6 ms·

"Creative application". That's just going to get automated too. We're in the twilight of art, if not humanity.

by KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago

gfodor 5y ago
More likely we are at the dawn of something we can’t yet understand.
- speed_spread 5y ago
  We are at the dawn of something that might understand us.
  - akie 5y ago
    We don't even understand ourselves.
    - PoignardAzur 5y ago
      Yeah, but the thing will be a lot smarter than us.
- snek_case 5y ago
  What's a bit worrying here is that life has had billions of years of evolution to shape its instincts (i.e: empathy, self-preservation, desire to explore, etc.). Our basic instinctual drives are tuned in a way that the system is more or less stable, the species doesn't go extinct. We're in the process of creating machines whose drives will be completely artificial, not shaped by natural selection. We're going to shape them... Or, more accurately, greedy corporations, billionaires and leftists are going to imprint an approximation of their own morals and goals in there, for better or worse. Those machines will also inevitably end up a lot smarter and more capable than we are. It's possible that if we fuck up the programming, we just just won't be able to stop them from transforming the world into whatever they want... If the world they want is toxic or unsustainable, good luck trying to reprogram a machine that's faster, stronger and smarter than you. It's going to be the other way around, the machines will reprogram us if it suits their needs.
  - visarga 5y ago
    You only need to add "You are a nice AI." to the prompt to make it nice. Or you can replace "nice" with whatever you want, but then you suffer the consequences.
    - testmasterflex 5y ago
      The issues arise on the definitional level. Defining “nice” is impossible as far as I can tell. Especially for a computer. But also too inflexible.
  - rnk 5y ago
    Wait, that's a weird list: "greedy corporations, billionaires and leftists" will push their own views and morals? Why do you conflate those things? In the US, leftists might want crazy things like universal health care. I do agree there is huge danger in programming systems and letting them make choices. But we already let it happen in things like letting software trade stocks and move the market (triggered by signals, causing unexpected behavior).
    - gfodor 5y ago
      Greedy corporations, billionaires, and leftists all pose existential levels of risk to the degree they influence the development of AI.
      - rnk 5y ago
        I'm surprised by your problem with leftists here? What is the leftist agenda with regards to AI?
lobstey 5y ago
But like you can write a poem to generate pictures for it. It's revolutionary for people to present differently.
- KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
  A revolution is an understatement. Presenting differently is nice for now but projecting just slightly more into the future the whole concept of presenting might be over and done with. For example: My gf spends hours dolling herself up, making poses, sometimes traveling to interesting places to get good instagram photos. The desire is to present herself as a cool and attractive person. This all becomes meaningless with Dall E.
  - teruakohatu 5y ago
    > This all becomes meaningless with Dall E. No more than it was since Photoshop.
    - snek_case 5y ago
      Well, no. Your average Facebook users doesn't have the time, money or skills to really touch up the photos they post on Facebook. If you can just ask your computer or your cellphone to pose you on top of Mount Everest or flying an F-22 fighter jet or driving a Lamborghini while wearing an expensive suit and it produces 20 variants of that image in 227 milliseconds though, that completely changes the game. The internet is going to be full of fake photos and soon full of fake video clips too. You'll basically never be able to trust someone's Tinder profile picture. The upside, maybe, is that if the internet becomes more fake, it also becomes less interesting. Maybe it will encourage people to do more activities and things in real life, away from computers. Dating websites will probably drop in popularity because profile pictures are so manipulated that you basically have no idea what the person looks like without meeting them in person.
      - motoxpro 5y ago
        Sounds like a win win, more people in the real world, more creativity online.
briga 5y ago
Or perhaps this just opens doors to new types of art and creativity?
dotnet00 5y ago
This makes art more accessible, but in the end the 'art' aspect comes from what the creator is trying to express, in which case as long as humans (or anything else with a creative drive) exist there will be art. Just like how photography didn't cause the end of paintings, movies/TV didn't cause the end of stage plays and electronic music didn't replace instruments, all this will do (and to an extent has been done by other generative models) is create a new kind of art.
- testmasterflex 5y ago
  That’s my take too. Nobody will care for a AI generated painting made with no effort by a computer. Something new, where human effort with an opportunity cost remain, will arise. Perhaps non-perfection will become the new trend vis-a-vis the opposite today?
  - nonbirithm 5y ago
    But who says that those artists must declare that their artwork came from an AI? Even on HN, people have already begun to accuse others of writing comments with GPT-3 without disclosing so. Whether joking or not, this feels like a glimpse into future human attitudes towards this breed of creation. If we equate human-created == valuable, and AI-generated == not valuable, but we as humans cannot reliably tell the difference, then I'm picturing a future of distrust where creators/consumers suspect or accuse each other of fraud. Such behavior is already prevalent with social media today, so why wouldn't it be amplified even further when new and advanced technology is introduced? DALL-E 2 isn't even at an AGI-level and it has already cleared some people's bar for what qualifies as "production-ready art." I also recall the recent article where Ed Sheeran said he films his creative processes to prove he was the true author - and that was an authorship case solely involving human-created works. In the future, "pure" artists might have to adapt a similar protocol to protect those kinds of virtues.
    - koolba 5y ago
      The forum singularity will be reached when the GPT-3 generated responses themselves include accusations of writing comments via GPT3.
sAbakumoff 5y ago
han, the humanity will destroy itself with idiots like putin who believe in nuclear strikes.
anaganisk 5y ago
Don’t worry, probably will end up as NFT generator.

