Why I'm Thinking About Chicken McNuggets

How the words of an old mentor and Chicken McNuggets are shaping my thoughts about the threat of AI slop

I am fortunate that I have, over the course of my life, lived many lives, tried a lot of different things, and had a lot of really amazing experiences.

I was very fortunate at one point in my life to be a budding jewelry craftsperson and designer. And as I pursued this objective, I had the privilege to work as an intern for the late great Cindy Edelstein for the designers’ pavilion at JCK in Las Vegas. JCK at the time was the largest wholesale fine jewelry show in America, filling one of the largest convention centers on the Strip to brimming with hundreds of booths by hundreds of manufacturers from all over the world.

The designers pavilion was the place you showed if you were an up and coming jewelry designer who offered original designs and fine craftsmanship. Everyone from David Webb to Sarah Graham to Todd Reed and others looked to Cindy to advise them and help promote them to retailers. And the retailers looked to Cindy for advice as well. Helene Fortunoff, the head of the famous retailer Fortunoff, would swan into the designers pavillion, always with a beautiful scarf around her neck and dripping in the finest gold jewelry, and turn to Cindy and say, “Show me who you like.” Cindy’s picks would become featured offerings in her Manhattan store.

It was an amazing experience. Cindy sadly passed away in 2016, but she was a lion for her designers, and a treasure to the fine jewelry industry.

I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, mostly because I am remembering her advice to young designers who were worried about knockoffs. You’d see the knockoff makers at JCK, usually young women who would surreptitiously photograph items in the cases of the younger, more innovative designers, so that the companies they worked for, usually based in China, could produce copies at a fraction of the cost of the real items. Small shop designers, unlike larger brands like Hermes or Chanel or Tiffany and Co., usually didn’t have the resources to combat the copycats. It was a real and legitimate threat to their businesses.

Yep, those are chicken nuggets. I promise I will make them relevant if you keep reading. Photo by David Foodphototasty on Unsplash

I’ve been thinking about it because the age of AI has posed a similar, perhaps even more intense threat to creators today, and the witchcraft and occult community is no exception. There is a flood of AI-generated books, tarot decks, social media content aimed at practitioners, cheap slop being offered at expensive prices. It can be very hard to tell the difference between AI copycats and counterfeits and the real thing. I’ve already clocked one AI generated deck being proudly displayed as guaranteed NOT AI on the website of my favorite tarot deck shop. (Here’s a YouTube video that offers some good advice on how to tell the difference).

One of my favorite Tarot creators was lamenting the seemingly endless deluge of AI generated decks and content, and Cindy’s advice to the designers came back to me.

Here’s the gist of it: The best thing to do is keep creating. Stay ahead of them. They can only copy what you do. They don’t have what it takes to deliver your originality. They are stuck following you. So keep going, keep creating.

Now, generative AI is a little bit different than Chinese knockoff manufacturers. They purport to be creating original things. Notice that I don’t say they ARE creating original things. Because that overstates what generative AI really does when it spits out a song or a design or a text. As you probably already know, AI creates in response to a prompt from a user. The user inputs their prompt, which details what they want created, with some instructions as to style and influences and other limitations, and the AI program pulls from its vast library of material that it has been “trained” on to generate something that hopefully meets the criteria established in the prompt.

This isn’t really creation. This is basically the equivalent of what McDonald’s does when it makes its Chicken McNuggets. When McNuggets were first introduced nationwide in the United States in 1983, they were unidentified chicken bits that had been industrially extruded into a chicken mush that was then formed into the famous bell, bow-tie, ball and boot shapes. They are then breaded and deep fried. Since 2016, the recipe calls for chicken breast meat only, and McDonald’s claims that its McNuggets are now free of articficial preservatives. But it’s still reconstituted chicken mush that has been reformed into pleasing shapes and fried.

Here’s the thing about Chicken McNuggets -- yep, they are hella tasty. And when I am pressed for time and out of the house and need a quick snack, they can really hit the spot. And while technically they are made from real chicken breasts, they are not real chicken. Real chicken is when you roast a whole bird in the oven. Real chicken is when you take whole parts of the bird -- breasts, wings, thighs -- and properly batter and fry them. Offered a choice between real chicken and McNuggets, all other things being equal, most people who have any appreciation of food will choose the real chicken, not the McNuggets.

AI generated creations will never be real chicken creations. They will always be McNuggets. McDonald’s can improve its process for McNuggets all it wants. It can remove artificial preservatives, use the best quality chicken, add really interesting spices. But in the end its really never going to taste as good as real chicken, because it’s still reconstituted chicken mush formed into pleasing, predetermined shapes.

AI generated creations are never going to be better than original human creations. Now, if all you’re doing is composing an email to your boss, it doesn’t have to be. But the reason that people are balking so hard at AI generated content, books, tarot decks, actors, music, designs or other creative product is because it just isn’t as good as the real thing and it never can be, because the work isn’t really the product of original human thought. It’s reconstituted thought mush.

So witchcraft creators, be they authors or oracle deck creators, or musicians or artists or ritualists, I’m not saying AI isn’t something to be concerned about. It absolutely is. But don’t get discouraged that somehow the McNugget style thought mush might replace you. It can’t. Especially not if we make sure that consumers understand the difference involved in purchasing from a real creator, and insisting that creators either disclose whether and how they are using AI, or refuse to use it altogether. We need to be as vigilant and vociferous about that as moms in the 2000’s were about the content and process around McNuggets.

Keep going. Keep creating. Don’t get discouraged. You are always going to be the real chicken to their McNugget thought mush. And make sure everybody knows it.

Blessed be, y’all.