Brilliant breakdown of the rhetorical tactics at play here. The connection between Gordon-Levitt's OpenAI ties and his sudden moral crusade is spot-on, it's textbook motivated reasoning dressed up as ethics. I've watched creative gatekeeping shift across mediums for years, and the pattern is always the same: incumbents framing acces as theft when their advantage dissapears. The case law citations seal it.
So, given that AI is a modern fact of life, is it wrong to want "truth in advertising", a "Nutrition Facts" label, a list of ingredients? How much sodium benzoate and red dye #2 is in the video, the short story, or a YouTube political screed? Me? I'd like to know.
Yes, I use spellcheck. No, I don't use a grammar aid. Any animus I may or may not have with regard to AI probably comes from being duped by some deep fake of COL Douglas Macgregor speaking DNC talking points.
Let's be fair to AI. One ought to share the credit when it has partnered with you.
I agree on your main point. Deepfakes are bad, and should be labeled as such. These can be highly dangerous.
I am not advertising. I'm creating. You don't have to consume it. It's not dangerous for your gut health. Everything else you're talking about here is just another version of a True Scotsman purity test.
No, I am not required, nor should I be, to break down my creative process by tool or by time to sate someone's curiosity. If it took 15 hours of storyboarding, writing, musical arrangement or audio engineering to create a video, you have no "right" to an inventory of my creative process broken down by individual tool or technique.
AI is not a partner in the same way a firearm is not violent. It has zero agency outside of human interaction. It will sit there and do nothing until someone with intention manipulates it.
Thus, tool.
This is a fundamental point. Should authors be required to say they've used Grammarly or Scrivener, ProWritingAid, Microsoft Word? Actually I'd like a list of every word your spellcheck caught, so I can see how much heavy lifting Microsoft Word is doing for you ... then I'll know if you're a REAL author. Do you see the issue with this sort of demand?
"List your ingredients" is positing a "light" version of gatekeeping - making a determination on the value of someone's work based on the tools they've chosen to use instead of the actual work.
You can dislike Skrillex because he's "just pushing buttons" and making electronic noise. He also fills stadiums with 50,000 people having the time of their life. This is the problem with trying to identify art by ingredients. It doesn't work for something which is subjective as an end product.
I'm definitely not talking about books exclusively. I don't use AI to write because the writing process is a) enjoyable and b) AI cannot replicate my style or humor - it's terrible at it.
It absolutely can be mis-used. We've already seen published books by well-known authors that included an AI prompt to "write this section" within the published book.
There's nothing wrong with using an LLM to help you organize thoughts, outline, etc. It works well as a task manager and organizational assistant. Really well, in fact. If you want to use it to help you write your bio, go for it. Need to write descriptions for a YouTube Thumbnail? Have at it. But for long-form creative work, it's just not anywhere near good enough to replicate a human author and their experience.
For book covers? It is capable of doing some amazing things, for far less and with far more flexibility than hiring an illustrator when you don't have the money to afford one, and you know a small book will not make up the cost of a $1000 artist.
There are uses for AI everywhere - and doing so ethically and with boundaries to protect how you interact with it creatively are key.
Super helpful breakdown of the fallacies! Plus the updates on the law decisions is handy to have.
Brilliant breakdown of the rhetorical tactics at play here. The connection between Gordon-Levitt's OpenAI ties and his sudden moral crusade is spot-on, it's textbook motivated reasoning dressed up as ethics. I've watched creative gatekeeping shift across mediums for years, and the pattern is always the same: incumbents framing acces as theft when their advantage dissapears. The case law citations seal it.
So, given that AI is a modern fact of life, is it wrong to want "truth in advertising", a "Nutrition Facts" label, a list of ingredients? How much sodium benzoate and red dye #2 is in the video, the short story, or a YouTube political screed? Me? I'd like to know.
Yes, I use spellcheck. No, I don't use a grammar aid. Any animus I may or may not have with regard to AI probably comes from being duped by some deep fake of COL Douglas Macgregor speaking DNC talking points.
Let's be fair to AI. One ought to share the credit when it has partnered with you.
I agree on your main point. Deepfakes are bad, and should be labeled as such. These can be highly dangerous.
I am not advertising. I'm creating. You don't have to consume it. It's not dangerous for your gut health. Everything else you're talking about here is just another version of a True Scotsman purity test.
No, I am not required, nor should I be, to break down my creative process by tool or by time to sate someone's curiosity. If it took 15 hours of storyboarding, writing, musical arrangement or audio engineering to create a video, you have no "right" to an inventory of my creative process broken down by individual tool or technique.
AI is not a partner in the same way a firearm is not violent. It has zero agency outside of human interaction. It will sit there and do nothing until someone with intention manipulates it.
Thus, tool.
This is a fundamental point. Should authors be required to say they've used Grammarly or Scrivener, ProWritingAid, Microsoft Word? Actually I'd like a list of every word your spellcheck caught, so I can see how much heavy lifting Microsoft Word is doing for you ... then I'll know if you're a REAL author. Do you see the issue with this sort of demand?
"List your ingredients" is positing a "light" version of gatekeeping - making a determination on the value of someone's work based on the tools they've chosen to use instead of the actual work.
You can dislike Skrillex because he's "just pushing buttons" and making electronic noise. He also fills stadiums with 50,000 people having the time of their life. This is the problem with trying to identify art by ingredients. It doesn't work for something which is subjective as an end product.
Thanks for the response. I do not fully understand AI. Maybe that is why I worry about the "purity" of what I pay for to read. It's a personal thing.
I use SpellCheck because I can't type, not because I can't spell.
To each his own. I don't much care for silicone enhanced breasts, either. Can we agree that AI can be misused? Ill used, in the eye of the beholder?
I'm definitely not talking about books exclusively. I don't use AI to write because the writing process is a) enjoyable and b) AI cannot replicate my style or humor - it's terrible at it.
It absolutely can be mis-used. We've already seen published books by well-known authors that included an AI prompt to "write this section" within the published book.
There's nothing wrong with using an LLM to help you organize thoughts, outline, etc. It works well as a task manager and organizational assistant. Really well, in fact. If you want to use it to help you write your bio, go for it. Need to write descriptions for a YouTube Thumbnail? Have at it. But for long-form creative work, it's just not anywhere near good enough to replicate a human author and their experience.
For book covers? It is capable of doing some amazing things, for far less and with far more flexibility than hiring an illustrator when you don't have the money to afford one, and you know a small book will not make up the cost of a $1000 artist.
There are uses for AI everywhere - and doing so ethically and with boundaries to protect how you interact with it creatively are key.