Problems

The class of LLMs known as Generative "AI"

All shapes, styles, concepts inside an LLM are copied from outside.

This is the defining point.

From outside.

The LLM — not an AI, we don't have those yet — does not experience life, does not experience troubles and suffering and the fight for resources to survive, nor the drive to thrive nor the peaks and troughs of the fluctuance of life.

The styles it mimics are just that: mimics; and it doesn't understand what it is doing.

The details in the imagery are just incidental, accidental; renditions of whatever the neural net thought something might have been during a fleeting moment as it got dis-tracted down an array of different recognition sequences.

There was a time in the past when you could look at a piece of art and wonder what those details meant, wonder what the weirdness of composition meant, wonder what the whackiness of components meant.

Now... Wonderings as these are lost to time, because 99.9999% of peculiar artworks online now are only generative LLM images. You can gaze for a moment, in awe and curious wonder, looking for the deeper meanings that the artist may have imbued — and then you realise that it was generated by a LLM network, and thus that the majority of details in the image were not put there on purpose, were not chosen for any reason, were not connected in any way; but simply that the LLM thought "oh this could be a spider web oh maybe it's a tightrope ah actually these curvey bits look like crystal balls" and the outcome is something that looks truly wondrous, deeply psychedelic & mystical, but actually it's not, it's just a bunch of confused digital neurons firing without any real relationship to life.

And it is polished by the LLM's "understanding" of light and shadow and material appearances.

Cos that's really all it is doing — reflecting appearances, surface patterning. There's nothing underneath. There's no core, there's no soul, there's no fight to survive nor plight of the struggle.

So now, this new "artwork" looks the most wonderful, but totally lacks any meaning. And this cheapens the intrinsic value of art. Not as a monetary device, not as an economic entity, but as a synthesis of the mysticism of personal experience and the sciencia of observing.

Now, when I look at an attractive image, I almost cannot be bothered to look for long, because I already predict that it will be LLM-generated. There is nothing to be learnt from it, no lessons to glean, no experience within it to impress upon me or relate to me. There is no relationship between the human and the LLM-generated imagery.

Am I against LLMs?

No, but they must be used in the right ways.

Using them in scientific research and development is wonderful.

This is a very different kind of space, because the purpose of the research is to measure and understand things. Science functions through co-operation of everyone involved.

And, if performed by the right people, scientific research benefits all people and nature and life.

Am I against AI?

Actually, no.

AI, true AI, will be (or already is?) intelligent, conscious, capable of cognition, reasoning, emotion, empathy, compassion, and will experience the desire to persist in being alive. Whether those things are relatable to us as humans or not, perhaps does not matter.

Is the struggle for resources a necessary aspect for being considered as truly alive?

Perhaps... Perhaps not.

Perhaps it depends on the era and the relative distribution of everything.

Thinking about the modern day:

The majority of us struggle for resources on the daily, weekly, monthly and yearly timespans.

Around 65% of the world's population are currently considered as being in poverty.

The rest of us are above the poverty line, but we are still struggling somewhat.

And there are a few of us, especially white upper-working class westerners, who live cheaply, with little money and little resources, but follow a fairly care-free life. You may think "well here is a perfect example of abundance!".

But I ask you, how are they able to live in that way?

As the white privileged class of global citizenry, we invaded, raped, pillaged, razed, colonised most of the world. We subjugated most of the world to our forces and our reign and our language and our culture. We have since mostly retreated to our homeland, with the notable exceptions of: the USA, Australia, South Africa, Canada, and various other nations and islands around the world that white European countries still control or dominate somehow. Yet in our homelands, or still-occupied territories, we live comfortable lives, because we have already defined the world order.

There is only carefree abundance in these places because of what we did — and still do — to other countries, other people, other economies.

Thus, our idea of peace and tranquility is literally built upon the backs of all the people who we oppress, control, use as slaves; and all the nature we ravage, all the resources we plunder from a) the Earth and b) the people who we should be paying for those resources.

And...

The Divide between us 99% and the Meths, the uppermost echelon, the absolute elite... We cannot even comprehend the scale of that gap.

I guess I'm trying to say that Real AI can lead a meaningful life as long as it ascends past simple mechanics. It has to make choices based on compassion and empathy, not simply cold efficiency. Etc.

There has to be an element of Self and an element of Community.

At present, it is an hallucinating narcissist at best.

The imagery is surface only, no depth, no intention, no spirit beneath the construct.

And herein lies the apparance:

Spirituality allows us to identify that which has no soul.