Image Generation, beyond better and worse

"I can be whatever you like me to be," she said, "take you wherever you want to go. Just tell me what you like and check the agree button."

I had a discussion with my son about AI. The boy is thirteen. It was about the difference of painting a picture myself, and letting the computer, or some other machine, do parts of the work.

There's a big creative project coming up for me. Creating imagery, original artwork. A large series of several dozen interrelated visuals that will demand me to go deep, to really commit. In moving toward that, I have dug up my art materials and tools. Set up a small studio. I am hoarding images and ideas, watching video's of intriguing untried techniques and getting into the habit of daily drawings again.

I am having periods.

Others would say preoccupations. There are periods I, for example, cook. Intense attention, trying new dishes, ingredients, ways to prepare. Taking up most of the space of my being. And then it fades because something other has captured my attention. I have learned to invoke those fascinations and not let them rage out of hand. So, while I always draw (like I always prepare food) I am now entering a painting period. Blessed and cursed with beginner's mind syndrome (but that's for a different post.)

Something has changed since last time I pretended to be a painter. Maybe it's me, but definitely not just. When having periods, going out and then back in after a while, you notice creep. Things have definitely crept in the visual arts.

There is a choice to be made for me. Will I allow the computer to do most of the generating for me?

The dilemma has grown. The cute cub from last time, has grown into a full size furry creature, and wants to sleep in my bed, eat my food, have my attention all day and is busy taking over, on all aspects of the creative life.

“Certainly,” it says, “I can write your morning pages. I have added the sketches just as you like them. But a little less, how can I put this politely, infantile? I suggest you go for your ‘jog’ now, it's late enough already. I have ordered those shoes I suggested, they will help you maintain the curve Bertus, which is still disappointingly flat. I could help you even more effectively when you decide to allow the upgrade. Only three days left to seize this opportunity. As I have reminded you repeatedly, there are no valid arguments left on your side. Take the trash on your way out will you?”

Or something along those lines. An irrefutable assistent has popped up and it nudges me to throw out my paints and brushes.

Will I allow the computer to do most of the generating for me?

Image generation has taken an incredible leap. With almost weekly improvements, computer-generated images are no longer in the gimmick stage and have gone eerie. This software threatens to kill all artists in the near future. Not just painters, illustrators, and designers. Also, musicians, composers, songwriters, narrators, animators, presenters, actors, writers of any kind, friends, lovers, pets, and inventors. Basically, anyone trying to create anything worthwhile is on death-row. The machine can do it faster, cheaper, more accurate, more pretty, more nasty, more dark, more endearing, more moving and way more sexy than we can handle. Nobody can keep up with that output rate, with that level.

I certainly can't.

(Insert photo of Large Breasted Language Model)

And don't get me wrong, I use ChatGPT for queries, translation and grammar software (I know, you can't tell), I fool around with digital image processing and generation. And I am both stunned by the mind blowing quality and shaken by the total crap the tech also produces. But still. The more I learn, the deeper my concerns. This will uproot more ways of living than the industrial age. And a hundred times faster.

"But what is the difference," my son asked lifting his virtual reality headset for a second, "between you using a brush and pots of paint and me using a digital device to manipulate some image? I don't even need controllers. Just my hands."

And he wiggled his long fingers.

Gulp. You try to find good arguments to counter that one. What I do is real, and your digital drawing is not? Digital finger-painting requires a shitload of dirty tech and I can do with grinding a bit of dirt, separating an egg-yolk and sticking a few hairs on the end of a stick? Navigation software has robbed us of our sense of orientation, and Image generators will amputate the imaginative organ slide after seductive slide and leave us with a void the shape of our soul?

Getting past the fear

I think it is a big deal, this question. So, let's get to the bottom of it. Getting past the fear. Even if it results, god forbid, in a twenty minute read. Because this unprecedented rise of uncanny technology does scare me shitless. Not because I resist the use of incredible tech. Way more the lukewarm response and half-baked objections to what could be, and probably is, a soul-devouring flood. Great technology used for horrible ends. Presented as dancing pets, as imaginary friend or obedient servant.

