this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2024
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Would be good if openai could focus on things that are useful to humanity rather than trying to just do what we can do already, but with less jobs.
We already knew how to farm before John Deere; should we have focused away from agricultural industrialization in order to preserve jobs?
looks at the immense harm that agricultural industrialization has had on the climate, the environment and society
Apparently yes.
Working less is a great ideal for humanity.
Americans have this thing that their job defines them but we worked less than we did before, let's keep going.
Except the gains technology and automation bring are rarely evenly distributed in society. Just compare how productive a worker is today and how much we make compared to 50 years ago.
We make a lot more. Improvements are good.
You think people should be taxed more, vote for politicians trying to tax rich people more.
1 Generally people want to work, people don't want to be exploited by capitolists for a capitolist society where they barely make rent humans are generally workers. 2. This isn't working less, this isn't productivity improvement. This is less humanity in art and all just so employers don't need to spend money on workers.
Nothing is stopping anyone working for works sake. Personal I think that's a waste of time but people are free to do what they want.
Yes it is. It's the same as the printing press, or the electric switchboard, computers, cars, containerisation, 3d rendering verse drawing. Work used to be done by humans now the labour had been replaced to make something better quality, for a lower price with less workers.
Removing the artist is not "replacing the labor like the printing press".
No it is.
1
2
3
Why pursue any of the arts if they do not benefit humanity?
Because they look good enough for the web stories or RP I make
Ai generated images are not art.
Yes and no.
Currently you could say that ai is just efficiently guessing what we would want to see from pixel to pixel.
An artist may tune their style to be more similar to the art that they sold before in hopes of repeat buyers.
An AI looks at countless images and seeks out patterns which it refines. It mimics things and duplicates patterns.
An artists spends countless hours absorbed in the art of others to learn styles. Frequently they may mimic other works and iterate off of existing ideas.
Fan art, tracing, compositing - these are all things understood in the art community. If someone makes fan art of someone else's character does that invalidate their work as art?
AI invokes a reaction because it's getting "close." AI is receiving a lot of the same criticism that digital artists got for not using traditional mediums back in that technology's infancy.
Art is in the eye of the beholder. What defines art? Everything is relative. At present? AI is a tool. A bit unpolished and raw but so was CGI in the movie industry. Look how quickly that evolved.
AI could well be a tool for creating art in the future but as of yet it is not a tool I have ever seen to create anything I would consider art. Well, certainly not good art. Admittedly, every time I've been aware that it's been used at all it's because there are obvious AI errors present which make things look shit.
Without question. Early tablets and digital art couldn't hold a candle to traditional mediums. Even if the same artist created content for both. The tools are certainly rough.... but considering how young the technology is, and how far it has already come, I think we may soon arrive at a point where people may have issues distinguishing between the two.
Either way it's a fun topic to discuss. It's deeply interesting to see the variety of responses to it.
If nature carves a stone to look pretty, that's not art.
If a human carves a stone to look pretty, that's art. It has care and detail, it has something about humanity in it as it has a human behind it and everything that shaped them, shaped that stone.
It's that simple. Ai can not make art no more than the wind can.
I understand where you are coming from but to be fair the wind isn't using art as a reference. This is why I suggested it was a complex issue... and provided the examples that I did. There are quite a few similarities between ai models producing art and artists. Surely there are differences - but objectively speaking they do have quite a few similarities.
Art is specific to the beholder. Does what is before you evoke an emotional response? Was it produced for that purpose? If you provided paint and paper to an ape - would it be considered art? What about a child who has no concept of art?
From a non image perspective: music is art. Is a mashup music? What about other sample heavy music? Some people might argue that x genre isn't really music.
Back to prompt driven ai generated art: what if someone spent 70 hours tuning and modifying a prompt until the art fit their vision? 200 hours? What if they lacked the ability to draw or paint?
I genuinely don't believe this is a black and white issue. I do understand the implications of what ai tools have to the workforce - but that is a separate topic.
If the wind blows, cut up pieces of art magazines around and then land in a pile. That isn't art. It's just cut-up pieces of someone else's art.
If a person cuts up a magazine and pieces the parts together with intention and meaning. That can be art.
Art is not "I like this visially", art is not "you did this well." Art is human expression.
I can't really agree with this example. I think you're suggesting the AI is completely independent of human expression and is completely random in its application of its training data (the cut up pieces I suppose?)
Generative AI is driven by a human prompt (description) and refined by further prompts which pushes the result in the direction of the prompters vision.
This is in essence what is occuring above. I view this process as someone being provided a chisel and a block of stone:
-Michelangelo
As I suggested above AI is a tool that makes accessing art and expression available to anyone. The Ai is the chisel. They cut the stone with words.. It isn't just random clipart being thrown around either: The 'stone' is the culmination of all of the art the model has 'seen.' It has taken that data and found the patterns that different styles contain. You might describe this as the distillation of human expression into something new.
