While Artificial Intelligence in my opinion is an unimaginably beneficial addition to human society, there is a large chunk of the population vehemently against anything made through the help of AI. The very mention of AI seems to bring out visceral amounts of seething within some people, which to me is something that makes very little sense.
From what I’ve heard, the reasons for their hatred boils down to the following reasons:
- AI steals from artists
- AI will replace creative jobs
- AI will help in corporate exploitation
I see the first criticism perhaps the most frequently. Any story narrator on the internet who might use AI pictures, for example, is often bombarded by people in the comments attacking their use of AI. Do you remember when Instagram had a trend of turning your picture into a Ghibli-style picture through AI a few months ago? At some point, my feed became more full of criticisms of this trend than it ever was of the original trend. The main criticism of this trend was that this was disrespectful to the original author, Hayao Miyazaki. I ask, how so? People should not have a monopoly on a style of making things. James Bonsack was the first man to automate the building of cigarettes; does that mean he was disrespecting his predecessors who made them by hand? I could list countless examples, as plenty of things which were handmade in the past are now automated. AI does not “steal” art any more than individuals steal art by being inspired from other individuals and drawing similar to their artstyles.
The second criticism, the idea that AI will replace creative jobs goes hand in hand with the first. I would actually say that this is not necessarily wrong, so much as it has the wrong idea of what jobs actually are. Jobs are not just random tasks people get paid for; they exist because people want or need the service they provide. The demand for a job exists only as long as the value of the work it does exists. If AI can make a job irrelevant, I would question just how much value that job had in the first place. If the public no longer needs a service, there is very little reason to actively slow progress to “save” jobs. Not to mention, many of these same people espouse that AI generated art feels soulless. If the “soulfulness” of an artwork matters so much to the public, I would think the introduction of AI would not affect demand so much, as it allegedly cannot provide the public with the soulful artworks they desire.
The third criticism states that AI will allow tech companies to profit off of unpaid labor and data while harming the workers who would have served these roles. This idea, once again, I feel as though comes more from visceral emotions than any lines of reasoning. It is anger towards tech giants that fuels this criticism, an anger which can be valid in many cases, but not so much in this case. Once again, if one’s job can be so easily replaced with AI, I reckon their job never had much societal value to begin with.
At the end of the day, most of the outrage against AI is not about ethics or fairness: it is about discomfort, envy, and a refusal to accept that the world moves on. AI does not steal art any more than cameras stole portraits, and it doesn’t “destroy” jobs any more than the printing press destroyed handwritten books. People screaming about corporate exploitation are really just projecting their anger at tech giants onto a tool that could make life easier. Hating AI doesn’t make it immoral; it just makes you predictable, reactive, and thoroughly behind the curve.