FWIW I think I agree with the overall sentiment, but until we actually see lots of people successfully make art from AI, I'm gonna remain more skeptical than not.

Those aren’t vague preferences; they’re closer to rules.

Again, this reads like Claude wrote it, not you. Whether it passed through your judgement or not, the cloud of this being created with the use of AI looms large, and makes it harder to enjoy the read, because I know and notice Claude's voice waaaay more than yours.

AI should help an artist arrive at their artistic vision faster — not hand them a vision they never had.

Disagree here. I'd like tools that help me achieve a higher quality bar than I could achieve on my own. I don't want a speedup, especially if it comes at the cost of reduced quality or individuality (which are unavoidable costs currently)

Though I do agree with the "not hand them a vision".

It has no taste of its own to impose — only the taste you bring to the editing.

Again, I disagree here, though only slightly. AI doesn't have "taste", but it does produce output with a particular quality to it, in a way that resembles something made in poor taste. It produces the "fast fashion" equivalent of writing (etc) — you can still analyze whether it seems to have been made in good taste or (certainly) not. This puts you at a disadvantage compared to working from whole cloth.

Disagreements notwithstanding, I appreciated reading this. Thanks for sharing it here, and I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on this.

"drum machines, DAWs, auto-tune, and music video technology" were all created for artists. AI is being created for [long list of swear words omitted] capitalists.

Hmm, books and "writing" are sooooo passée. I continue to wonder if the new medium will become a blob of information that comes with a knob (0-10 (reference ... smooth)) that allows the reader to tune the "voice" to the reader's own liking? Choosing sequences and words in a particular order is a power in itself, though. An artistic power. Hmm.

Some past affordances text has acquired: • spaces • lowercase • hyperlinks • folds (inline hyperlinks) • timestamps on utterances (IRC) • metadata on utterances (e.g. subject lines in email) • permalinks (Userland?) • Unicode • editing utterances by others (Wikis) • version control (Wikis) • tags that anyone can add (Delicious?) • emoji • reactions (Slack) • moving utterances by others to a new topic, a.k.a. modifying metadata like a subject line (Zulip) • multiple views e.g. by topic vs Combined feed (Zulip, but perhaps earlier others?)

OMG even "Pirate" sounds AI! I give up --- I’ve heard this shanty before, matey. Not this particular racket about AI, mind ye, but the tune beneath it. I’ve watched the same blasted thing happen before, only in another trade. Years ago, I spent me days meddlin’ with songs and music-making. Drum machines came aboard. Then DAWs. Then Auto-Tune. Then all manner of fancy contraptions for makin’ moving pictures. And every time a new bit of kit arrived, suddenly every landlubber aboard could make music. And, by Neptune, most of it was dreadful. But the fault weren’t with the machinery. The slop came from folk discoverin’ a new tool, pressin’ the first shiny button it offered, and declaring the voyage complete. Press button. Receive beat. Call yerself a musician. The technology lowered the deck, and most sailors simply stood upon it. But some proper artists kept at it. They learned the machinery instead of merely operating it. They pushed it, fought it, discovered where it behaved strangely, and figured out how to make it do things no old instrument could manage. Same blasted box. Different sailor. And that, I reckon, is exactly where we be with AI.