(Image credit: Photo by chepté cormani from Pexels)
Cassette tapes have cracked the Billboard charts. Disposable cameras are selling out again. People are dialing friends from rotary dial landlines or screenless flip phones. Crews of self-proclaimed Luddites are rebelling in analog form against AI. These latter-day Luddites aren’t seeking to burn down server farms, but they are challenging the evangelizing of AI as a conversational and artistic partner, as propounded by AI developer fans.
While it might look like a retro fashion statement or a half-ironic aesthetic mood board, it’s actually about refusing the version of reality that AI produces, with its competently painful, painfully optimized approach to …
(Image credit: Photo by chepté cormani from Pexels)
Cassette tapes have cracked the Billboard charts. Disposable cameras are selling out again. People are dialing friends from rotary dial landlines or screenless flip phones. Crews of self-proclaimed Luddites are rebelling in analog form against AI. These latter-day Luddites aren’t seeking to burn down server farms, but they are challenging the evangelizing of AI as a conversational and artistic partner, as propounded by AI developer fans.
While it might look like a retro fashion statement or a half-ironic aesthetic mood board, it’s actually about refusing the version of reality that AI produces, with its competently painful, painfully optimized approach to life and art that leaves no room for the surprises and flaws that define most artistic endeavors.
It’s easy to mistake polish for quality. But the best human art, or simply memorable images and turns of phrase, often sneak into view covered in metaphorical grime. But AI doesn’t do texture. It simulates, without providing insight.
Artistic error beats AI perfection
In a bit of irony, it’s improvements to AI that lead to the ultra-smooth, sharp rendering and sterile, but competent writing. AI seesaws between predictably dull and chaotically useless.
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The AI versus analog choice maps perfectly onto the question of making and listening to music. A computer can hit every note perfectly and simulate an acoustically flawless instrument. You might be fine with listening to its crisp fidelity from digital speakers. But left to choose, I suspect most people would favor the experience of a live performance by a virtuoso on a handmade masterpiece of a musical instrument over a manually edited recording.
Claims that AI-produced content is “spiritually empty” might be an exaggeration, but discomfort with being surrounded by only that aesthetic is probably common. And neo-Luddites itching for the scratches and bumps of handwriting and the hiss of vinyl is entirely understandable.
The machines will keep getting better, and AI could even start to mimic how humans drop notes or how you can hear the intake of breath before a voice starts singing. No matter how smooth the symphony, we’ll still crave the static.
Eric Hal Schwartz is a freelance writer for TechRadar with more than 15 years of experience covering the intersection of the world and technology. For the last five years, he served as head writer for Voicebot.ai and was on the leading edge of reporting on generative AI and large language models. He’s since become an expert on the products of generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. His experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. Now, he’s continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving AI space and its impact on their lives. Eric is based in New York City.