Why I watch films and listen to music and stuff
Some people seem to think the value of art is threatened by the ability of AI to make it. These people don’t understand the point of art.
When I enjoy watching a film, it’s partly because of the pretty colours and sometimes you get to see a lady’s nipples. AI can do this bit.
There are no colours or nipples at all in Dr Strangelove. If I’m totally honest that film looks like shit (why didn’t Kubrick shoot it in Technicolor? Was he stupid?). But Dr Strangelove makes me lol. AI can’t do this bit yet, but I think it will be able to sooner or later.
I will still cherish Dr Strangelove because, while making me lol, it teaches me something about how people saw and understood the world 60 years ago, and what they found funny about it. Not “teaches” in the sense that we can discuss it in a seminar and write essays about it, but in the sense that having a conversation with someone teaches you something about their personality. In the sense that having sex with someone teaches you something about their feelings towards you.
AI can’t do that bit. Not because it lacks capabilities but because there is no human on the other end to learn about. I think soon AI will be able to generate films that represent 1960s culture in a way that “teaches” me about it in some sense, but not in the sense that I’m looking for when I sit down to watch a film.
if you could suck your own dick, why would you ever leave the house? - The L.A. Times
— more mr. nice guy (@juniorhoncho.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 1:55 AM
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This doesn’t have to be about 60-year-old cultural touchstones to be true. Teen comedies and mediocre horror films might be more superficial, but they are still fundamentally connections between human beings reflecting on their experience of being in the world together. When you watch Anchorman you are connecting with Will Ferrell, and you are also forming a connection with all the other people who have watched Anchorman. It will be neat if AI learns to make personalised slop that’s laser-targeted to make my specific brain lol and lmao, but I’ll still mostly want to watch the films my friends recommend.
This feels pretty obvious when I’m talking about films, but it’s probably even more true for music. A big part of why I listen to music is that it makes my brain do weird stuff that feels good. AI can do that bit. But when I come to love music, that’s usually driven by the thrill of hearing someone use musical vocabulary that I understand, in a way that’s new and exciting to me. That thrill comes from the feeling of connection to the musicians who built that vocabulary and the musicians exploring it in a new way. AI can do that exploration, but the thrill isn’t there.
The first time you heard AI-generated music, wasn’t it amazing? And then the second time, you didn’t give a fuck. I think it’s common to see this as “supply shock”. It doesn’t feel special when it’s free to produce. But that economic lens is the wrong one. The reason AI-generated music feels worthless is that there’s no human on the other end of that music, it’s just an empty pipe.