I’ve been dishearten lately with the amount of AI generated content I’ve seen being throw around everywhere. I think creating of any kind can be an art form. When you make something yourself there’s a part of you in it. That can be as simple as a comment on Reddit or a doodle on paper. Or something more complex like writing a novel or painting a masterpiece. The work is a unique part of you and I think that’s amazing. So it makes me sad when for whatever reason people use AI to generate content and publish it as their own.
Human made content is more interesting
This morning I woke up and found this post called “I’d rather read the prompt“. He put into words what I’ve been thinking for a while now. There is something special when another human is doing something creative. There’s a passion and uniqueness to it that no AI can generate. While AI can do some interesting things to me it seems kind of dry. I guess its hard for me to put into words. But I can say I’d rather read and look at human generated content for the rest of my life then to be in a world were everything is AI generated.
Vibe coding
Just the other day I found a person on a live stream programming a game. I thought oh cool lets check out what there doing. It fun seeing game development projects from individuals. I think some of the coolest ideas I’ve seen have come from individual game developers in game jams practicing their craft. But I was soon disappointed when the stream was mostly them talking to an LLM to generate code.
I don’t have any problem with using AI as a tool to help you learn or to solve some problems. I’ve used it myself a few times to figure out something in C++. It might also be good at generating simple tools to help you out. But AI can’t understand the big picture. Especially in something like game development that’s more of an art then a math problem to be solved.
From what I’ve seen AI generated code beyond 100 lines starts to have problems with extra bloat and poor performance. As the post I linked to above put it. “Every time one generates code by prompt, they create a new stillborn program; vibe coding is the art of stitching together their corpses into Frankenstein’s monster.”
Human writing is better than AI generated writing
I’m not going act like i’m some writing pro. English and writing were my worst subjects in school and they told me I was dyslexic. One reason I started a blog was to force myself to write more so I could improve. I still have a long way to go. But even with that disadvantage I don’t want to use AI to write for me. It just feels fake to me and if someone is taking the time to read what I wrote I want it to be genuinely me. When I read other peoples writings I also want it to be genuinely them.
Because I was dyslexic I never got into reading novels. I would read books about programming and other non-fiction topics that interested me. But this year something has changed. My son ask me to read Warriors: Into the Wild so I did and I found I enjoyed it. So I was thinking hmmm maybe I should try something else.
It was around that time someone suggested Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson. I fully enjoyed it and never thought I’d be the kind of person that could be caught up in a book for hours.
I say all that to point out that AI generated writing would never produce such engaging stories. Last time I did an experiment with AI writing an on the fly story with my son. The AI forgot who the main character was after 5-6 prompts.
AI Generated Art
I think art is an expression of yourself. A good piece of artwork evokes some kind of emotions even if its just appreciation. To hand that job off to AI almost seems like heresy. I like to draw but I’m not an amazing artist. But as I have got older I’ve learned to appreciate art work. So it makes me sad to think that more and more art is AI generated.
I feel like each person over time develop their own style and uniqueness in their work. A result of the 1000s of hours they have put into their craft. Even the flaws are cool as Bob Ross would say “happy accidents”. I don’t want to live in a world were all that’s gone and we get the same regurgitated stuff over and over.
Growing as a person
In closing I’m not saying don’t use AI at all. It can be a helpful tool. But make sure your the one creating your own work. The world will be a better place for it and you will grow more as a person because of it. That makes doing it yourself worth while.
