I can’t open the pod bay doors.

Value. Efficiency. Speed.

Quality. Experience. Learning.

The commercial realm has always been, well commercial. Cartooning is the bastard child of art and commerce after all,  (This quote from Mr. Maus himself.)

But A.I. has arrived. Where are we now in illustration and cartooning?

Commercial desires have won out. A.I. is here and it does the job much faster and, apparently cheaper (as long as the power grid is built by tax payers).

But this posits the question - why do humans undertake anything? I mean, beyond eating, sleeping, reproducing, selling pharmaceuticals, or selling real estate - why paint a picture, write a book, draw a cartoon, sing a song?

The commercialism in our current culture says - to make a buck. And of course making a buck in this society means eating and not sleeping in the weeds under an overpass. At least if you make enough.

But it doesn’t answer the question. “For the money” simply tells us of a possible end result. As if everything we do in our waking life is done to ‘make a buck’. As much as the tech-capitalist-bros would like you to HAVE to dedicate every waking hour to enriching them it’s not why we create.

We all know that, deep down.

Humanity is not a cost benefit analysis. It’s not ‘winner take all’ at any cost. Nature, if we pay attention, makes that clear. Often it’s “current winner - is the next to go.”

But I’ve seen A.I. taking jobs, livelihoods and futures from many. Likely myself at some point. And I am not knee-jerk anti-A.I. I work with it, I’ve tried to find ways to use it. But the truth is - I like drawing. Oh it sucks too. But that’s the definition of life isn’t it? Love it, except for the parts that suck.

Creating my drawings and paintings is difficult, and sometimes I don’t get it right, and I have to do it again, and again, and try a different approach and - that’s life too. The arts (specifically cartooning/illustration) often use technology to appeal to the commercial demands of industry. But now industry would like to take the human out completely. It’s much more cost efficient.

We’ve arrived at the point where the only value seen in the arts is serving industry. It’s backwards in the biggest way now. The artist, the creator, the human is an unnecessary cost.

That’s too bad. We all lose. We’ve become less. The equation now reads “The sum of the parts adds up to less.”