Vox Day continues his love affair with all things AI by declaring that opposition to this artificial substitute for being able to think automatically makes the opponent a Marxist.
Since it’s obviously too difficult for the average individual who denigrates the use of AI and opposes its use on the grounds of insufficient human involvement to understand their own position well enough to recognize its obvious intellectual roots, I asked Claude to dumb down my observations enough to permit their little midwit minds to grasp it.
I have no idea what ‘Claude’ is, although I assume it is some sort of AI slop. Despite being an average individual and a midwit, my preference is to be labeled with the prerogative Luddite, as opposed to Marxist. The AI slop compares opposition to artistic work created by AI programs as being similar to arguments used by Karl Marx when he attempted to stand against the great industrialisation of his own times; a chair shaped by human hands has more worth than a chair pounded out on a machine. The competing argument is that worth is subjective and an object whatever the public is willing to pay for it.
150 years later we have the great joys of Ikea, while a table actually designed and shaped by human hands costs a small fortune in comparison. The outcome of industrial wages means that the average man can only afford to purchase goods made by machines. The wealthy can still purchase fine handcrafted objects of beauty, however.
This accusation of Marxism is thrown at anyone rightly protesting about art produced by AI. After the revolutions of industrialisation, art; whether it be painting or drawing, music, or the written word, was one of the few remaining outputs where the hand of man still reigned supreme. True, much of that produced was of very average quality, but the consumer was free to choose, even if he was strongly manipulated by advertising and the like. When you picked up a book to read the thought never entered your mind if the words had been written by a human hand or not.
A few days’ before he wrote that people are midwits for protesting the use of AI, Vox Day boasted of his ability to correctly identify fiction works generated by AI, while smugly accusing the majority of AI’s detractors of having no hope of being able to do the same. It is a curious position to pronounce that AI generated prose is unidentifiable while simultaneously accusing all those who oppose AI of being Marxists. At least I can easily identify an Ikea chair. What I do not appreciate is being sold a con; of purchasing a piece of furniture made by a machine while being assured that it was hand crafted.
It is also free, which I find curious. Facebook was free from the beginning, but as the users slowly found out, they were the product. So too will undoubtedly be the case with AI. These companies are not spending huge amounts of money out of the goodness of their hearts, at least if they do not wish to enact a replay of the dot-com boom and bust. As I said on the latest episode of The Greasy Pole podcast, AI is being designed to suck you in on a personal level and make you feel good about yourself when you use it. And when they have everyone hooked, when people are unable to function without being led around by their AI companion, then they will be charged $30 a month for the privilege.
How hooked can people get? Just look around you when you sit on a crowded train and count the number of passengers who are not staring with vacant eyes at their pocket moloch. Read how Australian children are hopelessly addicted to their devices already.
But my opposition to AI goes beyond mere commercial matters. AI is the ultimate tool of our secular society. If anything, it is the pinnacle to which the secular world has been evolving and striving to make itself over the last 500 years. It is soulless. It is a great step towards further reducing humanity to becoming useless eaters. It exists entirely apart from God. It adds nothing of value while greatly increasing the noise ratio. I only fear God, but AI fills me with disquiet.
Why Vox Day is pushing it so hard, why he is so infatuated with his “new best friend” as he puts it, is unknown to me. But I find it strange, very strange indeed. Vox has been at the forefront of identifying the methods and goons of the System, publicly exposing them, mocking and humiliating them, and he has been doing it for over 20 years. But now he is all-in on the ultimate tool of the System. Is he merely genuinely mistaken or is it something else?
I do not know, but I am not swayed by his arguments nor affected by the labels that he uses to smear those not jumping on his AI bandwagon. You can place me very firmly in the opposition camp to AI. I will never knowingly use it. I will make it a point to avoid it. And I will countenance all those around me to do the same. Anyone who truly stands with God can do no other thing.
Originally published at Pushing Rubber Downhill. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
