strongly considering becoming one of those people who insists on never referring to a particular thing by its common name for political reasons because framing big probability models as "artificial intelligence" and pretending they're anything like HAL 9000 or Data is doing so so much damage to laypeople's understanding of a technology that primarily exists to make their lives worse

I genuinely think this is important to do for art criticism, cause like, all the precedents for "AI Art" are actually things like the stochastic methods of the surrealists and dadaists. there IS precedent within art history, but it's stuff like Jean Arp dropping scrap paper onto a canvas.

maybe it's a niche concern, that so little of the discussion around this stuff seems informed by anything from the last actual century of art production and criticism, but it feels to me like it really distorts the conversation when instead of using a term like "algorithm art" we're using "artificial intelligence". it's just incorrect, in a way that feels designed to insulate practitioners and tech pushers from questions like "what is your actual art practice? what are you contributing to the process? why is your work so much less interesting than your average Bob Rauschenberg assemblage or Max Ernst rubbing?"