Losing Faith in Ourselves: On Why we Create
Andrew Zelny, CTMF PhD Fellow
In 2016, acclaimed animator and film director Hayao Miyazaki was presented with an early demonstration of AI-generated animation: a grotesque zombie-like creature shuffling about it’s virtual environment. The demo was meant to showcase the early potential for artificially generated animation, with the presenters arguing that the technology might have further applications in horror videogames to imagine motion beyond what human creatives could imagine themselves. Miyazaki was not enthused. He said he was “utterly disgusted,” and that what he saw was in his eyes “an insult to life itself.” When pressed as to what their ultimate technological goal was, the presenters sheepishly replied that they “would like to build a machine that can draw pictures like humans do.” The clip ends with a bleak response by Miyazaki: “I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves.”
In the nearly 10 years since Miyazaki was first presented with this demonstration, the capabilities of artificially generated images and animation have exploded well past what many people thought would be possible. Earlier this year, OpenAI announced that ChatGPT now had the ability to generate images, from text prompts or other pictures, with surprisingly impressive detail. This kicked off the “Ghiblification” trend, where people used ChatGPT to generate images in Miyazaki’s iconic artistic style. Examples range from filtering holiday photos to look like charming scenes from Kiki’s Delivery Service, to the outright dystopian use by the official White House X page of a ghibilified image of a crying woman in shackles being deported by an ICE agent. Regardless of the content of these generated images, the technology that Miyazaki was first presented nearly a decade ago has surpassed the inhuman shamblings of that early demonstration zombie. What was once a meticulously crafted example of human artistry that required painstaking hours of attention to detail and years of experience could now be copied within a matter of seconds.
What strikes me most from this is Miyazaki’s lament that “we humans are losing faith in ourselves.” This line has gone largely unnoticed, but stands to be the most salient message from Miyazaki. Beyond what generative AI is in itself as a technology, what does this technology say about us? How is generative AI an example of us losing our faith in ourselves, and what can we do about it?
In order to properly consider these questions, I find philosopher Albert Borgmann’s concepts of disposable and commanding realities particularly illuminating. In “The Moral Significance of the Material Culture,” he draws a distinction between two sorts of material artefacts: things and devices. Things are those artefacts which produce commanding realities: they demand skilled engagement and focused attention in order to make them operate effectively or produce their desired output. For example, a trumpet does not produce music on its own - it takes a mix of knowledge and hands-on work. Devices, on the other hand, procure disposable realities: they require little to no active engagement, skill, or attention in order to get their output. Listening to Louis Armstrong on Spotify does not require such engagement - just tune in and tune out. Whereas things are active, devices are passive: they commodify experience, reducing it down to the product with little to no care in how one gets to it.
Borgmann’s distinction between things and devices is not meant to be merely descriptive, but normative. He heavily critiques what he calls the “device paradigm:” the way in which modern societies have shifted towards automated, unskilled, and unattentive commodification of experience. Instead of pouring ourselves into experiences that demand our focus, our care, and the development of our skilled capacities, modern societies have become awash with quick and cheap alternatives. This preference for the device paradigm leads to the degradation of skilled experiences, and our lives more generally; without the opportunities to grow and learn through material artefacts that allow for those commanding realities, we lose out on the fundamental, meaningful experiences of life that allow us to flourish.
This shift towards the device paradigm is what I believe Miyazaki was aiming to capture when he said that we have begun to lose faith in ourselves. In a world where the fruits of creative labour can be generated at the click of a button, it seems to me that we have lost faith in our ability to create meaningful experiences for ourselves. Seeing AI as an easy tool to make things quickly and efficiently misses the mark as to what art is supposed to be; an active engagement with the experience of creating. By saying we have begun to lose faith in ourselves, Miyazaki seems to be capturing the fear that we have begun to miss the point of why we engage in art in the first place: to have flourishing lives.
However, all hope is not lost. In response to these generative AI technologies, groups like Artists Against Generative AI have banned together to fight against the infringements on artist’s copyrights in training these models and discussions on the value of traditional artistic practices have led to discussions of a new Romanticism movement. Beyond this return to traditional artistic practices, some artists and digital art collectives like SMACK and the Edinburgh Futures Institute’s The New Real are working to actively integrate AI into their art, not as replacements for the creative process, but to stimulate it. In both the creative exploration of these new technologies and in the championing of traditional methods, there has been a return to the faith in ourselves and in the creative process. Although Miyazaki’s worry remains resonant, I believe there is still something to have faith in going forward.
About the contributor:
Andrew Zelny is a PhD Fellow at the Centre for Technomoral Futures. Andrew’s academic interests focus on the intersection between ethics, psychology, and technology and how these fields come together to influence technological innovation and the development of moral character. His work at the Edinburgh Futures Institute is on the mediating role technology has on the Aristotelian virtue of phronesis (practical wisdom) and argues for the necessity of mindful design and use of emerging technologies towards the end of promoting that virtue. Andrew is interested in understanding the psychological and sociological effects technology has on moral reasoning and character and hopes to provide a framework to better understand these connections.