4 ms·

Debating the impact of machine-created art

11 points by dnetesn 6y ago

brudgers 6y ago
An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. Has the ant traced a picture of Winston Churchill, a picture that depicts Churchill? Hillary Putnam, Brains in a Vat, 1981 https://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/Putnam--Brains%20in%20a%20vat.htm https://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/Putnam--Brains%20in%20a%20vat....
joe_the_user 6y ago
No. I think if we teach machines to be creative, then they’ll be beneficent toward us, rather than just keeping us around as household pets. I don't think great art is simply about "being creative", I'd say the art that is valued the most involves a nexus of personal creativity, mastery of various formalisms and a relation of the whole of culture and society. A particular work of art is significant not simply for being beautiful but for being part of a dialogue within the whole of society. And this situation today makes art problematic even without computers. Once society's "dialog with itself" was confined to the "best" magazines, high class publishers, renowned galleries and so-forth. For good or ill, attention is spread much widely and in a more arbitrary fashion. The formal gatekeepers are gone. There are still barriers to fame but they seem even more arbitrary. Will computers somehow produce works which become integrate with the zeitgeist, so to speak? I don't know but it seems like if computers are doing this, this cultural realm will have been colonized by these electronic devices and human will indeed being kept as pets.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  So, why wouldn't a superoptimizer AI write a weaponized joke that would suffocate someone by keeping them laughing for so long, or to craft themselves an android body with a form and movements that would make it the most beloved celebrity in all of human history? On top of that, why shouldn't it create music, literature, and art having that sort of effect, all at the same time, in the guise of several dozens of super-ultra celebrities and politicians? Why wouldn't a superoptimizing AI be able to become Galadriel who took the ring from Frodo? (Possible answer: The lethal joke and the face that lunched a thousand ships are apocryphal and fictional, but the politicians and the celebrities part is likely doable.)
  - joe_the_user 6y ago
    I have no idea how this comment relates to my above post, which is 70% about culture, 30% about computers and about 0% on whatever the potentials or dangers of AI are.
    - stcredzero 6y ago
      It's an extrapolation, of, what if AI start making art, music, literature, etc... Take that to a far conclusion. Do you understand the 3 references?
- brudgers 6y ago
  Once society's "dialog with itself" was confined to the "best" magazines, high class publishers, renowned galleries and so-forth. Or a narrative consistent with Soviet socialism and similar. Ideologies always adopt art as a tool and seek to enforce a narrow definition to suit their aims. Here a century later computer art is just a take on Duchamp's ready-mades...and more than half a century since it was a novel idea. As Heinlein said, every generation thinks it invented sex.
gwern 6y ago
"I have my own definition of aesthetics, too." "Lay it on me." "It makes art historians’ hair stand on end. Aesthetics equals the image in a work of art—and the image need not be a visual image—but an image from our five senses, plus the apparatus that generates it. For example, at CERN, I asked a physicist for his definition of aesthetics, and he said, “My notion of aesthetics is nicely laid out wires.” I saw them. There are these units of parallel wires, nothing crossed over, and the wires are color coded. It was beautiful." Props to this dude for a new achievement in épater le bourgeois.
galaxyLogic 6y ago
I think art is about us feeling elated because we think we see what the artist saw and thus feel we understand what the artist wants to share with us. If computer makes art it can be beautiful, and it can fool us into thinking we see what the artist is trying to say and feel that. But once we know the piece was generated by a computer that feeling goes away. It can still be beautiful like a landscape can be beautiful even though there was no artist creating it. Think about "great" painters and their masterpieces which are highly appreciated. Then a forger comes a long and makes a copy. Is the copy also great art, or not? It is more or less an exact copy. But we don't consider it great art. Why? Because we know it is a forgery. So "art" is much in the brain of the beholder.
- Hedepig 6y ago
  Does that not depend upon the process in which the creator of such an AI goes through?
  - galaxyLogic 6y ago
    I would tend to agree yes. The creator of the art-producing AI is much the creator. But not as much as if s/he would have created the art as such directly, because of indirection. The AI might produce billions of versions of the art which the human creating the AI has never seen or heard. It's maybe not too different from photography as art. The photographer takes many pictures then selects and edits them. it the act of intentionally conveying some "message" to the viewers that makes it art, in my view.

