Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit | Hacker News Reader

Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit

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98 pointspetethomas68 comments

> Dwyer claims Granger’s act was akin to slashing someone’s tires to protest the oil industry.

Granger's protest was properly executed as you slash the tires of the oil trucks and oil execs - you strike the people peddling what you are protesting. So of course Dwyer is trying to downplay the significance.

Wouldn't it make more sense to strike OpenAI, or Midjourney, or whatever else then?

Aside from that, I don't think this "protest" will result in anything more than maybe some increased security (and maybe more arrests if he inspires others to do similar).

Eating all AI "art" that tries to displace real artists in these spaces is the only moral decision.

I think I'd like to opt out of mob "justice" personally.

It's inevitable when the institutions are so thoroughly bought by the people building this technology.

I'm sure he'll be happy to eat whatever sama frames in the MOMA too, but you can only protest what's in your reach.

Got you to talk about it, though, didn't it?

> CW: Do you consider what you did protest, performance art, both, or something else?

> GG: Both. It’s a protest against the school’s AI policy specifically and it’s performance art because I needed something that would elicit a reaction. So this could reach more people.

Not everything has to be a global battle for all the marbles. Sometimes you're just pissed off that your school has a stupid policy and the administration won't listen to you. No better way to change that than make the news (aside from maybe going after donors).

> Got you to talk about it, though, didn't it?

Perhaps it did, although not in favor of what he's seeking.

That's all the better for a cause that needs attention. If everyone's to one side then the conversation quickly dies out, while if something is contentious there will be two or more parties keeping it alive.

A protest doesn't need to be perfect and it shouldn't convince everyone who sees it in one shot. A protest that causes outrage is much more effective at reaching whoever it needs to reach.

I mean -- we're talking about it, aren't we?

Maybe I'm giving more credit than is due, but my mind went to an inverted kind of echo of Cloaca... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloaca_(art_installation)

I don't know, on principle (and in matters of taste) I'm certainly not a fan of AI art, but I think Dwyer's work here was far from "peddling," and at least attempted to do something interesting with the format/medium:

> Shadow Searching: ChatGPT psychosis is a body of work made in collaboration with artificial intelligence which depicts a co-op between a human artist and AI that started as a thought experiment to produce a perfect partner based on one’s Jungian shadow. In the process of this goal a compounding relationship formed with the ai chat bot via recursive mirroring. The work explores identity, character narrative creation and crafting false memories of relationships in an interactive role digitally crafted before, during and after a state of AI psychosis. This highlights and embodies a growing trend that can be dangerous or unpredictable which you are not immune to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWy4UP-ti1s

The execution honestly doesn't impress me much--remember Loab? I would've loved to see the generic pretty girls devolve into something like that, lol--but I think AI psychosis and AI "companions" are relevant and potentially rich topics to explore. I respect it more than that "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" piece that made a splash a few years back.

“No, I didn't know about the exhibit before that day. And then I saw the Al piece and it was just—as an artist myself, it was insulting to see something of such little effort alongside all these beautiful pieces in the gallery. It shouldn't be acceptable for this "art," if you will, to be put alongside these real great pieces.”

What an impulsive fellow.

They're right and this also reminds me of the banana that was sold and eaten at Art Basel.

Maybe he was hungry.

Don't take him to the MoMA he'll need his stomach pumped.

The MoMA has some of the best art pieces I've seen out of the hundred plus museums I've been to.

It also has by far some of the absolute worst art pieces I've seen in my life - in person, or otherwise. One of them was literally a pile of trash.

I used to think that art shouldn't have any gatekeepers, but I've begun to wonder if maybe it should.

In art one often follows impulses. Art is about expression after all.

Plus, if these were really AI creations new copies can be printed. Unless the human “co-creator” did something like paint on the work after printing, not much has been damaged.

Someone, somewhere is disappointed they didn't think of the idea of videoing someone eating AI art as an art exhibit first...

> It shouldn't be acceptable for this "art," if you will,

He didn't even will. Why did he encourage others to? Misguided etiquette.

It's just garbage in garbage out. AIs reliably induce rage and negativity in humans. Humans become angry and violent if shown AI generated data. It's just a fact at this point.

