Intro
This is Time's Corner, an occasional newsletter by Christian Leithart. I’m co-founder of Little Word and editor of Good Work magazine. By day, I teach make the most of summer break, and by night, I edit this newsletter.
As an aside: newsletters have sprouted like wild onions over the past few years, so if you’d prefer to keep your inbox tidy, you can read Time’s Corner in the Substack app or via RSS.1 I won’t be offended.
A quick update on Good Work: Thanks to 19 generous people each giving around $60, we have enough to create at least two more issues! They should both be out sometime in the next year. Subscribe for freeeeeee.
What is New
The other day my brother showed me some videos created by Google’s Veo 3 tool. Watching them, I felt like the Spartan king seeing a catapult for the first time: “Here is the death of valor.” What’s the point of struggling to make a beautiful film or portrait or poem if any rube with a computer can do the same thing?
The thing is, I actually like making movies and taking pictures and writing poems. I don’t just like having them. I like making them. At the end of the day, I’m not too worried about Veo 3 personally. So, I’m going to ask a more neutral question: What are these tools for?
Like all tools, AI is decided to make work easier, usually by making it more efficient. They reduce friction. Is there any benefit to reducing friction in creative work?
Alan Jacobs wrote about this a few years ago. The friction between the artist's ideal and the limits of his tools is a key factor in creating art. Artists need their materials to push back. (This is what always bothered me about that video of Glen Keane animating in virtual reality. "You can do anything you want." Yeah, but what I want is to not be able to do anything I want.) On the one hand, artists don’t want to make their work more effecient. But, on the other hand, artists can and do adopt new tools. Someone had to invent the lead pencil, after all.2
I suppose the answer to my question depends on what you're going for. In the filmmaking industry, digital video has almost entirely replaced actual film because it's gobs easier to record, manage, edit, and alter. If you want to make a great-looking movie as quickly and cheaply as possible, digital is the way to go.
But not everyone wants to do that. I recently met a filmmaker here in Birmingham who loves using DVR cameras (remember those?). He makes music videos for bands who want a certain, unconventional look, and DVR gives him that look. (He also mentioned that people behave way differently in front of a camcorder than they do in front of a phone. Pull out a phone and everyone turns away. Turn on a camcorder and they all start mugging and crowding to get into the frame.)
I do most of my writing on the computer because it's fast and I like the semi-formal look of type on a white background. When I need to slow down and think through a scene or paragraph, I put out pen and paper. (Not pencil. Too easy to erase.) But most of the time, I'm after speed, and the computer gives me that. Could you use an LLM in the same way?3
Cory Doctorow has written that his main problem with AI art is the lack of communication behind it. Art communicates via the million micro-decisions made by the artist in creating it. Each stroke of paint (or the keyboard) tells something about the artist's thoughts. You can create AI art without making very many decisions; hence, according to Doctorow, its uncanniness.
But what if there is intention behind it? If an artist uses Dall-E, or whatever, to make hundreds of versions of his idea, then chooses from among those hundreds, makes adjustments, generates a hundred more, etc. If a poet has ChatGPT spit out a poem about the rain, then changes a word, then another word, then another, chops the whole apart and puts it back together? Does that make it just like any other tool, one step beyond using a word processor?
Let's say I'm writing a scene and I'm stuck. "What would Jane say in response to Michael's comment?" I wonder. Being the old-fashioned writer I am, I would do one of the following:
Lean back and stare at the wall for a while
Grab a piece of paper and a pen and start writing one bad line after another, in the hopes of jostling loose a good idea
Go for a walk
It's very easy to imagine a younger writer developing a different process. "What would Jane say to Michael?" she wonders. She opens ChatGPT, types in Michael's line, and asks it to generate fifty different things Jane could say in response. She skims the output, selects the best option, copies, pastes, and continues on her way.
There's much more to say, but this newsletter is already long. Let me add one thing: The problem with using AI tools to make art is that they trick you into thinking that they are creating something new. They aren't. What an AI spits out may seem new, but it's an amalgamation of vast quantities of words or images created by human beings. Now, my grad school professors would probably say, “What's the difference?” All of us our simply parroting stuff we've heard or read. We're just super-advanced LLMs made out of meat. But that's simply not true. Human beings can come up with new things. (They can make new humans, after all, each with an individual soul.) Machines can't.
Links
I have a new article up at 1819 News.
When I think of photographs of the Palouse, I think of Brendan O’Donnell and Hannah Grieser. But Om Malick has some beautiful shots in this photo essay.
Upcoming
This isn’t upcoming, but if you see the new Mission: Impossible movie—which you should, in IMAX if possible—look for my brother’s name in the credits!
My brother Sheffield’s photography show runs through the end of July at the NSA Gallery in Moscow, Idaho. Check it out if you’re there.
The Theopolis Ministry Conference this year is on church music, a topic near and dear to my heart. Get tickets here.
Up To
Reading: I haven’t read many of Dorothy Sayers’ novels, but I have to think that Gaudy Night is one of her more personal. She writes about academia, writing mystery novels, balancing a career with marriage and children. Lots to chew on, and a mystery to boot.
Watching: RRR. Corny. Unpredictable. Awesome.
Listening: Wild and Clear and Blue (recommended by Audio Deacon)
Eating: About to bust out the deep fryer for the summer
About
I’m Christian Leithart, a writer and teacher living in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m not active on social media, but you can read my blog here. Use the button below to share this issue of Time’s Corner, if you so desire. Thanks much for reading.
I use NetNewsWire to follow RSS feeds, and I can’t recommend it enough.
For a fun exploration of where pencils come from, see “I, Pencil” by Leonard Read.
I really liked your linked opinion piece at 1819. It reminds of the 'Tao' in Lewis' Abolition of Man!