On December 4th I hosted an event called “Machine Nightmares: Artists Confront AI” with author Lydia Kiesling at Mother Foucault’s Bookshop in Portland, Oregon. We imagined getting a group of artists and workers together to talk about the effects that AI, and the desires of the people developing it, are having on labor: how we make a living and how we define ourselves in relationship to it. We invited a stellar roster of people to make ten minute presentations in addition to Lydia and I: Joon Ae Haworth-Kaufka (community organizer), Celeste Noche (photographer), Nick Eng (union organizer and nurse), Jennifer Ruth (professor of film and filmmaker), Emme Lund, (author and teacher) and John Niekrasz (musician and writer).

The house was packed! I gave an intro in which I talked about AI as the most recent tool in the hands of powerful people who imagine that they can make workers disappear, and create the value that they otherwise have to extract from the society around them all by themselves. A lonely, stupid game, but the driving force behind much of what we currently understand as AI.

As each of the presenters came up to speak it became increasingly obvious that people in the audience had been hungering for an opportunity to engage with this topic- and to come together in person to share stories about it was exactly what many were looking for. Lydia talked about the way AI corrupts and alienates imagination, and Joon Ae described the fundamental inability of language models to understand and interpret culture. Celeste railed against the laziness of artists who let themselves be seduced by the easy corruption of AI tools, and Nick described an interesting dichotomy: while AI tools can be very helpful in a high-level surgical context, they become blunt instruments in the hands of a management structure only interested in the bottom line. Emme described the spiritual decay that we all face further on down the road of automated cultural production, and John finished up by describing how he had watched his employment as a ghostwriter evaporate due to industry adoption of AI tools, and noted that one of the problems that AI is trying to solve is being annoyed at other people: but it’s just that annoyance that actually creates a social fabric we can dress ourselves in.

At the end of the event we had a discussion with the audience about ways to respond to the state of things- and this turned into an organizing opportunity, where everyone put down their emails on a sheet. The wrapping up was full of conversation, exchanges of experience and news, and prospects for what we could all get together to do next. If you are thinking about these issues where you are, try organizing an event like this. People want to be able to talk and think about it together, in the real world. That’s the best weapon we have.

Journalist Taylor Griggs did a great write-up of the event for the Portland Mercury, which you can read here.