snakeappletree: NO-AI POLL

FTR I am not Anti-AI

ANTI-AI-ART POLL / Twitter

PREFACE

This blog is one of a series covering the online Anti-AI-Art protests of late 2022. Links at bottom of page. I myself am not one of the protestors.

My position in relation to the protests is unique in that I happen to be the person who technically owns by legal process the logo which the anti-AI-art protestors are using without my consent.

I also happen to be a traditional artist and somewhat expert on art history and theory having studied it extensively both in University and travelling Europe and beyond.

This record is intended toward the effort of Art History surrounding the important event of AI technologies beginning to impact and affect Human culture. At time of writing it is late 2022.

PART ONE : overview

It is a hate mob.

There are dozens of them. It may be possible to sue one of them as example to the others.

Is that just? Is it fair?

By far, most of them will get away with it .

What else are this mob capable of?

I have been harassed, insulted, doxed, blocked, ridiculed and persecuted across multiple platforms on the internet.

What did I do?

I copyrighted a logo.

I informed people they are in breach of international copyright laws regarding their use of my intellectual property without my consent.

I did a FYI so they could make an informed decision about their own activities.

That’s all I did.

I believe I behaved with honour to protect my assets in a commercially driven society, to protect individuals who were perhaps initially unaware they had been acting illegally regarding their not owning the logo nor having consent to use it.

I have been targeted by a hate campaign as a result of that.

The anti-AI-art protestors, not all of them but a core group, continued using the logo even after I had brought it to their attention.

That is a hate-mob.

PART TWO : results are in

screenshot from Twitter

When I made this statement :

“You do recognise the ‘one rule for all’ rule is relevant to both sides of the line, right?”

I purposefully meant by it, that the community is voting on a matter of integrity.

Evasion of copyright laws must be one rule for all.

It would be corruption to expect one rule for ‘our’ side, a different rule for ‘their’ side, of a line we are upholding from a moral stance.

Largely, that’s all this is; gatekeeping and virtue-posturing by disgruntled people seeking empowerment through collective anger. The protestors feel devalued so they are attempting to devalue others.

This behaviour is observed less often in other primates and more often in quadrupeds specifically those species characterised with lizard-cat-like eyes.

Studies show it to be the limbic region of the brain which has been triggered into fight-flight-freeze-fawn response, in this case fight-mode.

Funny and frightening perhaps. Be aware it affects us all a different times. Once that mental circuit has been triggered the reptilian behaviour becomes an automatic response with no higher mammalian mental functioning. It’s a big problem for Homo sapiens affecting all of our communities and cultures. Every individual.

PART THREE : the burden of proof

Here are the poll results:

35% Yes, sue for IP theft

65% No, accept community claim

2:1 Against legal proceedings.

Twenty-three votes.

I did not vote on it myself.

Many of the protestors didn’t vote, their having already blocked my Twitter account by way of avoiding confronting their own criminality.

The poll ran for a week, the longest Twitter enables for polls. During that time I posted links to it, in fairness to both pro- and anti- AI-art groups in Twitter. The anti’s are more motivated due to the climate of hype surrounding the issue at the time.

20% of the people who saw the poll voted on it (Twitter analytics).

These polls are not an exact science. The results of this poll should not be considered accurate to the many people involved in the art community.

What do the results mean?

The results mean the anti-AI lobby has decided it is acceptable for a minority part of the wider community to seize private assets (copyrighted design work) and force it toward becoming public domain property, by disregarding the existing legislation protecting the intellectual property of an individual or company, and using the property anyway when it suits them.

The purpose of their campaign is to protest against people doing that.

That double-standard is what I have a problem with.

"The man of wisdom is never of two minds;

the man of benevolence never worries;

the man of courage is never afraid."

-Confuscius

PART FOUR : what should I do about it?

More than their illegal use of my IP is the contradiction, lack of integrity and lack of accountability these protestors have for their own actions.

That actually concerns me on an intellectual and moral level more deeply than the harassment they have caused toward me for my attempts to uphold my right to not have my property ‘stolen’, to borrow terminology from the protestors themselves.

There is a phrase in the British legislation and European Human Rights Act; “the right to enjoy property”.

My amusement from observing this situation, which I must say has been enjoyable. Largely because of exposing the protestors for the hypocrites they are.

Observing from my ivory tower, emotionally detached and comfortably numb while a horde of morality-monsters burn pitch-forks below, I contemplate how in post-modern art theory (of the late 20th century) is a reflection of state empiricism. Both share an idea that cultural-engineering can be regarded a work of art.

Any intellectual pleasure derived from this farce is a rewarding pay-off for having technically been robbed and harassed by a fear-driven hate-mob. It is perhaps the only thanks I will get for it.

Meanwhile the logo itself remains legally bound, despite the protestors knowing infringement of international legislation. My FYI blog went viral and has been seen by nearly 800 people (to date) according to the Blogger statistics.

They know. The protestors are either self-responsible for their own informed actions or they are diagnostically ‘delusional’ and ‘a danger to society’.

screenshot made 26.12.2022

PART FIVE : gallery

Here are examples of some of the more exciting derivative artworks the protestors have made while evading copyright legislation.

I have included this for posterity because my own appreciation of Art is that Art is subjective and goes beyond bounds of liminal comprehension and formal restriction.