GenAI as spectacle

Generative AI enables machines to produce content that appears to mimic human-like creativity. As such GenAI models, as tools are great creative assistants. But while GenAI models excel at mimicking human-like responses, they lack genuine comprehension. That is, GenAI models use complex mathematical and statistical methods to generate responses that appear intelligent but lack genuine understanding or reasoning. The illusion of understanding means that GenAI output is surface, or representation without any deep contextual understanding, as experienced on social media platforms such as Instagram or Copilot. To better grasp the concepts of semantic understanding, reasoning and appearance of GenAI, a philosophical interpretation may help. For example, Guy Debord  (1931-1994), an arch-critic of consumerism and theorist of The society of the Spectacle (1967) - elaborates a system of social relations mediated by images where the totality of social relations becomes mediated by appearances. That is, experience of events is replaced by a passive contemplation of images (which are determined by other people) exemplified by the culture of advertising, consumption, and celebrity. Debord's term spectacle has become widely used for the modern condition. GenAI, then, through Debord's lens of a world mediated by images, may become the new social spectacle. The spectacle, moreover, evokes differences between appearance and reality. Shakespeare's Macbeth, for example, demonstrates how appearances cannot be trusted because they are moldable, meaning they offer no insight into the reality of a person. As spectacle, then, GenAI may alter perceptions of visual representations whereby appearances are based on copies instead of the original, or copies without the original.