And why can't that apply to people who use generative AI? Expression isn't about seeking recognition, in the sense of clout or popularity, it's simply a matter of "I want other people to be able to see what I see."
If I compare what I'm able to produce by hand, and what I'm able to get the computer to spit out, it's pretty clear to me which is closest to what's in my head. So why do I have to be ashamed of that?
Is that because they didn't type code on the keyboard? They still had to think of an idea, conceptualise it, work and prompt AI, test the results, alter things, work through problems, stick to a direction and bring about something from nothing.
Sure your one shot generic websites don't really have any "skill" or "honour", I may as well just read a text file of what you wanted to say (and I'd prefer that), but to say there is no sweat, tears or skill to using _any_ generative AI is a little bit narrow minded.
The thing, which anyone who's ever done any type of art realizes, is that 99% of the time, there isn't really such a thing as a high fidelity image in your mind's eye.
You feel like there is... But the minute you try to bring it into creation, you find out just how absurdly fuzzy it really is. A non-artist might believe that the failure of bringing your mind image to life is a failure of _skill_. That you are just physically incapable of accurately reproducing the thing you're picturing in your head.
While that might well be a factor, it's never the whole story.
That's most clear with writing. Anyone who's ever written anything of substance has had the experience of having what feels like a pretty solid story/thesis/whatever. But the minute you try actually writing, you realize just how fuzzy that idea really was. You have to work and labor at it to make it become something coherent. It's not a limitation in mechanical skill: typing absolute non-sense is exactly the same difficulty as typing the a NYT best seller. The difficulty is in the deciding what to type.
A huge portion of art is in that part of the process. Exploring ways to bring into existence not _the image you had in your mind_, because there's no such thing. But to bring into existence something that makes you _feel_ the same way the fuzzy idea in your head made you feel.
And that's the thing that AI does not, and fundamentally cannot, give you. All the innumerable micro choices your mind does as you try to gradient descend that raw log of wood into the carving of a bear.
Looking at an AI output and deciding whether it happens to match the fuzzy idea you had enough or not, simply isn't the same thing. I'm not even saying that it's not valuable or useful, it certainly can be. But it's fundamentally not _art_. That's the reason Rick Rubin, for all the praise he (deservedly!) gets for all his work, does not describe himself an _artist_. It's just not the thing he is doing. He doesn't create, he evaluates. And if you take that for what it is, that's absolutely fine, great even, when you're as good as he is.
But if you believe the evaluating is, as you put, "seeing what's in your mind's eye at the highest fidelity possible", that's simply untrue. And it _cannot_ be true, because there isn't actually a thing that's in your mind's eye in a way that would allow for that, regardless of whether you're using AI or creating it by hand. Using AI just gives you the illusion that there ever was such a thing.
>Looking at an AI output and deciding whether it happens to match the fuzzy idea you had enough or not, simply isn't the same thing.
Yes, it is. I say this as someone with a BFA. The feeling of a happy accident from a slip of the tablet pen and a "mistake" in the generation is the exact same: "I wasn't expecting that, but it works." Same when it's an unhappy one: "That's wrong, we need to fix that."
I don't care to spend time antagonizing you with speculation on why you have this wrong, but I can say this with certainty: at the high level of determining if something that I am willing into being, through interfacing with a process and tools outside myself, aligns with my vision and taste, there is no substantive difference between gen AI and traditional methods beyond that which exists between any two given traditional methods.
I don't really have anything to say other than the fact that you both don't thing there's a difference between using AI and actually creating something yourself, and that you also don't care for explaining why those are the same thing to you, but you also still feel the need to nevertheless reply anyway... It's fitting, is all.
That take is pretty disingenuous and it makes it hard to take an argument seriously. Who are you to say they did nothing? If someone uses an AI agent to distribute tasks to it like a tech architect does to a team of developers by teaching what to do, and assigning to whom should do it, with examples and instructions, and then reviews the output, offers feedback, and iterates for a few weeks until something is complete, how is that not doing anything? What exactly are you proposing they did for those couple of weeks? Should I imagine that all architects have done nothing their entire life?
Are developers that use a "high level" language like C++ also doing nothing because the machine did all the work of compiling to assembly and machine code for them? Nothing to celebrate and no honor?
At which point does this argument stop being valid? Is the project manager the one that created the product? Is it the CEO that is paying the people to? Is it the bank that has granted the loan to build the company?
In my view, the one that "creates" is the one that puts in the majority of the effort. Under this definition, the average vibe coder isn't creating anything.
If I compare what I'm able to produce by hand, and what I'm able to get the computer to spit out, it's pretty clear to me which is closest to what's in my head. So why do I have to be ashamed of that?