Alexa in the Garden of Epicurus

Here is a really good video about AI music and the band "Velvet Sundown", and brings up various issues regarding AI music:

Quote from Don

PS. I am more than happy to have this deleted or delete it myself if this veers too political for the forum.

I haven't clicked through to the article but will do so now. Certainly it seems to me what you've posted is helpful, so I think the post itself certainly should stay up. I'll read the link and come back and comment further if it seems additional warning on following the link is appropriate.

Update: Just read the article. Aside from a passing reference to the current president and to past events in Stalingrad which adds nothing important to the article, there's not much partisan politics in it at all. I didn't follow all the links or watch the linked videos, but the great majority of the article seems to contain a lot of useful information and argument - some of it stated in a colorful way, but nothing that would cause me to think that the link strays from our posting policies. It's a good collection of issues arising from AI.

Quote from Cassius

And if in fact someone posted a poem that so appealed to you that you in fact found it to be one of the most enjoyable poetic experiences of your life to read it, would you then wish that you had never read it if you found out later it had been generated by AI?

Quote from Pacatus

And I am not saying that I couldn’t be fooled by a sufficiently “aesthetic” AI – but that would just make me sad and angry. Art, like passion, is a human affair.

Quote from Cassius

the limitations of hypotheticals

This isn't a hypothetical. There are entirely AI-generated bands, artwork, animation, texts including poetry right now that are fooling people or "passing the Turing Test" if you will. We are well beyond hypotheticals at this point.

Quote from Cassius

resuming that the poem did in fact cause me great enjoyment and that I could continue to read the poem in the future with enjoyment and with no necessary harmful effects, I would not wish not to have had the experience.

I don't doubt you could get pleasure from the words, but the words are literally meaningless to the software that composed them. The poem would be nothing more than a glorified random word generator spewing out a line of words that the algorithm decided were likely to be adjacent to each other given a prompt. There is no - ZERO - human emotion, feeling, creativity (other than the clever programmers) that went into those words that you find pleasurable to read. There's nothing behind the poem's expression. It's a Potemkin village of a poem. There's no there there.

Now, if you want to compare it to taking pleasure in a sunset that was unplanned and due to random fluctuations in the atmosphere... okay? In relation to that AI poem, you - the reader - are imbuing that poem with meaning. The "author" of the poem is NOT trying to communicate their feeling to you. The AI poem is a Rorschach Test. A random inkblot that you can look at and say "that looks like a bee resting on a flower" or read a poem and say "Oh, this reminds me of a day I spent in the sunshine." YOU are imbuing algorithmically-selected words with meaning. Granted, we do SOME of this with all poetry, but the author has an intention of what they wrote if it's a human author.

Quote from kochiekoch

I think the ethical problem here is full disclosure. If you are given the information that the game is CGI, you know what you're getting and you can choose not to view it.

Quote from Don

Now, if you want to compare it to taking pleasure in a sunset that was unplanned and due to random fluctuations in the atmosphere... okay? In relation to that AI poem, you - the reader - are imbuing that poem with meaning. The "author" of the poem is NOT trying to communicate their feeling to you. The AI poem is a Rorschach Test. A random inkblot that you can look at and say "that looks like a bee resting on a flower" or read a poem and say "Oh, this reminds me of a day I spent in the sunshine." YOU are imbuing algorithmically-selected words with meaning. Granted, we do SOME of this with all poetry, but the author has an intention of what they wrote if it's a human author.

You and Pacatus are building a strong argument in favor of judging whether you want to participate in a pleasure by an across-the-board requirement that the source from which it comes NOT be AI.

I definitely sign on to that viewpoint to the extent that you have to understand the source of a pleasure in order to evaluate whether in the end it is going to cause you more pleasure than pain.

But isn't that just the same question just stated differently(?) Don't we have to be certain that *all* AI generated pleasure is going to harm us more than help us in order to reach that conclusion? Because certainly there are *some* major benefits to AI or else it would not be "taking the world by storm." Are we to adopt Cicero's viewpoint on Epicurean philosophy and go on a crusade against AI? I'm all for crusades in the right context.

But that's where I think the debate is still open. I don't yet have the sense that by necessity all use of AI is so dangerous that it should be banned (and we're not just talking the forum but society as a whole). I would think that there's a lot of subtlety on where to draw the line.

And my gosh this debate is everywhere. It's hard to read a list of articles on any subject at any time day or night without some part of this debate being brought up.

Quote from Don

Google's AI summaries at the top of ALL my searches are intrusive and far and away useless the large majority of the time. I still use Google, but I'm rapidly being more likely to use other search engines for this exact reason.

I just read an AP article on the large environmental impact of AI data centers, in terms of energy and water usage, and heat generation. One of the contributors wrote that beginning Google searches by typing “-ai” eliminates the AI overview feature.

