Authors and artists are currently dismayed that AI is replacing them. More and more books are coming out that are AI copies of their own books and artworks on Amazon.
So what are they doing against this. Do they vow to boycott Amazon and stop selling on the retail giant known for countless labor violations?
No, instead they blame AI and “people who use AI” (whatever that means). It’s simple not to use AI, they say: learn to draw. Learn to write. Learn to code. Learn to organize your own messy thoughts. Learn to read through the lines. Learn geopolitics. Learn photography. Learn five more jobs.
And perhaps in 20 years from now you can start actually living. People were not learning to draw before AI; they gave up if what they wanted did not exist. Not everybody is going to invest their free time into your hobby.
It’s pretty blatant that this is the reckoning of a class of people, the ‘artisans’, with the reality that the skill they thought would never be automated… is getting automated. This is not speaking on quality, output volume, etc. Without any qualitative qualifiers needed, their work is objectively getting automated. And they are lashing out.
But they sold their work on Amazon for years without complaints, even as the drivers who deliver their physical copies pass out at the wheel from being overworked and not having access to A/C.
I put artisan in quotes because it reveals what they are: the petite-bourgeoisie. Most of them are not socialists in any way, they only care about their profits. The fact that they work mostly by themselves, or as freelance authors (delivering a book to a publisher who then handles the rest of the process, e.g. printing, marketing) doesn’t change their class nature.
Even as Amazon itself is investing in AI, like all tech giants, they are still selling on the platform. They will sooner abandon their values than their profits.
I could say more, but it would be a pale copy of this essay: https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2023-02-03-Artisanal-Intelligence.html, and I couldn’t do it justice. You should read it.
I will leave you with what prompted me to make this quick write-up:
Taking his own books off Amazon doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind. He sees the sales numbers on the copies and thinks, each one of those is a lost customer.
I think that’s very well-put, thank you. The basis of this analysis is not unfamiliar to me, but the contextualisation definitely helps.
I believe I was a bit thrown off by what I understood was an expectation of a proletarianised writer to boycott Amazon, for example, but not a driver, accountant, customer support rep, etc.
If the writer’s choice to use amazon is made for them then of course they are not responsible. It’s a part of alienation they couldn’t boycott amazon if they wanted to - their publisher makes the choice for them to use the platform.
There’s a lot of self-publishing on the platform nowadays though, they make it very easy since there are digital books (although you have to send a bunch of tax documents to the US for it). Interestingly (or as expected) they don’t do anything for the small writers, you still have to market your book like the big publishing houses do. It’s a lot of George RR Martin and JK Rowling at the top of the amazon charts.
For what it’s worth, I’m not sure if it makes a difference in a case where they technically did have a choice to not publish on Amazon.
One could say that the delivery driver also wasn’t forced to work for Amazon, they could’ve worked for a different company; it depends on whether the alternatives were viable.
In any case I’m not hung-up on this point, it’s just something I thought about when I first read the post.