14/06/2025
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬
The Garden of Earthly Delights is an oil painting by Hieronymus Bosch, painted somewhere between 1490 and 1510 in what is now known as the Netherlands. At this point, it is highly tempting to go to ChatGPT and ask more about what the painting is, and why it is relevant when it comes to this article’s topic. That is exactly why I have written this. The automatic urge to turn toward Artificial Intelligence, specifically generative AI, comes with its good and bad quirks. It is still an emerging technology after all—who am I to burn it at the stake?
Generative AI is all too familiar, but still requires a definition for purposes of clarity and consistency. Generative AI, as the name suggests, is a machine-learning model that can create content from user input or user prompts. Picture this: you arrive home from school after an evening class. It takes 20 minutes for you to reach your house, a few hours to do chores like cooking and cleaning plus your evening routine. You have 1–2 hours for yourself before you sleep, which is spent studying or scrolling on your phone, or playing video games, depending on preference. At the last minute, you realize that you have an assignment due tomorrow and it’s on a topic that you have trouble understanding. You badly need sleep, and so you go to your device and ask your chosen AI assistant for help. It takes less than 30 minutes to write it all down; it would’ve taken a few more hours if you took your time to learn it on your own, which would involve the tedious process of looking for resources, digesting the explanations often convoluted by jargon, and finally applying your knowledge in regards to your assignment. Now, this task has been reduced to 1 hour, granting you a more generous amount of sleep for tomorrow.
The modern world promises efficient and quick ways to save time, but why don’t we have enough time, still? With this, it becomes understandable to rely on AI for many things. It’s difficult to live in a world where uncertainty reigns. It’s difficult to be constantly exposed to the news—of ongoing wars, famines, and the plight of impoverished and marginalized sectors of society. It’s so difficult that it feels hopeless, that at times it can be too exhausting to think about your next meal or your next course of action, so taxing to your mental state, to everyone’s mental state that you just turn to AI for advice on how to navigate your feelings in a sea of problems. It is incredibly isolating for the ordinary individual to be under the weight of various systemic issues converging in the midst of a chaotic world. In this entanglement of spontaneous events, we cling to what makes us feel safe and secure—we cling to certainty, which is what AI provides.
When you ask AI what The Garden of Earthly Delights means, it (or they?) proceeds to collect information from various sources and summarize it in bullet points for the user to read and easily understand. The user, content with this condensed form of knowledge, moves on to the next question. How about generating art in the style of Bosch? AI creates a dreamy blend of details and ideas to satisfy the user’s request. If you’d like, it can make the artwork move to add to the surreal charm of the picture, to make it feel more “alive.” However, my critique is that with our increasing reliance towards AI, it decreases our faculties in facing the true essence of our existence. Comfort reaps its consequences, too. Being comfortable with letting AI do most of our work with the intention of a quick fix, to end every “unnecessary” task plaguing us, strips us down to a passive, gray existence. With all our problems solved, all our answers generated, all our knowledge condensed to simple terms, our senses dull to the grandest aspect of life: the uncertainty. Scholars, academics, and harbingers of knowledge for centuries have wrestled against and embraced uncertainties in their pursuit of the truth, in what makes the world work, in what makes the celestial bodies turn. Artists such as writers, painters, and composers toiled away at their studios, spending caffeine-induced nights obsessed with the painful pursuit of art and lifelong passion of mastering their craft. In film and visual media, animators, actors, and directors sought to capture and express life with justice and extreme care by confronting both the beauty and sorrows of existence. When we avoid the uncomfortable truths of life in favor of settling in a cocoon of limited bliss, is it still worth living it? Is this what we call living to the fullest?
This is not to say that the use of AI should be discouraged but must be used well and for what it is—a tool that will help us achieve whatever we wish while still retaining and even improving our existing skills and capacities. To quote the absurdist philosopher Albert Camus, “Life can be magnificent and overwhelming—that is the whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.” Life is difficult. In embracing this fact, we remember why we are here: we are here to live and to take care of each other, to try and alleviate the woes of our neighbor and go through this existence with a loving heart and a humble mind. May the use of AI help us achieve noble human pursuits and dreams that lead to the betterment of an imperfect society and an uncertain life.
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✍: Yeshia L. Cahilig
💻: Jerome R. Sustiosa