Quote from Pacatus

One of the contributors wrote that beginning Google searches by typing “-ai” eliminates the AI overview feature.

Just tried it! It works. KUDOS to you, Pacatus !! I'll be sharing this little tip.

This discussion touches on a way in which hedonism often harbors an awareness of the well-being of others, even those beyond our immediate loved ones. For some, such as myself, the thought of the harm to, say, society in this case, brings personal pain which may outweigh any pleasure that I would experience from the technology in question. One could call that being a Luddite, or you could think of it as listening to one's feelings to better assess how to respond to a situation.

A key to listening to one's feelings is understanding that feelings change over time, and one needs to be open to continually assessing their feelings over time. This is the process.

Anyway, back to the discussion....

Say farewell to AI bubble, prepare for the crash:

Say farewell to AI bubble, prepare for the crash

Quote from Pacatus

beginning Google searches by typing “-ai” eliminates the AI overview feature.

Re-quoting this ^^^^ for emphasis.

Quote from Don

Just tried it! It works.

I tried, and it didn't work with the " " around the -ai, but did without them.

From the article that Godfrey posted (in post 27 above):

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When one user asked it to produce a map of the U.S. with all the states labeled, GPT-5 extruded a fantasyland, including states such as Tonnessee, Mississipo and West Wigina. Another prompted the model for a list of the first 12 presidents, with names and pictures. It only came up with nine, including presidents Gearge Washington, John Quincy Adama and Thomason Jefferson.

Quote from Cassius

1. Don't we have to be certain that *all* AI generated pleasure is going to harm us more than help us in order to reach that conclusion?
2. Because certainly there are *some* major benefits to AI or else it would not be "taking the world by storm."

Those are two very different statements.

1. "*all* AI generated pleasure" - I'm not sure what you mean by this. The "pleasures" "generated" via AI go beyond what we're primarily discussing in this thread. I'm particularly concerned about the generation of artwork - prose and image - by AI algorithms. Machines are not "creative." They're "generative," in that they will indeed generate images and text but there is no creativity involves. It is a concrete process governed by an algorithm put in place by programmers (even if one says an AI engine "learns" from its large language model or "training" data. The learning is programmed into the machine.

There are benefits to AI in the sense of analyzing medical data, for example:

How Artificial Intelligence Is Shaping Medical Imaging Technology: A Survey of Innovations and Applications - PMC

AI might also help with other problems for which time constraints preclude humans from tackling (we're mortal beings... we can't crunch numbers 24/7 for days at a time).

Granted, this Big Data issue has some dark underbelly, too, but it's being used as a tool; not as an end in itself. People are using AI to generate music, prose, artwork, as ends in themselves, many times as short cuts to $$$. The AI slop that has infected Amazon is staggering:

Scammy AI-Generated Book Rewrites Are Flooding Amazon

Authors keep finding what appear to be AI-generated imitations and summaries of their books on Amazon. There's little they can do to rein in the rip-offs.

www.wired.com

So, my answer to your "Don't we have to be certain that *all* AI generated pleasure is going to harm us more than help us in order to reach that conclusion?" would be that we have to be wary of AI's different aspects and usages and how it is being used to assess the harm/help.

2. "taking the world by storm." - One of the reasons that AI is "taking the world by storm" is due to hype, overselling, overpromising, underperforming, and "lather, rinse, repeat." AI companies - and AI executives - are precarious in many ways and appear, to what I've read, to engage in obfuscation and misdirection to appear smarter than they are. If you really listen to what some of these AI "geniuses" are saying... they're not saying anything. It's all buzzwords and empty rhetoric. And people don't want to say "the emperor has no clothes" so they nod their heads and the ruse goes on.

Why 75% Of Businesses Aren’t Seeing ROI From AI Yet

Also in the Forbes CIO newsletter: DeepSeek throws a grenade into the AI space, AI looms large in Microsoft And Meta earnings, AI moves Doomsday Clock closer…

www.forbes.com

And the Better Offline podcast gives an unfiltered no-holds-barred look at what's going on in the tech sector: https://www.youtube.com/@BetterOfflinePod

So, in conclusion, I'm mostly okay with using AI as a tool to do what humans find impossible or highly onerous to do (e.g., crunching massive data). As for art, I want my art to be created by feeling, mortal humans with real emotions and real skills and real creativity.

This discussion (and it's a good one!! Thanks to whomever it was that got this rolling!!) reminds me of the discussions we've had over the experience machine (which I believe was mentioned earlier?).

My primary reason for saying that one should not hook themselves up to the experience machine is the source of pleasures change from experienced to induced.

My understanding is that Epicurus said "All sensations are true" in that their source is natural and coming from some existing thing in the universe. There is a reality beyond our minds and bodies. We experience sensations because we are alive in a material world which has an effect on us.

The experience machine renders us a passive inert participant in someone else's idea of what pleasure is. We are at the mercy of the manufacturer and repairman of Experience Machine LLC.