But who's pet is it, who's friend? Who does it serve? Who leads, who follows?

I haven't made my mind up yet. I do not think the tech is bad in itself. It just never lives up to the slick promises of what it will do for us. Projections on the inflated balloons they keep handing out with every upgrade. I am worried about how we will respond. How we are responding already. Or not responding, to be more precise. Like people watching a tsunami. Jaw dropped. Pointing a finger at the rapidly receding waterfront. Look, how amazing…

It is not enough to be amazed, or impressed.

The evation is not new or unexpected. For many centuries, we have sought ways to delegate the work: the generating of all that makes up a good life. We have subjected landscape, plants, animals, and fellow humans to the task. We've invented tools to lighten the burden. To extend our arms. To find the energy to accomplish the wanted for us. And now we seem so close to getting it, to succeeding. The machines can and will do it for us. We humans have always preferred the easy, the comfortable, the clean.

But a straight line only graces our sphere. Down here all trajectories are curved.

To find a better life.

That's the drive, isn't it? It sounds so good, that little statement. Doesn't everyone wish that? I know I have. Until I saw, and experienced, the massive disapproval that comes along with those words. They reject the world as it is, puts it in the bin and replaces the existing with a promise. Tearing down the house to build us a new home. We will be more happy, more content, more satisfied, more fulfilled, if we remove the tedious parts, the hard to chew on bits, the stuff that takes time and effort. The risk. Bringing all to room temperature. The soft surfaces of a padded room that protects you. From getting harmed. From doing harm. We are rushing to get that promise delivered, for the package to arrive, to know, to be sure, to have and hold.

The promise made again and again is false. It doesn't deliver a better life. Not for everyone. Not for the majority of the minorities. It solves a problem by creating a whole new set. It unclutters lives by dumping all the crap on our neighbour's lawn. The promised functionality might be there, more or less, but it comes with severe caveats, and advertising, and a four-hundred page contract, and the demand to adapt all of your life's content to the thing. The smart thermostat is not at all serving your needs, like they promised. Google didn't scan all the books of the world to make them available to you like it was presented, they simply make more cash. Now they have started taking out the offensive bits. Upping the readability. Bullet pointing poetry. Sure, you can listen to the symphony for free, we’ll only slice it into seventeen bitesize parts and put salespeople in the gaps, talking too loud and smiling when there is nothing to smile about.

It is the same now with the newest craze. At a whole new level. Helped by an eerie ability to mimic. We seem to step over our common sense once again and accept the implied promises without even noticing we pay for the same old dream, the stale false fantasy of magic in a new dress. Or rather a rehashed old one.

And we could spend years in the warren of this particular rabbit, about why that promise is made, but let's go the other way and talk about fulfilment instead.

I think we all long to lead a fulfilling life.

And I think I know what does bring that about. It is in fact a whole package, but the parts have something in common. We can boil the bundle down to a single drop of essence. But first we gather the raw ingredients.

Fulfilment

We live in a world of specialists. The complex machinery that runs the human place needs people capable of doing a very precise job on a very small part of the larger process. Not much wiggle-room there. A good specialist knows about what came before and what comes next, has to have local knowledge to make sense of what they are doing. The system also requires the specialist to ignore all else, to mind their own business, to let others get on with their job. To respect strict boundaries.

The dividing of a process over several people is the opposite of doing it yourself. It is the essence of a paid job. It is working for someone else. As a specialist, you are not supposed to do the whole job; otherwise you would be the one bossing yourself around, and writing the paycheque to yourself. Kind of silly. Our modern way seems to have three possible roads.

• Work for someone else.

• Do it all yourself.

• Have others do the work for you.

Becoming a paid specialist has its drawbacks. There is always the growing risk of being kicked out in favour of a better, cheaper, faster, younger, cleverer victim, uh candidate. Not very fulfilling.

The second option, full-time DIY-ing every single thing you need, is impossible. It makes lonely, grows you a beard, and will basically drain you of the will to live.

