I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with AI and the people that use it if not as many people talked about it like it’s still them doing what the work that the AI is doing.

I’m not anti-AI. I think just like any technology, it has its positives and negatives. However, I’m getting kind of tired of people who use AI and talk about the work that gets produced by the AI as though it’s their work.

I like to work out, and sometimes I come across people that try to build muscle in non-natural ways. The majority of them do not claim that they’re doing the same amount of work as someone who tries to build muscle in natural ways. They call it cheat codes and they’re open about valuing results more than they value hard work. While we disagree about what’s important, I appreciate them being open about it.

There are things you can customize about what an LLM produces, or what software that generates images within an art program produces, but you can also hire an artist and tell that person what you want, and telling that artist what you want does not mean that you made the art. It means that you specified some customizations of what gets produced.

If someone else makes a robot that can cut down a tree, and you use it and press some buttons on it to customize it to work with your tree, and then it cuts down the tree, you did not cut down that tree. The robot did. If you’re only capable of felling a tree with the help of that robot, to the point even that if someone asks you if you can help them cut down one of their trees, and you can’t do it because the robot is getting repaired, then you are not capable of cutting down a tree.

I don’t feel like it should be asking too much to want people to be honest about whether what they’re producing with AI is actually theirs or not. Creative directors that commission their artists to do something don’t claim what their artists make is their work. People who use chemicals and other things to grow muscles faster don’t claim they’re doing something natural or that it’s just them doing it all on their own. And yet for some reason, people who use AI, the most obvious “someone else is doing it” thing that’s likely ever been invented, largely want what it produces to be seen as something they made.