“A.I. generated actor Tilly Norwood is set to make her big screen debut, starring in the film ‘Misaligned’ ” 

The above is from CBS News, and if that sentence gives you pause – you might just be in the same boat as me. The thought isn’t: “wow, technology has come such a long way," nor is it, "we can finally unburden those hollywood elites who have such a rough life.” If Californian Tech Bro’s were honest, those thoughts in complete form should be written as, “Wow, the technology to steal personal emails and writings from hundreds of millions of Americans as well as to blatantly rip-off the life's work of every writer, artist, and songwriter ever has come a long way. On the bright side, finally, Hollywood actors can stop complaining about how hard life is.” 

Ha! 

I jest; I jest at the second part. The first part is true. For those who are late to the A.I. party: there are many allegations by employees of A.I. companies who claim to have been ordered by their bosses to go to local libraries, bookstores or otherwise to take books in bulk so the pages can be scanned into their machines to develop their A.I. There are also currently dozens of lawsuits by people like Elton John and Bruce Springsteen against these A.I. companies, which will take years to go through courts, if not a decade. Meanwhile technology-savvy humans without ethics will continue to make billions of dollars. 

To be honest and fair, there are counterarguments from the pro-A.I. scene, against those like me who believe that A.I. has no place in art. Mostly those arguments point to when the app Photoshop was first released. Older painters and such decried it, proclaiming that the system had no place in art; that digital art was not ‘art’ just like how people today will say that A.I. art is ‘slop.’ That argument is easily disabused — not by countering that “A.I. has no soul, and thus its creations cannot be art,” — but by countering with the only metric that people with money care about: A.I. ‘art’ is theft of the intellectual property of all the living and dead songwriters, artists, painters, and writers. 

Billionaire Peter Theil of the weapons company Palantir regularly argues something along the lines of: people who are against A.I. in America are Chinese government sympathizers, and wish to see the downfall of America. I certainly don't agree. I don’t often read of other journalists who are both as pro-America and as critical of their government as I. He also said at the Aspen Idea’s festival that the Catholic Pope was working for Chinese Communists, due to the Pope's urge for World Leaders to better regulate A.I. (also to note: a “Palantir” is a mythical object from Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring’s Universe, which was an evil object used for spying and long-distance mind control. What a strange or on-the-nose name if I ever heard one) 

With all of that said, I believe I have identified the real issue that I have with pro-A.I. gremlins – and they are gremlins, because proverbially they want their cake and everyone else's too, all the time, forever.

If the argument by A.I. weapons companies like Palantir is that: “You should let us use all your secret and private data, forever, and let us drain all the rivers and aquifers in America, forever,” then shouldn’t those companies be paying the taxpayer? Furthermore it should be explicitly stated that a defense company is not the same as an ‘A.I. art/writing/chatbot’ company. Those companies openly steal everyone's intellectual property and then sell subscriptions to access the ‘art’ part of A.I., and some of those companies are traded on the stock market. Our civilization as a whole is not better, safer, or more righteous because some tech bro in California figured out how to train a machine on stolen intellectual property and then he turns around and sells it.  

Photoshop is not equivalent to A.I. Photoshop is a collection of tools developed by a handful of people, whose developers can all be pointed to and paid. A.I. ‘art’ (slop), has no defense, and it should be separated in conversation from the A.I. that will be used in the defense of America. Peter Theil and his billionaire peers worry about America becoming irrelevant if China “beats” America in the A.I. race, but I say unto you, Dear Reader, 

What is Liberty without her values? What is America without fair trade for good ideas? 

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

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