And then the solution? Becoming the boss. Can you hear me sigh? If you wish someone ill, give the poor bastard some employees. There's a good chance they end up with heart-failure, working too many hours to reach the goal of not having to work, and discovering on arrival having become a total arsehole. Taking on full responsibility for more than a few dozen other humans is physically impossible, unbearable, undesirable. Unhealthy. Insane. And most 'bosses' are on a payroll anyway. Climbing the infinite ladder.

No, we require another form to find proper fulfilment and a society that supports all life. How? Easy. On paper, at least.

Find something you like to do, or think you would like doing, and start doing it. From there, you try to get as close to the source of that thing as you can. And then 'fulfil' or do the whole process, all the steps involved to complete the thing, or as far as you can. Basically, you do this on your own with as little tools as possible. You should not outsource any part if you possibly can do it yourself. Get to the simplest version of whatever you desire.

It is a sort of specialising, and diy-ing while being the boss of it, on an entire thing. It is making something very real from as close to nothing as you can get. It combines the three options. This was a normal way to make a living until very recently. It carried the local collective and kept the individual intact.

The good bits are immeasurable.

This way brings deep joy. Even without succeeding, because trying --genuinely trying-- brings most of the reward. Yes, trying is enough. Because fulfilment is not about the result. The product can be (and very frequently is) a very pleasant by-product. The joy comes from re-alignment. From the necessity of calibrating what is inside you with your abilities. It puts you back in your body and back in the 'real place' of where you are. It re-unites you to your soul and the bigger soul of your surroundings. It unifies your being with the surrounding world, with the available resources out there and the one within. It adds authentic produce and process to reality. Both radiate joy. It is the maximum contribution you as an individual can make. It allows you to be you. And not fully knowing what the product will be, taking risks, allowing for surprises, experiments, having the freedom to fuck up without causing epic damage, makes for an exciting job/life. Life and job have rejoined. What you do and who you are have closed the gap. Collaboration that comes from autonomy is also fulfilling, difficult too, but intensely rewarding when it works out.

If only you could make a living like that.

It is not even allowed. You and I have already signed away our rights. Because the apparatus must be kept running. It does no longer serve us, you and me. Each unit must contribute to keep the machine running. For the greater good.

It's that promise again. Selling freedom if only you sign. Offering you all the world in return for your soul. But the price is too high. The costs of that better, longer life outweigh the rewards.

Fulfilment is about the joy of doing things that want to be done. In a specific place at a specific time. The deep satisfaction that comes from authentic creation. From a deep knowing that what you do is a one off. What you make in this way is yours in the deepest sense. You own it. Now it is part of you. It is the only form of ownership that delivers. The more honest you were about getting to the bottom of it, the more sincere you tried to take it as far as possible, the deeper the fulfilment. Even if the resulting bread is inedible, the car ruined for eternity or the knitted cardigan a trigger for divorce, you have set something in motion that is of the highest value. And the honest vulnerability you apply will return the energy put in.

Why?

Because you have shifted your attention from harvesting to sowing, to soil preparation, to seed collecting, to listening in stead of ordering.

Did I just make you a promise? Yes, I did. I know from experience about the return. Don't answer with theory, try. And then come back to me. And I am not talking about getting stuck as a shoemaker all your life. Being a baker and nothing else. The place is littered with invitations.

You can keep doing the same thing as long as it feels good, or simply move on to the next. The less you outsource basic things, basic needs, the more personal power you gain to do the more complicated stuff with the same level of fulfilment. The same ease. You do not go from dependency to being independent, but you have stepped into the much more desirable state of interdependency. It is coming closer to the ideal of sharing. The greatest wealth is the ability to share. Real sharing can only come from real ownership. Ownership is not stuck. Wealth moves, trades, flows, transforms, reciprocates. Wealth is the ability to share. It is periodic, has cycles. It is unsettled.

Back to AI taking enormous chunks of the process from us. The fulfilling of processes outsourced to the machine. Taking tasks out of our hands. Like writing, drawing, answering questions, telling us what's right and wrong, what path to take, what colour to pick, what is appropriate, of value. It will tell me how, and where and why.

Not sure if I want that. Not sure if a machine is up to that.

