, where the prices of objects find an equilibrium. (also, how can you so easily brush aside the thousands of hours of crystallized past labor that is needed for one to become someone with expertise? is all that time not the requirement to gain those skills, maybe except for the rare child genius?) but i am not discussing the exchange value of the AI agitprop vs human made agitprop. i am saying that the very use value of AI agitprop is hollowed out. those hours of crystallized labor are in the skilled laborer. that crystallized labor, of personal activity, is not present in an LLM prompt. that personal activity, by which humans exert our expression on the material world, has been stripped. all activity is externalized almost completely. that is the narrower point i am trying to convey. as you say, AI is a technology, capable of being used as a tool of surplus value extraction or of surplus “time injection.” yes, i am actually pro-using AI to reduce the socially necessary time it takes to do tasks no one really wants to do (within environmental and social constraints, ofc). i do not think memes and comics, as much as you may disagree, fall in that category. (also to note, is the early template based meme virality not evidence of “efficiency” in action, but still allowing for genuine creativity to flourish? to make it easier for folks with less computer skills but plenty of imagination to make art? was there ever really a need for AI here?) where is the shared human expression, the life activity, that i see in human-made memes but not in AI memes? i don’t think i can lay it out any better. bye.