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This is a truly horrifying piece of technology, destined to destroy the livelihoods of countless artists. It's incredible in terms of the technology, but... sc

This is a truly horrifying piece of technology, destined to destroy the livelihoods of countless artists. It's incredible in terms of the technology, but... scary in equal measure. I can't think of a single good reason for this to exist that doesn't have huge negative impacts on our world. Why pay an artist/graphic designer when this does what you need? "Now those damned creatives can go and find real jobs"

sephlietz 4y ago
How is this any different than any other technological innovation which has made a job obsolete or otherwise allowed fewer people to do more work?
- wormer 4y ago
  I argue there is a difference because of the nature of the work. Machines aiding in farming is only a good thing, because it can maximize output and minimize input. People (largely) don't care about the process of how it was grown, but rather having the product to eat (Of course there's cruelty free agriculture, organic, etc. but stay with me here). But artistry is a personal thing, and maximizing the output of art pieces isn't something that most are interested in. Art is a uniquely unquantifiable subject, and we want it to have a personal and emotional connection to both the creator and the viewer, something that is lost when AI boil it down to it's essential components and rebuild them in it's image.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    Machines aiding in farming is only a good thing, because it can maximize output and minimize input. Machines aiding in art is only a good thing, because it can maximize output and minimize input? Makes art cheaper, more accessible, allows more people to create? It is like how digital filmmaking has cracked the Hollywood monopoly on content.
    - wormer 4y ago
      I think that this doesn't really help artists as much as just do it for them. Art, the way I see it, requires a human to do because it is something that requires emotion, something a robot could replicate but not feel. For example, a gut wrenching image of innocents being beat by police is gut wrenching because it's something that exists in the real world, and the artist and the subjects are real and their emotion is real. But a computer generated image only has a likeness; it doesn't have actual emotion. I aldo don't think that it makes it "cheaper, more accessible, and allows more people to create". Digital art supplies being something readily available and relatively cheap to their classic counterparts is what makes things more accessible, and to make it more so would be to drive the cost down or something. Having the computer draw for you isn't exactly creating art. And art isn't a commodity and I argue it shouldn't be a commodity. It's something, again, personal and special. And this doesn't end at the visual arts, I think it applies too to writing. AI could write what's written in my journal word for word but my journal would have more value just by virtue of it being written by me.
      - WillPostForFood 4y ago
        Having the computer draw for you isn't exactly creating art. I disagree. It is like using sampled music or an arpeggiator or drum track to compose music. a gut wrenching image of innocents being beat by police is gut wrenching because it's something that exists in the real world Can't a painting be gut wrenching? It doesn't exist in the real world.
madiator 4y ago
Your argument is weak in that it could have been invoked for several previous inventions: ATMs replacing cashiers, search engines replacing librarians and so on.
p1esk 4y ago
Same was true many times throughout the history. Why do people still pay musicians to play in live concerts when they could listen to a recording? Why do people still watch other people play chess when they could watch two AIs play much better chess? Think long term. Eventually AI will be able to do most of human jobs. As a result, products and services will become cheaper. As a result, people will have to work less for a living. As a result, more people will be able to draw and paint for pleasure, and not necessarily to make a buck.
- Bud 4y ago
  There are a couple gigantic blind spots here: 1) AI appears to have approximately zero chance of making housing and food and other basic needs cheaper. 2) Artists WANT to make money for creating art, music, etc.
  - emteycz 4y ago
    I'm working on applying this technology to housing as we speak, you're very wrong IMHO. Yeah some people are going to loose jobs over this, happens all the time. People are not isolated from the market, they function on it and need to take it into account.
- bckr 4y ago
  > As a result, products and services will become cheaper. As a result, people will have to work less for a living. I think we've seen this play out before and instead of reducing work, our standards of living increase and people keep working about the same amount. See e.g. the post industrial world where homemakers had to scrub clothes, then got machines to do the scrubbing, but subsequently had to clean the clothes more frequently. We might be able to reduce the overall amount of human work only through extremely successful social/political reforms similar to the ones that outlawed child labor and established the 40 hour work week. Assuming the technology will cause it to happen is bound to lead to disappointment.
- badRNG 4y ago
