Post #231015

2026-02-04 12:57 UTC

The deliberate conscious effort that we humans require to do anything, like make art or write an academic paper, has been belittled and glossed over. Instead results are glamorously prized as the product of success, and the amount of effort that it took to get there is hidden away in shame. AI is the obscene extreme to that mentality: not more thinking, effort, work, anything— get the result now. While it was that exact effort that made us human in the first place.

Replies (14)

@Ameboid@mastodon.social 2026-02-04 16:12

Even writing this post took cognitive effort. I put words down but they didn't have the weight or meaning I had in my mind, looked for synonyms that more accurately represented what I wanted to convey. Then tried to rewrite and rearrange it to something more coherent. The process was not effortless, but that is the point.

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@martintheg@aus.social 2026-02-04 13:22

@Ameboid@mastodon.social I would like to vote for this this more than I can be legally allowed

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@elpijay@fosstodon.org 2026-02-04 13:41

@Ameboid@mastodon.social this makes me sad. Human creativity is no longer rewarded for the beauty it can produce. This feels so short term-ist

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@metin@graphics.social 2026-02-04 13:42

@Ameboid@mastodon.social Totally agreed. I've recently written down my thoughts about generative AI at the bottom of my homepage's "About" section, and hope many people will read them… https://metinseven.nl

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@em_and_future_cats@mastodon.social 2026-02-04 14:15

@Ameboid@mastodon.social I guess this is why those of us who are artists and makers can see the effort behind something and can be “blown away” by what seems to be the simplest thing. The admiration of a piece of art was originally and subconsciously the admiration of the effort in a piece. But if the “public” hasn’t seen any of the effort during their lifetime, I suppose they are pretty ignorant as to “why” they admire a piece.

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@okennedy@discuss.systems 2026-02-04 14:50

@Ameboid@mastodon.social There's a take from @oatmeal@mastodon.social that captures this idea beautifully [1]. Art, scientific pubs, etc... are all forms of communication, all attempts to connect people across time and space. The process of craftsmanship is useful because it naturally selects for works that have something valuable to contribute to the conversation. GenAI makes it possible for someone to create an artifact has the trappings of meaning, but without a process that forces the person to actually think through what they actually have to contribute. It's a hot take, or as The Oatmeal puts it: "As a kid, I had one of those little Casio keyboards where you could hit a button and it'd automatically play a song. I remember hitting the button. I remember standing there pretending to make music. That's how I see AI art. Standing there. Pretending." The full take is far more nuanced, and the medium conveys the emotion far better than a text excerpt. It's worth a read. [1] https://theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

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@NicelyManifest@mastodon.social 2026-02-04 15:11

@Ameboid@mastodon.social The very notion of meritocracy is even more complex. And sometimes counter intuitive - should we reward A better than B as A has a better work ethic? What if B was trying harder?

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@Amoshias@esq.social 2026-02-04 15:19

@Ameboid@mastodon.social when I see AI companies advertising their stuff as a way to enable your creativity because you can say a sentence to it and have it create a picture, I get so angry. creativity is the result of human effort. not the result of humans having a random idea, but the result of doing the hard work to bring that idea into the real world. the hard part is never having the idea.

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@SomeVeganCheeseIsOk@mastodon.social 2026-02-04 15:24

@Ameboid@mastodon.social There's a great Kipling poem about not letting pain *or* pleasure control you. (He only aims it at men, but you can ignore that if you like.) I see the AI development in that light: you can't let the sweat of work deter you from art and you can't let the ease of AI deter you from the sweat of effort.

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@Guillotine_Jones@beige.party 2026-02-04 16:00

@Ameboid@mastodon.social Amelia, are you related to Eugen? This is one of the best -- and most biting -- critiques of generative Ai that I have seen.

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@jcrispimromao@masto.pt 2026-02-04 17:23

@Ameboid@mastodon.social and Ai is the result of that effort. I can't understand this tendency to stupidify people by offering g them everything they need without having to make the effort.

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@softproof@mastodon.social 2026-02-04 19:55

@Ameboid@mastodon.social Well put! They tell us AI empowers people... To me, AI is the price we pay for getting too lazy to learn.

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@enjoyingkink@mstdn.social 2026-02-05 05:00

@Ameboid@mastodon.social I totally agree. And it fits nicely with the keynote I watched just yesterday from Brandon Sanderson. https://youtu.be/mb3uK-_QkOo

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@Sherifazuhur@sfba.social 2026-02-07 19:28

@Ameboid@mastodon.social not just the effort, every detail and rabbit hole encountered along the way

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