"Creative application". That's just going to get automated too. We're in the twilight of art, if not humanity.

gfodor 5y ago

More likely we are at the dawn of something we can’t yet understand.

speed_spread 5y ago
We are at the dawn of something that might understand us.
- akie 5y ago
  We don't even understand ourselves.
  - PoignardAzur 5y ago
    Yeah, but the thing will be a lot smarter than us.
snek_case 5y ago
What's a bit worrying here is that life has had billions of years of evolution to shape its instincts (i.e: empathy, self-preservation, desire to explore, etc.). Our basic instinctual drives are tuned in a way that the system is more or less stable, the species doesn't go extinct. We're in the process of creating machines whose drives will be completely artificial, not shaped by natural selection. We're going to shape them... Or, more accurately, greedy corporations, billionaires and leftists are going to imprint an approximation of their own morals and goals in there, for better or worse. Those machines will also inevitably end up a lot smarter and more capable than we are. It's possible that if we fuck up the programming, we just just won't be able to stop them from transforming the world into whatever they want... If the world they want is toxic or unsustainable, good luck trying to reprogram a machine that's faster, stronger and smarter than you. It's going to be the other way around, the machines will reprogram us if it suits their needs.
- visarga 5y ago
  You only need to add "You are a nice AI." to the prompt to make it nice. Or you can replace "nice" with whatever you want, but then you suffer the consequences.
  - testmasterflex 5y ago
    The issues arise on the definitional level. Defining “nice” is impossible as far as I can tell. Especially for a computer. But also too inflexible.
- rnk 5y ago
  Wait, that's a weird list: "greedy corporations, billionaires and leftists" will push their own views and morals? Why do you conflate those things? In the US, leftists might want crazy things like universal health care. I do agree there is huge danger in programming systems and letting them make choices. But we already let it happen in things like letting software trade stocks and move the market (triggered by signals, causing unexpected behavior).
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Greedy corporations, billionaires, and leftists all pose existential levels of risk to the degree they influence the development of AI.
    - rnk 5y ago
      I'm surprised by your problem with leftists here? What is the leftist agenda with regards to AI?

lobstey 5y ago

But like you can write a poem to generate pictures for it. It's revolutionary for people to present differently.

KaoruAoiShiho 5y ago
A revolution is an understatement. Presenting differently is nice for now but projecting just slightly more into the future the whole concept of presenting might be over and done with. For example: My gf spends hours dolling herself up, making poses, sometimes traveling to interesting places to get good instagram photos. The desire is to present herself as a cool and attractive person. This all becomes meaningless with Dall E.
- teruakohatu 5y ago
  > This all becomes meaningless with Dall E. No more than it was since Photoshop.
  - snek_case 5y ago
    Well, no. Your average Facebook users doesn't have the time, money or skills to really touch up the photos they post on Facebook. If you can just ask your computer or your cellphone to pose you on top of Mount Everest or flying an F-22 fighter jet or driving a Lamborghini while wearing an expensive suit and it produces 20 variants of that image in 227 milliseconds though, that completely changes the game. The internet is going to be full of fake photos and soon full of fake video clips too. You'll basically never be able to trust someone's Tinder profile picture. The upside, maybe, is that if the internet becomes more fake, it also becomes less interesting. Maybe it will encourage people to do more activities and things in real life, away from computers. Dating websites will probably drop in popularity because profile pictures are so manipulated that you basically have no idea what the person looks like without meeting them in person.
    - motoxpro 5y ago
      Sounds like a win win, more people in the real world, more creativity online.

briga 5y ago

Or perhaps this just opens doors to new types of art and creativity?

dotnet00 5y ago

This makes art more accessible, but in the end the 'art' aspect comes from what the creator is trying to express, in which case as long as humans (or anything else with a creative drive) exist there will be art. Just like how photography didn't cause the end of paintings, movies/TV didn't cause the end of stage plays and electronic music didn't replace instruments, all this will do (and to an extent has been done by other generative models) is create a new kind of art.

testmasterflex 5y ago
That’s my take too. Nobody will care for a AI generated painting made with no effort by a computer. Something new, where human effort with an opportunity cost remain, will arise. Perhaps non-perfection will become the new trend vis-a-vis the opposite today?
- nonbirithm 5y ago
  But who says that those artists must declare that their artwork came from an AI? Even on HN, people have already begun to accuse others of writing comments with GPT-3 without disclosing so. Whether joking or not, this feels like a glimpse into future human attitudes towards this breed of creation. If we equate human-created == valuable, and AI-generated == not valuable, but we as humans cannot reliably tell the difference, then I'm picturing a future of distrust where creators/consumers suspect or accuse each other of fraud. Such behavior is already prevalent with social media today, so why wouldn't it be amplified even further when new and advanced technology is introduced? DALL-E 2 isn't even at an AGI-level and it has already cleared some people's bar for what qualifies as "production-ready art." I also recall the recent article where Ed Sheeran said he films his creative processes to prove he was the true author - and that was an authorship case solely involving human-created works. In the future, "pure" artists might have to adapt a similar protocol to protect those kinds of virtues.
  - koolba 5y ago
    The forum singularity will be reached when the GPT-3 generated responses themselves include accusations of writing comments via GPT3.

sAbakumoff 5y ago

han, the humanity will destroy itself with idiots like putin who believe in nuclear strikes.

anaganisk 5y ago

Don’t worry, probably will end up as NFT generator.