The speech begins with:

I am so tired of hearing about AI. Unfortunately, this is a talk about AI. I’m trying to figure out how to use generative AI as a designer without feeling like shit. I am fascinated with what it can do, impressed and repulsed by what it makes, and distrustful of its owners. I am deeply ambivalent about it all. The believers demand devotion, the critics demand abstinence, and to see AI as just another technology is to be a heretic twice over.

and I was hooked to read this long speech, and so I did.

There are four ideas discussed in regard of "humans using machines" with analogy to "artists using instruments" with focus on AI:

1. Under the Machine. It depicts when the machine pours more knowledge than the user, and has been portrayed with analogy to the artist Rick Rubin with reference to his work on The Way of Code:

Rubin obviously has skills and knowledge, but we get two Rick Rubins. There’s the one in the studio, unable to play guitar, but gifted at guiding artists and clarifying what they want. And then there’s the cartoon Rubin, who leans into his lack of ability in interviews, writes bad poems, and poses as the guru. Maybe that split is what happens when the work becomes too abstract from execution.

2. Beside the Machine. It depicts, how we can use AI, not under but besides it, and create great art. The author also questions why can't our prompts be ambiguous?

That, to me, feels like a better model for prompting in creative work, whether the first act of execution belongs to a person or a machine. A good prompt doesn’t need to function like a blueprint. They can also behave like a horoscope or a fortune.

3. Into the Machine.

One of the things you notice when encountering Herndon and Dryhurst’s work is that they are just as concerned with the administrative structures needed to serve artists as they are with the creative potentials of new technology. They say that all media is training data, so their work wrestles with the implications of what media generation at scale means for artists. The AI model and the economic model don’t need to come packaged together. Both can be areas for innovation, and severing the implied connection may be a requirement for ethical AI.

4. Beyond the Machine. The reference of Gibhli art generation using AI is shown, how it completely ate years of work Hayao Miyazaki.

The lesson for AI might be similar. Its danger comes because it operates inside systems with no sense of “enough.” AI needs boundaries, and so do we. The question isn’t just “what can this machine do?” but “what should it serve?” and, most importantly, “when should we stop?”

And finally I can really relate to this quote by Simone Weil:

We have to endure the discordance between imagination and fact. It is better to say, ‘I am suffering,’ than to say, ‘This landscape is ugly.

This speech was a wonderful read, although I think I would've been able to enjoy it more if I had been familiar with the artists and their work.