Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live
The author critiques Mark Zuckerberg's recent manifesto on AI, arguing that AI-generated content lacks the human effort and intent that define meaningful art. The piece also touches on broader societal anxieties regarding AI, including job losses and energy consumption.
Why it matters
It reflects a growing cultural pushback against the proliferation of AI-generated content and the corporate narratives surrounding its necessity.
Recently, a man I was rock climbing with told me about how he’d used AI to make a motivational poster for himself, which he’d hung on his bedroom wall: a bear, walking a slackline over a canyon, holding a sign that said, “Do cool shit.” I made what I hoped was a polite noise. What reaction was this man looking for? He probably hoped someone, maybe me, would say it was cool or inspiring. It seemed I was not the first person he’d told about this poster. “You know, it’s funny,” he said to me. “No one ever says anything about it.”
I have been thinking about this now for several days. There’s a sort of turducken of things that I find off-putting all rolled into this anecdote: hippie shit, motivational posters, AI “art.” Still, the sum total of reactions to this poster appears to be polite noises.
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