In a desert metropolis of 22 million, many things are scarce, and few are as abundant as trash. For decades, Cairo lacked an organized approach to waste management—an administrational gap filled by the people of Manshiyat Nasser, a neighborhood known as Garbage City.

A manufactured, artificial opposite of the natural world, the workspace is a peculiar invention. It has the outside wrapped all around it, separated by just a few inches of wall and yet fully out of reach for eight hours a day. And those working in it are always ready to put their pay towards a vacation escape to the other side, while those working outside of it never dream the other way around, never fantasize about vacationing inside an office.

After Boris Eldagsen and I replied to Joan Fontcuberta’s musings on “algorithmic photography” with an article published by PetaPixel, Gregory Chatonsky replied to us with a theory that expands on latent space. Now it’s our turn again. Gloves are off, but it’s all in good fun.

PetaPixel just published an essay co-authored by Boris Eldagsen and me, which should be an interesting read beyond the photographic community, with implications for anybody who consumes images. The article is a critique of Joan Fontcuberta’s “algorithmic photography,” presented in his latest book. Since we are mentioned in it, Boris and I saw it necessary to respond to an artist and intellectual who theorizes that we're past the distinction between photography and AI imagery.

In the public arena, photography is a long-standing winner of truth-telling contests, beating older forms of visual representation that aim to approximate reality with brushstrokes, chisel-chipping or textile-loops. The camera as a tool establishes a more direct relationship with the subject, at least from an optical point of view. That much is obvious.

At the rate polarization is driving us apart these days, unity’s embrace might end up out of reach sometime soon. As the planet is heating—a divisive issue really putting the “polar” in polarizing—it feels like we’re all heating with it: families redraw the Thanksgiving table’s seating chart according to vaccine schedules while politicians on TV oscillate between shouting and screaming as the aisle widens into an chasm.

A technology with civilizational, planetary consequences, AI is a gravitational heavyweight that moves all of us, one way or another, some day or some other, whether we want it or not, know it or not. With our stakes at an all-time high, it's important to understand what AI is and isn't, what it does or doesn't do, who it benefits and how, what it destroys and why.

While the public discourse around the ICE killing of Minnesota woman Renee Good has all the right ingredients for a hot stew of opinions—spicy camera angles, juicy legislation, and a good pinch of political finger-pointing—it is lacking a solid portion of clear-cut common sense. Something that isn’t mush. Something we can all agree on.