  > Think long term. Eventually AI will be able to do most of human jobs. As a result, products and services will become cheaper. As a result, people will have to work less for a living. As a result, more people will be able to draw and paint for pleasure, and not necessarily to make a buck. This is ahistorical. The fact is that you must at least seem to produce more market value than your total compensation in order for a company to hire you. There will simply be less people who make a "livable" wage while those who own these automations will become increasingly wealthy. Depending on how the market changes, there may also be increasing unemployment. But why would that matter? Unless unemployment gets too high, the market will continue to work as usual. There's simply no reason for the owners and inheritors of an increasingly automated economy to share the value increase with their workers. The worker's wages will be market-determined just as before. Perhaps if unemployment gets too high it will be in their interests to offer something like UBI, though no reason for anything beyond what's strictly necessary for the economy to function, and the minimum required to avoid excessive social turmoil.
Der_Einzige 4y ago
The future is now old man.
mrfusion 4y ago
Maybe an artist can make huge images or whole catalogs of images with technology like this. Maybe more people can be game developers with access to free original artwork at their fingertips. I don’t see it as replacing artists, I see it as amplifying artists.
blurbleblurble 4y ago
meanwhile artists are like the most curious about this
zackbrown 4y ago
Last week at a birthday party, I met a 74-year-old career visual artist who still creates with various media: paint, colored pencils, sculpture, etc. Curious for her thoughts on DALL-E, I pulled out my phone and invited her to generate some imagery. (I have early access via a family member at OpenAI.) She didn't skip a beat, and immediately started getting creative with it. We even did a "collaborative piece" à la Mad Lib. I asked her if she felt threatened by DALL-E. Surprised by the question, she said: "No! I could see this really accelerating my process. Sometimes I'm blocked on an idea and I could see this being a great tool for finding inspiration. Can I get access to this?" My take-away was that art is not zero-sum: someone's art isn't "less" because more entities are creating art. If computers can do it too — even if they're arguably more mechanical in the recombination of existing ideas (note: humans do the same) — nothing stops human art from being art.
- izzygonzalez 4y ago
  Arguably, the biggest barrier to any creative domain is technical capability. An immediate thought is that locked-in people who can only communicate by text would be able to share their thoughts more expressively. In terms of the creation loop, anyone can create a bunch of AI-generated images. Wombo is huge right now. The differentiating factors will be prompt design, commitment to iteration, aesthetic-driven curation of generated works and presentation. Photographers take and process thousands of photos to create just one masterpiece.
- andreilys 4y ago
  My take-away was that art is not zero-sum: Art is zero sum in that there are a limited number of artist residencies, exhibitions and funds available. In this case, we will likely see further contraction in the number of artists able to support themselves. There will ofc always be the super stars and hobbyists.
  - rictic 4y ago
    The amount of art that people want in their lives is much larger than the amount that's there now. Artists who are willing to direct their talents towards satisfying others' desires for art will find the world is very positive sum. Those that vie for a limited number of spots in a prestige game may find that it's zero or even negative sum, but those are not good games to play anyways.
password54321 4y ago
Well they won’t be alone at least. Even us programmers are eventually going to be replaced.
alar44 4y ago
Only non-artists say this. Every graphic designer I know thinks this is great.
chrisco255 4y ago
I'm less worried about the jobs angle, as this can be viewed as a productivity tool. I'm more worried about the ability to use this tech for deep fakes. It's going to erode trust in society even further than it already has.
- MartinCron 4y ago
  The cynic in me is wondering if that will make any difference. It's not like people need deep fakes or even the possibility of deep fakes to believe that the world is flat or that Obama was born in Kenya or that lizard people are running sex trafficking rings out the basements of pizza parlors with no basements. People look at the objective reality, provided by the sources that should have the most credibility, and just shrug it off.
  - wormer 4y ago
    Right people should but this will only increase people being deluded, because of it's ease of use. And it's not like any of us are immune to being deluded either; I'm sure there are things I and others take as truths because the facts we found them upon were carefully fabricated to have no holes. If I saw a masterfully crafted video of vaccines actually being implanted with microchips, wouldn't I believe it? I'm not an expert on identifying deepfakes, nor should I be just to consume media. I think this is a valid cause for concern and will make things worse rather than keep it the same.
    - MartinCron 4y ago
      Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I wouldn't believe a masterfully crafted video of vaccines actually being implanted with microchips unless the video were authenticated by at least one reputable news source. Provenance matters, and just like we don't believe extraordinary things based on single out-of-context photograph, we shouldn't believe extraordinary things based on a single out-of-context video.
      - chrisco255 4y ago
MarcoZavala 4y ago
karmasimida 4y ago
technology once invented is not going back you can't demand some technology not to be used when it is not a weapon there isn't a reason to believe that our current world is in a stage that is free from changes, in fact our world become what it is due to invention of disruptive technologies, regardless you like it or not.

