One student in a college art history class was infuriated that their teacher not only used artificial intelligence to teach the class but also required students to use AI in an assignment.
They posted about the issues in the r/MildlyInfuriating subreddit. "I currently take an online art history class: Introduction to Art," the original poster said. "Now, for our next assignment — due in about three hours — the teacher wants us to generate AI art and have a discussion about said 'artworks.'"
It's easy to understand why this assignment would get their hackles up. AI is controversial at best. While it has become popular and has been applied in many fields, stories continue to flood in about its mistakes and shortcomings.
For example, the incredible amount of computing power that it takes to generate even one answer from a chatbot or a picture from an image generator has caused a noticeable spike in energy usage across the United States and world. This has led to higher electricity costs for ordinary people who are unfairly footing the bill for data centers.
Meanwhile, AI outputs may seem like answers to questions, but the machines do not have a way to understand material or check its accuracy. When generating text, this leads to so-called hallucinations — made-up facts and references that an AI system delivers with what seems like total confidence.
When it comes to images, there are obvious surface-level problems with many AI productions, such as too many fingers, hair that merges into clothing, and gloves with fingernails. But there is also a deeper issue, which is that AI can't analyze or interpret concepts — so any apparent meanings in generated images come from the humans looking at them or from the creators of the images in the program's training data set, many of whom were not consulted about having their copyrighted work used in this way.
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That was why the original poster was so frustrated by the assignment they received.
"This is a genuine, actual interpretation of machine-created art, not discussing the consequences of AI on the art landscape, not in a satirical sense. This is an actual genuine evaluation of slop," they said, clearly angry.
The assignment was both ironic and offensive, given that the original poster was apparently required to promise to not use AI in their assignments at the beginning of the semester.
"And even if it harms my grade...I'm not f****** doing it," they added. "It goes against my own fundamentals and values, both as a human and an aspiring artist."
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