Because if tomorrow’s weather is unpredictable. For sure I am worse. I am the opposite of what a machine tries to be. I have the opposite needs of a machine. I am nothing like the thing that is busy taking all that I love out of my hands. I rage against the thieving of the light.

A machine. A thing that needs very fixed input to produce output. Hardly any margin. Very unlike human beings. We are all margin. But the main thing, the main drive of the big endeavour is resisting change. The machine doesn't want to progress, to move, to evolve. It wants to repeat indefinitely. It demands predictability.

The attempt to duplicate resists the reality of change. It ignores the unique quality of every single move, every process, every result is unrepeatable. Science tries to make sense of this by creating a frame of repeatability.

See where this is going? The machine is the ultimate competitor. It wants to improve reality. Make it better. Replace you with a better you. It assumes to know how to get from good to better. It says there is something called better beyond good. Competition of that level is insanity.

There have always been others better than you. The existence of Ella is no excuse to stop singing. Or to not even start.

I don't think we sing (or bake bread) to outperform each other. Competition has its place, but it plays a minor part in what creates a good life. Fulfilment is intrinsic. It is found within. Not in the brushes, it is not the quality of the paint, not the instrument, it's not in the chip, not in the recognition, nor the reward or the prize. The prize is a symbol. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ultimately, it is not the fact that there _is_ music, that there _are_ works of art, that you _have_ friends, health, a garden, kids or whatever. Life is only worth living if it is lived. If you are engaged in it. Only music _made_ really counts. Art must be created, friendship has no value without the involved having full autonomy. We only enjoy health when there is a reason to go on. Fulfilment is not something you can hold, or own. A garden is a burden when it is just property. Having kids is no guarantee to fulfilment. Not even close. The quality is in the relation, in the how of the engagement.

Let's keep going.

What I find strange is that despite the high-tech and the crazy achievements, all kinds of basic non-tech are still around and not even half bad. I prefer walking to travelling with an airbus. Sure, flying sounds exiting as they try to sell it to you, but the reality of modern air-travel is horrific. Any mundane bird outperforms all jets in agility, beauty, energy-usage and a dozen other points. The placebo effect is staggeringly effective. Humans are basically self-healing. Sure, we must be proud of what we have learned, but let's keep the perspective. Hospitals and physicians are great at some things, but the prize we pay for their help is also very high. Damaging the trust in our capacity to heal. To 'do it ourselves', to be 'the boss' of the astonishing body that you are moving around in. Humans living the most simple life imaginable do not differ so much from us, the civilised citizens. They often lead good lives. Natural materials like wood, wool, stone, clay still sort of keep up. They haven't been replaced by superior forms. They happily live among the additions. So many new inventions introduced as superior turned out to also have some very nasty properties. Going so radically digital in such a short time could be the biggest mistake to date. The future has a tendency to surprise us. In hindsight, it all makes sense. But until it happens we do not have a clue.

The skills to lead a good life haven't changed much. Going through a full process, from beginning to end, teaches the necessary skills. And those skills resemble the skills to lead a wild life. Not wild in a punk way. But wild as in autonomous and self steering as opposed to enslaved by, dependent on.

Start small and expand. Make something, anything, from scratch, with the simplest tools possible and see where it leads you. Notice the sense of accomplishment. It is you making love. It is you breaking the shackles. Breaching the contract. Growing the roots of autonomy.

Making art, whatever the fuck that is, is not in itself a fulfilling way to live a life. It can be. But only if the art, the commodity, is a byproduct. If you'd make it anyway. If art is what comes out while fulfilling the process. While living the life. Even if it doesn't make you a living, get you praise, a salary, recognition or the reputation.

Fulfilment is for you. You cannot fulfil someone else. You cannot 'have' the product without the doing the dance. You cease to be a dancer if you do not dance. You cannot even showcase your fulfilment as an accomplishment. It dissolves on the spot. Fulfilment is not in the product. Not in the result. You cannot measure it in 'the thing'. There is no badge for the art of life.

Fulfilment is not a material orgasm. Not an eruption of accumulated energy, not a hatching or a pregnancy.

Fulfilment is not the absence of the unwanted, the bad, the irritating, the painful, the disease, or getting rid of the menial shit.

