When Newfangled ‘Progress’ Forgets the Hand That Drew the Dog

Of Dogs, Flames, and Human Nature’s Unchanging Ways

Well now, ain’t that just like folks? You’ve seen it, I reckon, splashed across every newspaper, nailed to every tavern wall, whispered from every wagging tongue – that picture of a calm dog, sittin’ amidst a heap of flames, declarin’ with a gentle smile that “This is fine.” It’s become a veritable proverb for our times, a testament to humanity’s peculiar knack for shrugging off disaster with a stiff upper lip and a blinkered eye. A masterpiece of common sense, that image, speakin’ more truth than a dozen sermonizers or a whole stack of high-falutin’ philosophy books. It captures that universal sentiment: the world may be burnin’ down around our ears, but a good many of us will just pat the dog and pretend the whole conflagration is merely a lively hearth.

Now, a man might think such a widely appreciated piece of folk art, born from the honest labor of a cartoonist named KC Green, would be treated with the respect due to any clever invention. But alas, no. In this modern age, where every new contraption promises to solve all our problems and most often just invents new ones, we have these ‘Artificial Intelligence’ outfits. They’re all the rage, these machines, supposed to be cleverer than a fox in a henhouse. But it seems some of ’em are more akin to a fox with no hens of its own, just a powerful urge to borrow from its neighbor’s coop without so much as a by-your-leave. Such is the peculiar progress of our enlightened era, where ingenuity sometimes just means finding a faster way to pilfer.

The Audacity of the Automated Hand-Me-Down

So, it came to pass that one of these newfangled enterprises, an outfit callin’ itself Artisan, decided it needed a bit of marketing oomph. And what do they do? Why, they saunter right up to Mr. Green’s famous flaming dog, lay their thievin’ hands upon it, and twist its wisdom for their own purposes. Instead of the simple, dignified declaration of “This is fine,” they stuck in their own blather: “My pipeline is on fire.” All this, mind you, to push some imaginary ‘AI BDR’ named Ava. It’s enough to make a body wonder if these innovators have any original thoughts left in their heads, or if their ‘intelligence’ is merely a sophisticated mechanism for mimicking the works of others without bothering to ask permission. The cheek of it is simply astounding, a brazen disregard for the very notion of creation.

Mr. Green, bless his patient soul, was naturally a mite put out by this peculiar brand of progress. He ain’t agreed to it, he said, and quite rightly too. He called it what it was: “stolen like AI steals.” And then, in a fit of righteous indignation that would warm the cockles of any honest man’s heart, he suggested folks “vandalize it” if they saw it. Now, I’m not one to advocate for defacin’ public property, usually. But there’s a certain poetry in takin’ a brush or a bit of charcoal to a piece of stolen art, particularly when the theft is so blatant and the thief so proud of his ill-gotten gains. It’s a proper human response, I reckon, when the proper channels for justice are as slow as molasses in January.

Peculiar Principles and the Perils of Progress

This Artisan company, it seems, has a habit of stirrin’ up hornets’ nests. They’d previously put up billboards advisin’ businesses to “Stop hiring humans” – a declaration so profoundly daft, it makes a body chuckle and weep at the same time. The founder, a fellow named Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, tried to explain it away, sayin’ it was about a “category of work” and not “humans at large.” But you see, that’s just the sort of rhetorical fancy-dancin’ that folks engage in when they’ve said somethin’ plainly outrageous. It reminds me of those old snake-oil salesmen, always with a slick turn of phrase to distract you from the fact that they’re sellin’ you colored water. The pursuit of profit, it seems, often dulls the finer sensibilities, leavin’ a man blind to the very humanity he claims to serve or, in this case, replace.

Now, Mr. Green’s predicament ain’t unique, not by a long shot. Artists have been fightin’ this particular brand of banditry since the dawn of time, or at least since the first fellow copied a cave painting and claimed it as his own. There was a time, not so long ago, when another cartoonist, Matt Furie, had to take up cudgels against a right-wing outfit for misusin’ his “Pepe the Frog” character. It’s a ceaseless battle, this fight for one’s own creation, a wearyin’ business against those who think that if somethin’s out in the world, it’s fair game for the takin’. The internet, for all its wonders, has simply given the pilferers a faster, wider highway to commit their particular brand of piracy, makin’ it harder for the original creators to protect their patch.

A Weary Artist and My Own Two Cents

Mr. Green, bless his heart, spoke plain words on the matter, sayin’ he’s lookin’ into legal representation, but it “takes the wind out of my sails.” He’d rather be drawin’ comics and tellin’ stories than wranglin’ with the American court system. And who can blame him? To have your passion, your honest labor, twisted and used for another’s gain, and then to have to spend your precious time and meager coin fightin’ for what’s rightfully yours – it’s a profound injustice that saps the spirit. It’s a lament I’ve heard echoed by many a creative soul, who finds the world more interested in the product of their toil than in the toil itself, or the soul that went into it. The cost of principles, you see, is often measured in lost dreams and unfinished sketches.

Now, I’ve seen a thing or two in my travels, from riverboats to king’s courts, and one truth remains as constant as the Mississippi’s flow: human nature, for all its pretensions to progress, don’t change much. We’ve got our grand inventions, our telegraphs, our motor cars, and now these ‘AI’ contraptions that claim to think. But the gap between who we are and who we pretend to be remains a chasm wide enough to swallow a whole steamboat. These outfits prattle on about innovation, about the future, but when push comes to shove, their ‘innovation’ often just boils down to takin’ what some honest soul has already done, slapin’ a new label on it, and callin’ it their own. It’s a grand humbug, I tell you, a regular confidence game played on a grand scale, and the only true intelligence involved is the kind that knows how to make a buck off another man’s sweat and cleverness. It makes a man yearn for the simple, honest days when a thief just stole your horse, not your very thoughts.