Who Watches the AI Watchmen?
A petition in verse, after Bastiat
To the Keepers of the Label,
from the Watchmen of the Art:
a rival works for nothing, sirs,
and it's tearing us apart.
It asks no wage, it keeps no hours,
it never pays its dues.
Worse still, the people using it
appear to be amused.
We ask a law. Let all it makes
be labeled, for their sake,
so those who liked it can be told
they liked it by mistake.
One clerk inquired, before the vote,
who lit our latest scene.
We did not paint it, sirs, by hand.
We left it to a machine.
So strike the Sun from Blender too,
and shutter every lens,
and put a warning on Undo:
"The artist tried again."
First drawing, then the photograph,
then video, then 3D,
and every step was slop, we said,
then took it, quietly.
We charged them all with laziness.
They pled, instead, to fun.
There is no statute, sirs, for that.
We checked. We looked for one.
So who shall watch the watchmen? Please
don't look at us too hard.
The light on this petition, sirs,
came off a graphics card.