I was really happy to be able to do that interview with The Register, which was published over the weekend. I figured like, okay, if I can just get my thoughts all in a row, and communicate them clearly to people, they are going to start getting it.

Yeah, no. People on the internet are always going to be people on the internet. And as a former content moderator for a major social media platform, I know exactly how that tends to go.

In this case, comments on the Register’s forum about the article went exactly how they have gone everywhere else. It’s interesting and extremely ironic to me that people who are so against AI themselves behave in entirely bot-like and predictable ways when it comes to debating these topics.

I’ve literally heard it all before. I’ve even used AI to parse and categorize complaints people have had about my work in the past (and there have been a great deal). And I can say that it all comes to nothing. I don’t sense we’re any closer to reaching some kind of understanding about a mutual future we can all see ourselves living happily in with regards to AI.

So yeah, I don’t know what to say any more. Except, I guess, to highlight particular elements of comments from that latest article, and answer where I might, and just keep going. Cause what else is there to do?

First up on the Butcher’s block:

Stop talking about this person, he is just trying to use the Streisand Effect to his advantage.

Mmkay. So, it’s my fault then that this lawsuit needlessly dragged me in to prove that I’m bad because AI something something? Yeah, no. And I should just passively sit back, and let them mischaracterize me in the media. Sorry, not gonna do that, “bro.”

Another:

Heck, real masters of painting have created their own media and pigments, whilst others artists have learnt how to fold and grind their own chisels for just the right line in the lino blocks: how much time has this guy put into writing an AI model?

All I’ve done, and all I’m claiming to have done is to use off-the-shelf AI tools in the way that they were designed and offered to the public. It should not be controversial at all. Why should I “write” an AI model when all these things are made available? Don’t really get the logic here.

Also, as a painter, I’ll admit something: I don’t even mix colors usually. I use them straight out of the bottle. I’m a consumerist painter in that way, just like I’m a consumerist opportunist user of off-the-shelf AI. That doesn’t make me more or less of anything. If you want to go look at Old Masters, nobody is stopping you from doing that.

This person has a halfway decent comment, thankfully, user “HuBo,” which I’ll just quote the best part of, without much commentary:

Boucher makes interesting points that bodacious language models (with generous grammars, per this AC) might produce, on the one hand, “outputs [that] sometimes tend toward the vanilla“, books that “weren’t memorable for me“, and “answers [that] fell very short and were extremely flat and weird and boring“. Their positives, on the other hand, were in providing an “interrogative way of working“, help to “think more logically [and] organize those thoughts and communicate them“, and an ability “to rapidly iterate on the results until it matches my vision“. In other words, it seems the tech, on its own, tended to trek in the direction of spongiform encephalopathy, but a skilled wrangler could right that course, onwards to a much more satisfying BBQ outcome.

It’s like anything else: someone who doesn’t know how to play the violin is going to make a bunch of terrible noises with it. Someone who does know, and has a Stradivarius or what-have you, is going to get really different results. Part of what I’m saying though is actually, even the person who gets “terrible noises” out of AI, is still making an interesting kind of music which couldn’t have come before. Maybe it’s trash, but it’s *new* trash!

This one is weird and sad and dumb:

That’s the big question IMHO. Butcher ain’t got the physionomy of an Allende, Asimov, Christie, Fannon, Garcia-Marquez, Hemingway, Kerouac, or Orwell, with associated drink, smoke, inspired faraway gaze, crazy hair … His appearance reminds me more of a woodsman version of Adam Glasser (Seymore Butts) … but maybe that’s how writers look nowadays? Can’t judge a book by its cover!

I do like that they call me “Butcher” (this also came up in French comments on the Actualitté piece). I think I’m going to lean into that moniker.

But it’s just so cheesy and sad that this person had no other meaningful interesting contributions to make to the conversation, so much so that they had to essentially revert to calling me “ugly,” as the only way to express their inner unhappiness.

And I know, if we take away the specific details of my story, that this is what online commenting is ultimately all about. I saw five years of this shit as a content moderator, so I’m absolutely positive that this broiling anger people have, this unhappiness, does come from *me*, because it’s obvious that people spread it out equally at whatever target happens to come up that day, that week, etc. It’s a reaction to and symptom of the loneliness epidemic. People feel like they can’t connect with those around them. They’re missing a sense of community. But they know instinctively, inherently, that they need both. And it makes them angry and frustrated they can’t get it, or give it to others. So they just lash out and lash out forever and ever. It’s a terrible way to live, and I grieve alongside anyone else feeling that way.

One last one before I call it a night. Someone called “User McUser” writes, first quoting me in the article:

What’s in my books comes from my imagination, and I use AI tools to realize that vision, just like I might in other cases use a paintbrush and canvas, or linoleum block cuts to do the same.

That sounds legit – just yesterday I set up my easel and canvas, got my palette, paints, and brushes ready and told them all to paint me a picture of a bunch of flowers and they did fuck all nothing because that’s not how the tools of creativity work.

Well, guess what: that’s how the tools of creativity work when they encounter AI. Just like technology expands to fill all eventual uses (h/t to Ellul), so too does human creativity well up to take advantage of all those new possibilities. I for one would rather be part of the expeditionary team stepping into the breach, than cower in a corner complaining about others who have the courage to do so. But maybe that’s just me. It’s starting to look that way after all…

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