Some people have the view that AI art steals jobs from human artists, and others argue that AI wastes electricity. Here we explore these claims and clarify whether it's ethical for Fusion to use AI art on our website.
A claim levelled at Fusion a few times is along the lines of:
AI steals people's jobs and uses lots of energy, so how is this consistent with you saying you care about people, and mentioning "Planet Rescue" in your name? There are harmful ethical ramifications from AI!
Our Response
In terms of the ethical ramifications, you'll actually find that our party goes further than any others in protecting society from the harms of AI.
In our senate submission on Adopting Artificial Intelligence for instance, we call for Australia to fund AI research that would align with our interests, not the service of foreign tech monopolies interested in distracting and misleading us.
Many people fear that AI will replace their jobs − Fusion agrees with this fear, and we're one of only a handful of parties that supports the introduction of a Universal Basic Income − a regular payment to people to cover the costs of housing and basic necessities, without needing to jump through hoops and make excuses for why you're not employed − it doesn't matter if you're employed, everyone gets it.
This would liberate people to pursue artistic endeavours, charity work, or education in new fields that better align with their ambitions in life. All while having the peace of mind that the rug isn't about to be pulled out from under them.
This long-term support for artists might seem to be contradicted by our present-day use of AI art, but what was going to be there instead of the AI art? We were never going to commission an artist to paint the Sistine Chapel. Going to any other party website, the sort of imagery they'd have in these places is:
- Photos of themselves
- Photos of their merchandise
- Stock photos
- No images
We're not a cult of personality, and I found the previous stock photos to be soul-sucking, so I imagined better imagery in the style of stock photos, and created it myself using AI tools. As you can see in the earlier picture of the robot, we weren't emulating any particular artist's style − these are all original pieces. Yes I used an AI tool, but if you try out Midourney, I'm sure you'll see that it takes many iterations to get exactly what you have in mind. This picture of a robot is pretty consistent with popular designs of robots dating all the way back to the 1950s, but many never actually got manufactured, so nobody could take a stock photo of it.
On the point of the ecological ramifications of AI, we see that energy usage has always had a close correlation with GDP − using energy makes societies wealthier, and wealthier societies can afford to spend more on energy. If we choose to use 1 Wh on generating an image and we pay the same rate as if we had used 1 Wh keeping our lettuce in the fridge, then it seems a long bow to draw, to say that the energy spent on the AI image is somehow less moral than the energy spent on the lettuce, considering it was a decision of how to sacrifice our own money.
GDP per capita vs energy usage. Source
If people place so much value in these AI tools that they're willing to spend their money on generating AI imagery and go without a lettuce, a washing machine or whatever other choices, then who are we to say that their choice was immoral and that they should have spent their money on something else?
What always seems to be missed in the argument about AI's wasteful energy is any acknowledgement that anyone is footing the bill here for running these tools, and that paying this bill necessarily means this person is choosing to go without something else. The end customers did not get this AI artwork for free.
With energy costs being such a limiter of wealth, it's no wonder that we see parties like One Nation or the Liberal Party who propose the removal of various taxes on fossil fuels.
Fusion is not one of these parties though − we acknowledge that as nice as it would be to have free energy right now, most energy is sourced in a way that harms our environment, and we must stop subsidising fossil fuels even if that causes temporary rises in electricity prices.
Fusion's policies around energy usage include de-carbonising on an industrial scale, actively cooling the planet, and supporting precision fermentation to liberate 3/4ths of the world's farmland for rewilding. We are absolutely committed to getting rid of fossil fuels and minimising their ongoing impact.
So as the original question alluded to, this idea that we support negligent energy use at the expense of the planet just isn't consistent with our policies.
The arguments about artists and the environment are perhaps the most frequently invoked arguments against AI, but you'll also see sentiments like "I don't like Elon Musk" or "I don't like big tech", where the shared foundation for all of them seems to be "I don't like AI".
It would be a shame if this surface-level "AI is bad" managed to win out over the reality of the policies we're offering for Australia.
Such "AI is bad" fans have explicitly suggested that we should ban AI until artists are fairly compensated, ignoring the reality that artists have already been poor for hundreds of years and will keep getting into the field with or without AI. We're the only party actually tackling this exact issue being raised.
Fusion has the most ambitious climate plan, and our vocal support of UBI is because of our commitment to a dignified life for all Australians, including artists.
Was the top image AI or a drawing? And does it matter?