And it's not even like software engineers are special in that regard. Everyone here is quick to spot and express their opinions on use of AI in articles and everyone seem to like to have their words on rampant vibecoded pull requests.

Freedom of thought and speech means you're free to expect people to thank you for spitting on them, and also that nobody else than you would be responsible for that insanity of yours.

> AIs reliably induce rage and negativity in humans. Humans become angry and violent if shown AI generated data. It's just a fact at this point.

This is more conditioning from moral panic mobs than an innate trait. One could also say that TV makes humans angry and violent, or we could simply stop watching cable news.

>One could also say that TV makes humans angry and violent

It does

Anderson and Bushman (2002) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/11440811_The_Effect... Evidence is steadily accumulating that prolonged exposure to violent TV programming during childhood is associated with subsequent aggression.

Paik, H., & Comstock, G. (1994). The effects of television violence on antisocial behavior: A meta-analysis. Communication Research, 21(4), 516–546. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365094021004004 Results showed positive and significant correlation between TV violence and aggressive behavior

Ironically I used Gemini to look those up. Being a social studies thing, of course there is no absolute proof of this, there are many caveats and ways of looking etc.

Tangential - "find meta-analysis to back up my point" is ridiculously easy with AI, and it can be used on both sides. I could just as easily negate the ask and get compelling results.

I would hate having to write a dissertation right now.

I think you're agreeing with me. My point is that TV does not inherently induce negative emotions, but the content of it can. Similarly, AI content does not have to do the same, but poor quality AI content can.

Yeah. More importantly though, AI seems to be a novel way to pry open the crazy out of some people, with sometimes disastrous results.

Or putting it more charitably, some people seem to be more vulnerable, for whatever reason, to multiple different kinds of mental breakdowns (like the psychosis described by the "artist" "victimized" by this "crime").

While I personally don't get it (how some people are so entranced by AI as to have mental breakdowns), it does seem to be a thing, with some catastrophic results[1]. Granted in some cases the persons involved had prior serious mental health issues, that seems not to always be the case. In other words, be it not for AI, those people could reasonably have expected to live normal lives.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots

You would not be disagreeing with me, actually. I should have clarified that the problem is somewhere in current implementations of generative AI(Google Transformer derivatives), in my opinion, and is not necessarily the case to every shape and form of AI.

But nearly every single implementation of generative AI data generators appear to exhibit this behavior, with Google Nano Banana(tm) implementation as potential sole exception or lesser offender. Something in it is rage and/or derangement coded, NOT in artistic way that rock or metal music recordings are. Maybe this was what supposed "toxicity" of LLMs discussed heavily as chatbots rolled out remedied by extreme sycophancy to the point that LLMs don't literally flip out people and drive them into state of psychosis. But whatever it is, it's insane that everyone supportive of AI is tone deaf on a phenomenon that obvious, reproducible, and widespread.

All it takes to turn anyone into anti-AI Luddite is to show them a piece of text, image, code, any data that they are familiar with. That's not a simple moral panic.

They're definitely alarmists. In my environment, people are either neutral or positive about the workings of neural networks.

The reason is that they don't read articles critical of AI, and they don't even know about the existence of forums like reddit, for example.

> One could also say that TV makes humans angry and violent,

yes. It does.

Really goes to say something about starving artists

As much as I wanted to roll my eyes, this did give me a chuckle.

Unfortunately AI "art" has about the same amount of nutritional value as artistic value.

I'd recommend him to go for oil paintings.

  CW: Have you ever been in an eating contest?

  GG: Yeah, a long long time ago. I did a mashed potato eating contest at a renaissance fair back in Georgia.

I tried reading the article but after the third time the page’s scroll state reset on its own due to all the dynamic ads/popups/notices, I had to give up.

On mobile the site is unreadable. The red banner at the bottom goes from taking up half the screen to a quater when using the caret to minimize. I was then immediately served a full page ad about Ron Howard when I tried to scroll down..

Something something, "it's arrested development"

Yeah and then there's also tons of ad squares between the article text, and some annoying video player.

Finally, a proper example of direct action.

CW: Do you use AI for anything?

GG: I don’t really use it period. I miss the Wikipedia blurbs being at the top of webpages. If I’m looking up a simple math fact that I don’t know—like what the weight of something is—I’ll look at the AI summary, but I never, almost never, hit the expand button.