The source is art - human expression The prompt gives it form - human expression Further prompts drive the form to fit the users vision - human expression
There is intent and meaning.
Is it art in the traditional sense? Perhaps not in the same vein as ink and canvas but ... I believe, while it is certainly rough and unrefined, it can still be considered a tool to create art.
If you want, you can say that "prompt engineering" is an art. The act of engineering that prompts to get a picture, maybe that has a skill we might call art.
But no, the jpeg isn't art. It's a million cut-up images formed to make our monkey brains go "I enjoy".
Do you do this prompt engineering? The last time I had this conversation it turned out I was talking to someone that called themselves an artist because they put words into an ai.
Let's see if we can keep this civil, shall we?
First and foremost the model isn't compositing bits and pieces of other pictures - it's predicting what the next pixel should look like based on its training data. It is generating the image. In laymans terms: it's drawing based on what it has 'learned' by looking at other art. It's pretty interesting honestly.
I do have a background in art, though it is not my profession. Regardless of that- there are no requirements to create nor appreciate art.
A few good excerpts from wikipedia:
Everyone is entitled to their opinions. Ours seem to differ- and that's fine. My views are simple: if someone can express themselves through a medium- it is a form of art.
Prompt engineering may be a form of expression, but the ai generated images composed of copying what it saw previously and repeating is not art. It has no humanity in it. The brush strokes have nothing to say. It is really no different than the wind blowing about cut-up versions of other people's art.
If someone intentionally opens a window that allows the wind to blow in and shuffle up the cut-up art into a new image, that may be performance art, the act of opening the window. But the final result, which has no humanity to it, is not art. Will never be art.
Prompt engineering is no different than opening that window and then letting the ai wind shuffle up everything it knew over and over until you find an esthetic you like. It's not art. It will never be art. Because it fundamentally can not be art.
I know I expressed this already but the wind analogy doesn't work here. It isn't random nor undirected.
As far as copying goes - considering your staunch stance on what is and isn't art I think it's fair to say you have some involvement with it.
Regardless of the medium we all start the same way. Imitation. In traditional art we are trained by observing what the masses find pleasing. When we observe most artists work we can identify these roots. Very few artists art is not based in the works of those before them.
This article does a fine job of expressing the above.
AI assisted (generative) art is a tool that provides a user access to a compendium of learned styles. It lowers the barrier of entry to express yourself through art.
I posit that this is such a divisive topic because there is so little difference between how we learn and how these models do. It garners a lot of the same negativity that a prodigy might. "Why is it so easy for them when I worked so hard. They don't appreciate it as much as me."
In the end art belongs to nobody and everybody. Art is amorphous; formless. Art and artistic expression can exist anywhere- even here. I personally am not so high minded to gatekeep such a broad field.
I have no involvement with art. I have a lot of involvement with ai. I know what it makes is not art because I make the sausage, and that sausage is nothing but blown about and recombined shredded versions of everyone else's art.
Ai doesn't learn. That's marketing. It can't reason. It can't create. It can only generate an endless stream of anything but art. It's the antithesis of art.
I won't respond to your next comment for what it's worth. This conversation stopped having value five replies back.
Enough value to respond though. Interesting.
Be that as it may: considering your involvement you should have known the differences between random copy and paste and pixel prediction. I'm afraid I doubt your claims. Your views on art were pretty polarized - I'm pleased to have provided contrast to them.
Good luck keeping up that attitude as AI is advancing at this pace. You already can't tell them apart from human created images and and it'll just keep getting better. Stop kidding yourself.
Art is not about how believable it is. It's not a gauge of believability that an ai made this or not. There is no Turing test for art.
If the natural state of technology is that there aren't enough jobs to sustain an economy, then our economic system is broken, and trying to preserve obsolete jobs is just preserving the broken status quo that primarily benefits the rich. Over time I'm thinking more and more that instead of trying to prop up an outdated economic system we should just let it fail, and then we have no choice but to rethink it.
Oh yes yes I'm sure that we will totally rethink our economic systems that's absolutely what will happen and it will totally result in the utopia you're dreaming of. I'm sure that will happen I'm sure it's not just the ultra wealthy noting how they can make even more profit whilst everyone else suffers can't be that I'm sure the government will do something we all have faith in that we know it's obvious that will happen
You think pushing the status quo is going to result in change? The sweet spot for the rich is to have everyone struggle while they enrich themselves, but not struggle so hard that it leads to an upheaval. We've tried patching up a broken system and it doesn't fix anything, it just slows the decline. I think an upheaval is the only answer, dunno when we'll hit the breaking point, but it will happen, it's inevitable. For the economy to fundamentally change it will require it becoming completely impossible to survive in the existing economy, otherwise nobody would want to risk a fundamental rethink of how things work.