11 points by dnetesn 6y ago

An ant is crawling on a patch of sand. As it crawls, it traces a line in the sand. By pure chance the line that it traces curves and recrosses itself in such a way that it ends up looking like a recognizable caricature of Winston Churchill. Has the ant traced a picture of Winston Churchill, a picture that depicts Churchill? Hillary Putnam, Brains in a Vat, 1981 https://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/Putnam--Brains%20in%20a%20vat.htm https://faculty.uca.edu/rnovy/Putnam--Brains%20in%20a%20vat....

joe_the_user 6y ago

No. I think if we teach machines to be creative, then they’ll be beneficent toward us, rather than just keeping us around as household pets. I don't think great art is simply about "being creative", I'd say the art that is valued the most involves a nexus of personal creativity, mastery of various formalisms and a relation of the whole of culture and society. A particular work of art is significant not simply for being beautiful but for being part of a dialogue within the whole of society. And this situation today makes art problematic even without computers. Once society's "dialog with itself" was confined to the "best" magazines, high class publishers, renowned galleries and so-forth. For good or ill, attention is spread much widely and in a more arbitrary fashion. The formal gatekeepers are gone. There are still barriers to fame but they seem even more arbitrary. Will computers somehow produce works which become integrate with the zeitgeist, so to speak? I don't know but it seems like if computers are doing this, this cultural realm will have been colonized by these electronic devices and human will indeed being kept as pets.

stcredzero 6y ago
So, why wouldn't a superoptimizer AI write a weaponized joke that would suffocate someone by keeping them laughing for so long, or to craft themselves an android body with a form and movements that would make it the most beloved celebrity in all of human history? On top of that, why shouldn't it create music, literature, and art having that sort of effect, all at the same time, in the guise of several dozens of super-ultra celebrities and politicians? Why wouldn't a superoptimizing AI be able to become Galadriel who took the ring from Frodo? (Possible answer: The lethal joke and the face that lunched a thousand ships are apocryphal and fictional, but the politicians and the celebrities part is likely doable.)
- joe_the_user 6y ago
  I have no idea how this comment relates to my above post, which is 70% about culture, 30% about computers and about 0% on whatever the potentials or dangers of AI are.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    It's an extrapolation, of, what if AI start making art, music, literature, etc... Take that to a far conclusion. Do you understand the 3 references?
brudgers 6y ago
Once society's "dialog with itself" was confined to the "best" magazines, high class publishers, renowned galleries and so-forth. Or a narrative consistent with Soviet socialism and similar. Ideologies always adopt art as a tool and seek to enforce a narrow definition to suit their aims. Here a century later computer art is just a take on Duchamp's ready-mades...and more than half a century since it was a novel idea. As Heinlein said, every generation thinks it invented sex.

gwern 6y ago

"I have my own definition of aesthetics, too." "Lay it on me." "It makes art historians’ hair stand on end. Aesthetics equals the image in a work of art—and the image need not be a visual image—but an image from our five senses, plus the apparatus that generates it. For example, at CERN, I asked a physicist for his definition of aesthetics, and he said, “My notion of aesthetics is nicely laid out wires.” I saw them. There are these units of parallel wires, nothing crossed over, and the wires are color coded. It was beautiful." Props to this dude for a new achievement in épater le bourgeois.

galaxyLogic 6y ago

I think art is about us feeling elated because we think we see what the artist saw and thus feel we understand what the artist wants to share with us. If computer makes art it can be beautiful, and it can fool us into thinking we see what the artist is trying to say and feel that. But once we know the piece was generated by a computer that feeling goes away. It can still be beautiful like a landscape can be beautiful even though there was no artist creating it. Think about "great" painters and their masterpieces which are highly appreciated. Then a forger comes a long and makes a copy. Is the copy also great art, or not? It is more or less an exact copy. But we don't consider it great art. Why? Because we know it is a forgery. So "art" is much in the brain of the beholder.

Hedepig 6y ago
Does that not depend upon the process in which the creator of such an AI goes through?
- galaxyLogic 6y ago
  I would tend to agree yes. The creator of the art-producing AI is much the creator. But not as much as if s/he would have created the art as such directly, because of indirection. The AI might produce billions of versions of the art which the human creating the AI has never seen or heard. It's maybe not too different from photography as art. The photographer takes many pictures then selects and edits them. it the act of intentionally conveying some "message" to the viewers that makes it art, in my view.