No Kings, Imitative AI, and the Rightist Id

Last Saturday, there were No Kings protests all over the country, in big cities and small towns, in rural areas and urban areas, in red states and blue. Millions of people — the largest single day of protests in the history of the country — came out to protest against a President who is unilaterally and illegally cutting off funds Congress allocated to programs and locations he does not like, killing sailors in the Caribbean with no legal justification or proof of wrong doing provided to Congress or the American people, and flooding our streets with masked men stealing anyone — including American citizen children with cancer — who looks Hispanic to them. Trump’s response? Posting an AI video of him literally shitting on protestors and calling himself king. The individual video doesn’t interest me as such, but it is a marker of how imitative AI exposes the user’s id.

Trump was not the only person on the right who posted or reposted imitative AI material saying Trump was a king. David Sacks, one of Trump’s billionaire supporters, did so. Vice President Vance did so. It seems to be something of trend on the right. The reasons are rather simple — they believe that they are triggering the libs, which often seems to be the highest goal of any of their actions, and they honestly believe in kings, or at least authoritarianism. Remember, this is a movement backed and largely funded by people who oppose any democratic control of the economy and who think that democracy is not compatible with their economic goals. These imitative AI explosions, being posted moments after the protests started or ended, are a pure example of the id of the people creating them. That is what is interesting to me.

Normally, a politician or rich person would have to hire someone to create these items for them. They likely would never have seen the light of day, because it takes time to produce quality work. They also would likely not be as pure childishness as the ones produced by imitative AI since the natural give and take of an artist who doesn’t want to embarrass themselves would soften the work. I suspect this is part of the reason imitative AI is so popular among the rich and powerful.

Many of the richest and most powerful people, especially on the right, are functional idiots. They have been rich and powerful for so long that they no longer have a deep connection with reality. They do not have to participate in the day to day struggles of life and they are surrounded by people currying their favor. Unless they make an effort, it is easy for them to never hear the truth about anything they care about. And do you think that people who think democracy, ethics, and regulation are an impediment to success are really all that concerned with other people’s input? The idea of filtering their raw genius through an intermediary, a collaborator, likely seems intolerable to these people. Imitative AI allows them to produce what they want when they want as they want. And if the quality is poor, who care? The genius of their idea shines through regardless.

Normal art either requires you to work with others or to spend a lot of time and effort to become decent at the practice. Imitative AI allows you to put out a crappy version of the same thing (the Trump plane video, in particular, is terrible) but one, crucially, that you owe nothing to (except for the people whose art was stolen in the training process and the people who built the app, but the user never has to think about them since they are hidden, deliberately, from him or her) the work or ideas of anyone else. You can let your id run wild, let the pure genius of your ideas shatter the world through your use of imitative AI. You can be absolutely sure that taste, opinion of others, skill, or common sense can ever keep your glorious video of a president as king literally shitting on Americans from destroying the libs.

Take that, world. The id of the powerful and rich has been chained for too long.