The obsessive need for AI developers to make everything into the most banal, inoffensive version of said thing will probably end up being the biggest roadblock for AI taking over human jobs.
If you analyze these systems as a work of art, using the postmodern toolset, the people and systems taking one of the most potent technologies humanity has ever created and using it to craft a banality machine is just... very revealing. Like the great-uncle who can't even finish protesting how non-racist he is without using a racial slur in the process.
"We're innovative! We're hip! We're on the cutting edge! We're setting trends! Now here, let me help you turn your text into the grayest corporate sludge imaginable."
It's art. It's probably not art they intended to make, but it's art.
It is, isn't it. It's the Sokal Hoax on a society-wide automated scale: rather than being concerned with what a "text" might "mean", generate millions upon millions of "text" sequences and mechanically separate those which pass as real enough. Baudrillard's simulacrum.
> It's art. It's probably not art they intended to make, but it's art.
People seem to be very insistent that the output of AI is not capital-A art, because that threatens their worldview, ignoring how artists had previously pushed to expand "art" away from any concerns of technique, intent, legibility etc.
It’s already severely frustrating that at many companies, you have to talk to several people (separated by copious waiting) to get your problem solved after handling a severely outdated and underdeveloped phone system.
Its an offense to justice that its so easy to get away with being mean to service workers.
I see it as like- if you were the owner of a company, you could decide for yourself what the $/abuse trade off is, and for each individual customer decide if it's worth it.
As a disempowered employee, you can only decide in aggregate if the total $ vs total abuse is worth it. So in order to keep getting paid at all, you Must put up with every interaction. Which leads to no alternative to the person being abused and no real consequences for the person being abusive, which is a shame. And it seems a lot easier to take abuse if you know you have the upper hand and have an out if you ever want it.