Fashion designer Jeremy Scott earned a huge round of applause from graduates after ripping up a generic commencement speech scripted by generative artificial intelligence at the Kansas City Art Institute on May 16.
Scott started his speech reading from his AI-created script which congratulated students on reaching their “threshold of a new beginning,” and telling them their “power is limitless.”
But then he paused, according to Business Insider.
“Sounds kind of clichéd, right? Doesn’t sound authentic, does it? Sounds like you’ve heard it before, right? It’s because it’s AI,” he told the graduating class before him.
Then he ripped the script up and told the grads that they should not want the “AI overlords telling you what’s right and what’s wrong.”
Scott went on to point out that AI can’t create. It can only echo, mirror, and ape real human creativity.
“It can’t do what you do. It can’t have an original idea. It can’t even differentiate the difference between a good idea, a unique idea, and one that’s mediocre,” he said.
“That’s what makes your role as an artist so much more urgent right now,” the designer continued. “In this space and time that we’re living, I argue that the artist is even more crucial than ever. It’s because an artist doesn’t tell the truth. They decide what truth feels like. They’re a bender of reality while being a mirror to society.”
Jeremy Scott and Devon Aoki attend The 2023 Met Gala Celebrating “Karl Lagerfeld: A Line Of Beauty” at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 01, 2023 in New York City. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Americans are developing a complicated reaction to AI. Many, for instance, are rising up to oppose the data centers needed to facilitate AI systems from being built in their areas. Others are decrying the AI memes and images swamping their favorite Internet sites, such as X, Facebook, and other social media sites.
This anti-AI sentiment flies in the face of the many experts who continue to insist that AI is on the verge of remaking mankind and ushering in a wonderful new era for humanity.
The experts and technocrats continue to warn that the society that eschews AI will be left behind and will find themselves on the losing end of economic prosperity and technological advancement, but many average citizens seem to feel that AI will mean a loss of their humanity, instead of a revelation for it.
Scott’s broadside against AI is more evidence that the battle lines are increasingly being drawn in the march toward AI supremacy.
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