Yes, our "experiences" would be "real" to us but only in the sense that a dream or hallucination is real. There would be no external stimuli coming from a real external universe. We would be cut off from the universe, encased in the shell (or wires or hoses, pick your mechanism) of the experience machine. I don't believe, from my understanding of Epicurean philosophy, that Epicurus would endorse a life of living in a dream or an hallucination. All our friends would be figments of our imagination. All our pleasures would be fake. Our life would be a pale reflection of what it could be.

Epicurean philosophy is not pleasure at any cost; it is taking responsible for moving one's life - navigating one's little boat - using pleasure as your North Star, weathering the storms through which the Star can be seen through the clouds and lightning, and steering one's own course. It does not mean abdicating one's pleasure to someone or something (eg, AI) else.

Quote from Pacatus

Quote from Don

Just tried it! It works.

I tried, and it didn't work with the " " around the -ai, but did without them.

Oh! Sorry for the confusion! I just used the quotes to set that off as a set phase. I didn't use the " " in my search either.

Quote from Don

Oh! Sorry for the confusion!

Ah, wasn't you! The article had the -ai in quotes, and you can use quotes in Google to make sure your search includes the specified terms. So the confusion was mine.

This Substack article gets at why I feel the way I do about AI's use in art and creative endeavors:

Death of Illustration by a Thousand Prompts

How Skechers and other brands are napalming the creative playing field—one terrible AI ad at a time.

open.substack.com

Quote

...like watching someone take a sledgehammer to a Stradivarius because they heard you can make music with a kazoo.

...

We're not just automating away individual careers. We're dismantling the entire pipeline that creates the next generation of visual storytellers.

Quote from kochiekoch

Obviously, none of the stuff is going to go away,

I'm not so sure. The trajectory of investment vs real results doesn't seem sustainable over the long haul. Return on investment for these companies seems illusory at best, bordering on fraudulent.

To bring this back to the topic of the forum, I don't contend that people, including those of us on this forum, get pleasure from playing with these software tools or seeing/hearing the results of prompts.

I do contend that Epicurean philosophy is not pleasure at all costs. These tools, for me, are starting to fall under the "pleasures of the profligate" in some ways. They're like a quick hit that feeds on itself and leaves us wanting more. If I type this prompt I get this. What if I change this? What happens if I add another detail? For business needed "creative work ," why pay humans to create things that speak to other humans? That's expensive! Save £€¥$ and use the free software or subscribe for cheap. And meanwhile the AI dutifully responds again and again and again ad infinitum until all the electricity is being sucked dry.

Meanwhile human artists and poets and writers and cartoonists and musicians are either picking crops to live or are marginalized and paid as niche artisanal oddities to perform for the ultra-rich in some dystopian gated community.

There's also the implication of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Humans remain intrigued and seduced by "magic," and AI can appear magical. However, it's Alexander the Oracle Monger's Snake God all over again.

Okay, one last post for now on this, directly relating AI to dangerous skepticism (which we rightly rail against here on the forum):

Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months

What happens when you can't trust photos, videos, text, or the entire web?

open.substack.com

I'm taking this guy's advice from The Matrix:

I have to repeat how much I agree with this chart from Don's post above, and I'm going to post it at the Epicurean facebook group with this comment:

A friend has pointed me to the graphic I am posting below. It comes from an article against the dangers of AI. The article has a small amount of political content that is against our group rules to highlight, and I deliberately omit referring to that here. But the majority of the article is non-political, and it describes the real--world effects of "collapse of confidence in reality" which AI has the potential to encourage

The reason I am posting this is not to comment on AI, but that I don't think this chart is limited to describing problems with AI. I'd say this chart is exactly what has happened to the West as a whole since about 100 AD and the wide suppression of the growing Epicurean movement. It's just this series of disasters described in the chart that Epicurean philosophy was developed to oppose. The big issue is that we shouldn't see this as a modern phenomena that began or got worse with AI. These disastrous attitudes are inherent in every form of skeptical / mystical / absolutist philosophy such as what Epicurus revolted against. And these problems are inherent in post-Epicurean western civilization for the last two thousand years.

THESE PROBLEMS are the enemy that Epicurus fought against with his physics and canonics, and it's why we need to emphasize all aspects of his philosophy. If we understand Epicurean physics and canonics we'll end up with a sound understanding of Epicurean ethics. If we don't understand the physics and canonics, Epicurean ethics is arbitrary and can be twisted into something far worse than worthless, as it has become in the writing of many commentators.

Reflecting on that chart, and the implication that everything will soon go to "hell in a hand-basket"... I was thinking that as long as everyone maintains their employment and has money, and the money maintains its value, and there is enough food in the grocery stores, then everything goes okay. But if there ever comes a time with widespread unemployment, worthless money, and no food...then that is a big problem.