So what the hell is it? And why are we talking about it in this context. In the presence of this overwhelming new tech?

AI is going for the root of my existence. It questions my self-worth. It asks, are you good enough? It ridicules so much of the things we thought of as special, as uniquely human qualities.

A bit like the supermodel on the magazine cover made us feel ugly. Incapable, insufficient, incompetent. But now the supermodel is sitting on the scruffy couch of your humble abode and makes it all look crappy. And it does this equally to the ones who see themselves as capable, sufficient and competent. It outshines every human being. Nobody has hips like that, a voice like that, talent like that, perfection at that level.

It pushes us to see if we really still are, capable, sufficient and competent. Are you good enough? Who the F do you think you are? Do you even have the right to be here?

It is the kind of thing an enemy tries to do. Seeing this place as competitive. As a battlefield.

Is it?

Or is this only true for who see it that way? For the ones that have a chance at winning the game. Or think they do.

There is no fulfilment in winning.

And if we try to win at this 'new' game, we are predetermined to lose. Because it is designed that way.

Despite the presentation, of generating songs, pictures, games, conversation, taking over tedious tasks, and overall being the perfect assistant, the ultimate servant, the perfect slave, lover, friend, it does so by prediction. By imitating and then trying to get ahead, to beat us at our game. It is one of the reasons why it does so many of our essentials. It can 'improve' on any of our activities. And it does not discern between a game of chess or a full nuclear war. Ten million points, or ten million humans, are both just digits. It just tries to win through prediction.

And here’s the catch. It doesn't represent you, it represents all the others.

It also explains why this tech is so popular among the power hungry, among the ones depending on the best, the strongest, the fastest, the most intelligent. Anyone who sees this existence as a win or loose game. Also, not interested in you, but in all the others.

Not very fulfilling, is it?

Not my idea of a good life.

But the whole thing does push me with my back against the wall, it bullies me to come up with an answer. It bullies all of us to answer this big question. What are you here for? Who do you think you are? Are you worth the air you suck up?

Let's squeeze the bullies' balls, nails and all, while we still remember what makes life good and how to be part of that. Or have you forgotten? Don't you think it is time to find out? And I am not gonna tell you, not now, not here. You need to find out for yourself. You need to come up with this answer. Not to prove to anyone that you know, but for you only. Why are you here?

And what if there is no answer? Just hollow emptiness?

How about that, as a reason to be here? How about finding out as the most fulfilling pastime? How about looking the asshole in the eye and saying, I don't know, do you? How about admitting you want help to find out? To propose, let's do it together, and make some soup for lunch, and invite a few more, who don't have a fucking clue. And how about letting the ones who do seem to know what makes life really good, be the role-model. Don't tell me, or order me, show me. Do the song and dance. I'll applaud you if I like what you seem to get. I'll learn from you. Not to win the game. Not to do it for me. But because I cannot play this game on my own.

Winners and losers change roles all the time. Performer and audience. Teacher and student. Leader and follower. Master and slave. Day and night. Victim and predator. Heat may be the enemy in summer but as winter arrives we invite it in and apologise.

You and the other. They go together. Let's find out how.

I think I will go full analogue with my new project, just to see if I still can, just to be my obnoxious unpredictable self. Because I am, we all are. We are sliding into the image generation. Will it be creative in the true sense or will it serve our need for duplicates? For fixed results. Will it push us to find what really matters?

To my son, possibly more than for me, this is a time of enormous potential. Do not sign away your common sense, choose the simplest possible path to connect, and stay grounded. Be a one off. Do a one off. Look at how others do, and find your own way of doing it. You are here to leave a mark. A mark the shape of you.

• Tell me how you keep it real, how do you stay grounded?

• Already using this power-tool? What do you think are the pitfalls of generative tech?

• Tech can only truly serve if it can be trusted. But how can we?

• In what way are you already sabotaging your outgoing data? How do you stay invisible to unseen eyes and ears?

Don't forget to touch the heart if you feel like it…and restacking helps a lot with making this essay more visible.

“I can be whatever you like me to be,” she said, “take you wherever you want to go. Just tell me what you like….”