AI art is theft.
Couples that get divorced often have hundreds of small issues. They fail to address them. They build up. Eventually it breaks all at once.
The "anti-AI" push in America today is like this.
You forgot about "stealing from artists", but artists never got over that. To them it's still a hot button issue. Artists still absolutely hate your guts, and have been spewing excessive vitriol and anti-AI propaganda.
It's similar to: a leaky pipe. It would have been an easy issue to fix 3 years ago. You didn’t fix it. It kept dripping for the past 3 years. Your entire cabinet is warped. Mold is growing.
Addressing the concerns of artists 3 years ago would have been easy! Back then, they had simple demands, like:
- Let us opt out of training data
- Or just compensate us
But these relatively minor concerns were never addressed. So they festered. What has happened in the time since then?
Artists spent 3 years not just "hating AI", but spreading their anti-AI ideology. Artists were evangelists for the anti-AI cause. Just as one radical Christian can make 500 others become Christian, every former artist won 500 converts to the anti-AI cause.
Artists have — almost singlehandedly — polluted the AI discourse to such an extent that no sensible discussion can be had.
X has a tremendous bias towards logic and reason. It assumes that “discourse” on a societal stage must be driven by rationally motivated actors. This has led incredibly smart people, whose opinions I normally respect, to make outlandish claims, such as:
- The anti-AI backlash today is a CCP psyop
- The anti-AI backlash today is an EA psyop
- The anti-AI backlash today is a Rationalist psyop
I encourage you to adopt the “festering pipe” theory. We do not have “rationally motivated” actors. We have a handful of individuals who are incredibly pissed off, and are actively sabotaging America’s discourse, ruining our ability to have sensible discussions about the most important issue of our time, on a mass societal scale, because their relatively modest demands were not met.
I worry… because I see a new “festering pipe” forming with mathematicians.
Right now, mathematicians are angry. They have a modest list of demands. You can read them.
Here is: the open letter signed by 25 Fields Medalists.
Here is: the best article I have read this year. It was @doomslide's first Substack article. Doomslide was the first person who followed me on X that wasn't a porn bot, back in 2024 when I started posting. It states the issues that mathematicians have very clearly.
The concerns of mathematicians will be easy to fix right now. They state their demands clearly. If you let them fester, you will have a massive problem on your hands.
I am not a mathematician. It was only my college minor. I spent an awful lot of time studying: philosophy of math, logic, and philosophy of language, with maybe 20% of my efforts put towards actual math classes. This is my personal take on the mathematician's backlash to AI. This is my raw opinion, as nothing more than a fly on the wall. I think:
The social capital of mathematicians is immense.
Mathematicians have a tremendous cultural impact on other scientists and intellectuals. These other scientists/intellectuals have a tremendous impact on their students. Their students have an impact on the world at large.
This “trickle down” effect will take a handful of years. But: eventually, the complaints of mathematicians will make their way into pop culture at large.
Do not, for one minute, think: “the average person doesn’t care about theoretical math. The amount of people that can understand theoretical mathematics is small, so the group must be insignificant”. This is dangerous.
The people in the immediate social orbit of top mathematicians view them as gods among men.
You must view this as another leaky pipe. If you don’t fix this now, it will blow up on you.
-------------
The irony of the whole AI art fiasco. AI art never replaced real artists. AI art remains "jagged". It is superior than humans at some tasks, but worse than humans at other tasks.
It has been 3 years... in that time, consumers have gotten really good at spotting AI art. These few jagged edges became obvious tells. AI image gen give you plastic skin... AI audio sounds like it is underwater... every video is under 1080p... there are dozens of other small defects that the human eye can detect. It is obvious when you use AI image/video.
You should have trusted artists when they said: "AI art is not that good". It was naive to assume they were just "coping" because they couldn't confront the cold, hard reality that they would soon be replaced.
Using AI image and video — at all — is broadcasting subtle signals to the entire world. The "tastemakers" of the world notice it. True social elites refuse to come near you, while actively sabotaging your reputation behind your back. From your perspective, you should view "tastemakers" as dark matter: gossiping and slandering and turning the world against you, while avoiding your gaze entirely. They can see you, but you can't see them.
"Skill as an artist" requires the ability to play this complicated social game, in addition to having technical proficiency in your craft.
If you fail at this complicated social game, artists self-police, and exile you from their community. If you fight it, they extensively slander you, and ruin your reputation. The end result is that "AI artists" are a constant object of mockery and ridicule, both by the art community and the entire world (who trusts the art industry more than they trust the AI industry).
Skip forward 3 years. Mathematicians are arguing that there is some social component to mathematics, and without it, you are missing the full picture. (If you read the two articles linked above, this is the point they make.)
You should believe them!
Yet again, I am not a mathematician. I am a fly on the wall. But I can see that the AI industry is hurtling towards another terrible mistake.
If you stubbornly insist that the "social components" of mathematics are irrelevant, it will backfire.
-------------
I think America is on track to flat-out ban AI. Not "slow AI". Not a moratorium. Not pacing the frontier. It will be banned. Like heroin.
Why?
There isn't any singular issue. I think the AI industry has a dozen small problems. All of the small problems would be easy to fix in isolation! But they have been left alone for too long.
Our leaky pipe has warped the cupboard. There is mold in the wall. We need to call a plumber — and then a mold specialist, a carpenter, a contractor, and a cabinetmaker. Moreover: three more pipes have burst.
The anti-datacenter pushback was not caused by the Rationalists. The Rationalists are a different group with a different set of concerns. They are going to team up with the anti-datacenter populists. The leaders of the mainstream, anti-datacenter pushback were savvy at media, but bad at arguing. The Rationalists are bad at media, but fantastic at arguing. The two are going to team up.
The anti-datacenter group doesn't care about ideological consistency. They just want to win. They will spread any propaganda necessary to accomplish their goals. If that means retroactively changing their official narrative from one of "AI is useless" to "AI will destroy us all", they will happily change their entire belief system. And guess what! Nobody will care. Nobody is holding the anti-AI, anti-datacenter groups accountable for matters of ideological consistency over time!
You should fear Rationalists joining forces with Luddites. You should also fear mathematicians joining forces with artists! These represent the two most influential groups of cultural elites in America today. When you attend dinner parties, or engage in gossip, or post in group chats, or whatever — these are the opinions people care about. A friend of a friend of a friend of Terry Tao will reverse his stance on AI, officially joining the Luddite cause — or at least leaving the "pro-AI" cause, or joining the "pause AI" cause — because he respects Terry Tao that much. Similar things happened in artist circles when top artists came out as "anti-AI", except you don't know their names.
The world has a whisper-mill network. People gossip. Artists, intellectuals, and mathematicians all talk to each other. Your reputation matters. Defend it.
Anti-AI groups already won the public debate. It will soon win over the private debates. Over dinner parties, whisper-mills, and gossip.
Fixing AI's "PR problem" is no longer as simple as calling a plumber.
While we wait, the problem gets worse.
The anti-AI pushback is accelerating.