AI is the Revenge of the Mediocre

The anti-human mob can't get enough

We’re in the middle of the most bizarre part of the new tech adoption cycle: the extreme mania hype phase, where people lose their grip on reality and make the most absurd claims imaginable about the Current Tech (very similar to Current Thing hysteria in politics).

It’s easy to ignore and laugh at the most unscrupulous/low IQ content creators when they make predictions that are clearly based on sci-fi fantasies rather than anything based in reality.

CLEARLY an internet-scraping technology isn’t going to magically turn into an I Have No Mouth and Must Scream-style emotional artificial life form that decides to commit mass murder against its creators for funsies.

At some level the people who go down the extreme hysteria route with their commentary are playing into the incentives of the Content Creation Industrial Complex: the most outlandish statements get the most views and - most importantly - the most ad impressions.

It takes someone with extreme integrity hold the line against the financial incentives that are contantly tugging internet discourse in the other direction.

Few are able or willing to do that.

So this is what we’re stuck with.

The anti-humans

“What the pathetic commonplace heads with which the world is crammed really lack are two closely related faculties: that of forming judgments and that of producing ideas of their own.

- Arthur Schopenhaeur

But the slightly less cheeseball POV is that - even if it’s not going to somehow develop the capacity for anger and the desire for speciecide - at a minimum AI is going to make humans ‘obsolete’.

The claims extend to all white collar professions, but the most rabid, foaming at the mouth, full on excitement is reserved for it’s potential impact on one group in particular: Creatives.

Any time a new AI video clip gets released (set aside for a moment the obvious fact that most of these clips have been heavily edited by humans) the comment sections are full of excited and gleeful statements like “RIP Hollywood” and “lol humans are fucked bro”.

First of all: ‘AI video’ is just a rebrand for CGI (computer-generated imagery), which has existed since the 90’s. CGI hasn’t put any humans out of their jobs. In fact it hasn’t done much of anything at all other than make movies shittier and less aesthetically pleasing.

So the best the anti-human mob can come up with is rebooting a decades-old technology. Really? That’s going to put an end to human creativity? Come on.

But one thing AI has done is raise the lowest common denominator.

The average adult in America maxes out at a 7th-grade reading and writing level. Now those same 7-graders-in-adult-bodies can click a button and generate slop text that’s (slightly) higher-level than their abysmal natural abilities.

The same goes for art. People with zero talent have moved on from thousands of years of drawing stick figures and smiley faces to generating slop imagery just by typing in a MidJourney prompt (the irony of the ‘mid’ in MidJourney is hard to ignore) that’s much better than anything they’d be able to create on their own even given a thousand lifetimes.

The sole reason AI has such a deathgrip on genpop’s psyche is: It gives mediocre people the ability to LARP as being slightly less mediocre than they actually are.

It might not be a huge leap forward for mankind as a whole, but it’s a huge deal for the resentful non-creative underclass.

AI as a manifestation of ressentiment

“…everything that raises an individual above the herd and makes his neighbor quail is henceforth called evil…”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Nietzsche warned about the dangers of resentment (aka ressentiment).

Most people think of ressentiment as being based in materialism: Poor people demand that rich people be chopped down to their level, which if implemented destroys the incentive to produce and brings human civilization to a standstill.

This classic view of ressentiment is something that definitely exists. It’s not hard to find examples.

But it also applies to something most people don’t think of.

Natural talent.

Nobody is more resentful than the talentless.

The feeling of hostility that people who were born with no talent feel towards those who were born with all of it is at the root of all dysfunction in the modern world.

And the ephemeral nature of creative talent in particular makes it a ripe target for resentment.

Creativity/nobility

And only the fools who cannot hear the song ask that the rules be posted. Hear the music. And enjoy. But do not cry. Not everyone was intended to reach A above high C.

- Harlan Ellison, Eidolons

What is creativity?

Simply put, the ability to create something from nothing. When a creative person creates it looks/feels like they’re pulling ideas out of thin air.

One person can sit in front of their computer, open up a Word document, and gradually type up a bestseller. Millions of others can look at the same blinking mouse curser on the same blank Word document and can’t even come up with a single coherent sentence.

Some people have The Gift.

Most don’t.

It feels (and to be honest, is) unfair.

People with small amounts of creativity struggle and suffer, this is true. Hence the starving artist archetype.

But people who are born with extreme amounts of creative ability are the closest thing to royalty that exists in the 21st century. This is especially true in the U.S. of A. where we don’t have a formal noble class and thus invented our own in the form of the cult of the celebrity.

This cult rewards people at the extreme high end of the creative pyramid in ways that ordinary mortals can’t even fathom.

Not just financially. In many ways extremely creative people are treated as true First Class Citizens and can get away with things that normal people can’t.

They can be degenerate, they can be lazy, they can be psychologically unstable. It doesn’t matter. As long as people like what they create, they can do whatever they want. Normal rules don’t apply.

And to a certain variety of resentful 9-5 working stiff, this is an outrage that must be rectified.

“Why do these actors and musicians get to make millions and party and get all the hot chicks while I work my ass to the bone for nothing?”

Into this toxic maelstrom of envy and self-loathing by proxy enters AI.

AI is the ultimate defense mechanism for those who feel insecure and resentful about their lack of creative talent and the station in life it condemns them to.

“I might not be able to paint a painting or write a novel but FUCK YOU I can generate a MidJourney image that looks exactly the same as every other MidJourney image or click a button and get 70k words of slop from ChatGPT. And one day all those Hollywood assholes are going to have to get real jobs because real people just like me will be able to create a movie on our laptops with no effort. FUCK YOU.”

The great leveling

“The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all action; it levels…

Each individual within his own little circle can co-operate in the leveling, but it is an abstract power, and the leveling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The leveling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ... It must be obvious to everyone that the profound significance of the leveling process lies in the fact that it means the predominance of the category ‘generation’ over the category ‘individuality’."

Soren Kierkegaard, The Present Age

The core message that AI-lovers are shouting from the rooftops is: “Your talent doesn’t matter. We’re all the same now.”

Whenever a large segment of society demands a Great Leveling it acts as a crushing force that destroys the human spirit and any scraps of individuality it encounters.

That’s why the infamous Apple ad struck such a chord. On some level everyone can sense that it was an honest visualization of what AI proponents truly think and feel.

The irony is that they’re wrong. If anything, extremely talented people are going to stand out even more than they already do.

When the world is full of inhuman slop, the non-slop becomes that much more appealing.

Finding someone talented and original on the internet is such a breath of fresh air that you can’t help but feel a sense of awe and admiration.

The way to prosper in the Industrial Age was by neutering your personality and turning yourself into just another cog in the machine (brick in the wall?). The more robotic and machinelike you were, the easier it was for you to find a slot to fit into in the corporatized job market. Being human was a death sentence.

The way to prosper in the current Information Age is by being as much of a personality as humanly possible. The less robotic and AI-like you are, the more likely you are to benefit from algorithms that reward engagement and eyeballs. You’ll be left behind if you’re bland and indistinguishable from everyone else.

So while the current state of affairs is that mediocre, talentless people love AI for it’s supposed leveling effect, the reality is that the ecosystem it creates will drive an even more disproportionate share of resources to the creatively talented people they so despise.

Talent, humanity, and individual striving for greatness always win in the end.

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If you enjoy my writing you can also read my novel Your Life Does Not Exist, available in both paperback and ebook editions on Amazon.com.