Holy rationalization Batman

"No officers, I don't know where the AI art exhibit went" Suspiciously AI art exhibit shaped belly:

Its exactly this kind of stunt being called "art" that has devalued the word out of any positive connotations.

Which, the stunt of creating the AI generated art or the stunt of eating it? To me it's the former, and as the interviewee says, art is subjective even if the means of creating it are not.

So the artist is following through with pressing charges? Instead of just hitting ctrl+p and reprinting his art? Seems like an opportunity to give someone a break who might need one.

I read that the artist dropped his charges but that the state is still continuing with its charges. Grainger is hoping to get off with a fine.

To eat AI art is human. But to digest it, is divine

People used to get arrested for infringing copyright, now they get arrested (or murdered, see below) for defending it.

And the thieves sit in Davos, together with representatives of a party that wants to steal IP, Greenland, Venezuela and many other things.

And the press appeases the thieves instead of asking about the murder of Suchir Balaji.

> People used to get arrested for infringing copyright, now they get arrested (or murdered, see below) for defending it

Yes because stealing illegal items (if you believe AI generated imagery should be illegal) is still illegal

> Meet the Alaska Student Arrested for Eating an AI Art Exhibit

I'm more interested in an AI Art Exhibit eating a Student

The worst part of these modern age Luddites is that they feel morally superior. I appreciate AI art so this sounds extreme. I blame the media for farming hate content and then feeding it to vulnerable people who think they're informed enough to justify violence and vandalism.

When the color printer was mass produced, you could print the Mona Lisa and artists had similar protests. Arguably, this started the entire abstract and surrealist movement where things like a urinal became art simply because you couldn't print it out.

I don't want art to be about how much someone suffered to make it. However, part of my appreciation is the artist, and AI art is lower on my appreciation than hand created paintings. I think the solution is to increase awareness of art appreciation instead of empowering ignorant and violent demonstrations.

Is AI art really a threat? Is it really like a nuclear bomb? I don't think so, and the only people benefitting from this are the gatekeepers who will inevitably sell the solution to whatever the public thinks is ethical AI.

Eating polaroid pictures can't be good for your health.

He just chewed them and spat them out

Not all of them lol

I find that people who are the most opposed to diffusion models are usually the most ignorant about the technology. AI art doesn't begin and end with Midjourney and OpenAI. If you don't know what a controlnet, comfyui node, lcm, or lora is, then I'm not sure you really have anything valuable to lend to the conversation. There's a massive world of tools and techniques out there, and I just cannot fathom why people can't be bothered to look beyond the most readily available knowledge and be so insistent in their moral correctness.

Slightly tangential:

> He initially wanted to press charges because Granger’s act “violates the sanctity of the gallery,” but changed his mind

> Left: Graham Granger after his arraignment outside the court building

I was beginning to think "pressing charges" was a myth (popularised by TV shows like Law & Order) and this article didn't exactly change my mind about that.

Do US state attorneys actually give two shits about what the victim wants? Is it someone's job to read an email inbox and systematically approve/reject citizens' pressed charges? Do they even pretend to?

Participation of the victim makes prosecution easier. That's all pressing charges means, even if it isn't what many people understand it to be.

Thanks. 4 sibling comments and this was the only one that tried to answer "is pressing charges actually a thing"

Ultimately there are some types of cases where if the victim does not want to cooperate, it isn't going to succeed.

Also, government attorneys can be elected officials. Spending time achieving nothing against a bunch of uncooperative screwball artists isn't going to be something to brag about on the campaign trail.

Usually the attorneys who handle this are not state level but county or city level. In general they have so many cases to handle that victims who don't want the case pursued will cause them to drop the case.

You don’t wanna leave it up to the victim all the time because that opens up for pressuring victims into dropping the charges and some victims will just drop charges because they are scared (people assaulted by their partner, mob-victims etc)

Realistically, if the putative victim is uncooperative, a prosecutor is not going to pursue ultra-minor crimes of this sort.

A performance artist criticizing an AI artist for low effort. Hmm

There are performance artists literally risking their lives to make political protest art.

Your stereotypes do not emcompass all of the world.

at least they actually get to do something

Next he should go eat Sherrie Levine photographs. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/267214

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