sephlietz 4y ago

How is this any different than any other technological innovation which has made a job obsolete or otherwise allowed fewer people to do more work?

wormer 4y ago
I argue there is a difference because of the nature of the work. Machines aiding in farming is only a good thing, because it can maximize output and minimize input. People (largely) don't care about the process of how it was grown, but rather having the product to eat (Of course there's cruelty free agriculture, organic, etc. but stay with me here). But artistry is a personal thing, and maximizing the output of art pieces isn't something that most are interested in. Art is a uniquely unquantifiable subject, and we want it to have a personal and emotional connection to both the creator and the viewer, something that is lost when AI boil it down to it's essential components and rebuild them in it's image.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  Machines aiding in farming is only a good thing, because it can maximize output and minimize input. Machines aiding in art is only a good thing, because it can maximize output and minimize input? Makes art cheaper, more accessible, allows more people to create? It is like how digital filmmaking has cracked the Hollywood monopoly on content.
  - wormer 4y ago
    I think that this doesn't really help artists as much as just do it for them. Art, the way I see it, requires a human to do because it is something that requires emotion, something a robot could replicate but not feel. For example, a gut wrenching image of innocents being beat by police is gut wrenching because it's something that exists in the real world, and the artist and the subjects are real and their emotion is real. But a computer generated image only has a likeness; it doesn't have actual emotion. I aldo don't think that it makes it "cheaper, more accessible, and allows more people to create". Digital art supplies being something readily available and relatively cheap to their classic counterparts is what makes things more accessible, and to make it more so would be to drive the cost down or something. Having the computer draw for you isn't exactly creating art. And art isn't a commodity and I argue it shouldn't be a commodity. It's something, again, personal and special. And this doesn't end at the visual arts, I think it applies too to writing. AI could write what's written in my journal word for word but my journal would have more value just by virtue of it being written by me.
    - WillPostForFood 4y ago
      Having the computer draw for you isn't exactly creating art. I disagree. It is like using sampled music or an arpeggiator or drum track to compose music. a gut wrenching image of innocents being beat by police is gut wrenching because it's something that exists in the real world Can't a painting be gut wrenching? It doesn't exist in the real world.

madiator 4y ago

Your argument is weak in that it could have been invoked for several previous inventions: ATMs replacing cashiers, search engines replacing librarians and so on.

p1esk 4y ago

Same was true many times throughout the history. Why do people still pay musicians to play in live concerts when they could listen to a recording? Why do people still watch other people play chess when they could watch two AIs play much better chess? Think long term. Eventually AI will be able to do most of human jobs. As a result, products and services will become cheaper. As a result, people will have to work less for a living. As a result, more people will be able to draw and paint for pleasure, and not necessarily to make a buck.

Bud 4y ago
There are a couple gigantic blind spots here: 1) AI appears to have approximately zero chance of making housing and food and other basic needs cheaper. 2) Artists WANT to make money for creating art, music, etc.
- emteycz 4y ago
  I'm working on applying this technology to housing as we speak, you're very wrong IMHO. Yeah some people are going to loose jobs over this, happens all the time. People are not isolated from the market, they function on it and need to take it into account.
bckr 4y ago
> As a result, products and services will become cheaper. As a result, people will have to work less for a living. I think we've seen this play out before and instead of reducing work, our standards of living increase and people keep working about the same amount. See e.g. the post industrial world where homemakers had to scrub clothes, then got machines to do the scrubbing, but subsequently had to clean the clothes more frequently. We might be able to reduce the overall amount of human work only through extremely successful social/political reforms similar to the ones that outlawed child labor and established the 40 hour work week. Assuming the technology will cause it to happen is bound to lead to disappointment.
badRNG 4y ago
> Think long term. Eventually AI will be able to do most of human jobs. As a result, products and services will become cheaper. As a result, people will have to work less for a living. As a result, more people will be able to draw and paint for pleasure, and not necessarily to make a buck. This is ahistorical. The fact is that you must at least seem to produce more market value than your total compensation in order for a company to hire you. There will simply be less people who make a "livable" wage while those who own these automations will become increasingly wealthy. Depending on how the market changes, there may also be increasing unemployment. But why would that matter? Unless unemployment gets too high, the market will continue to work as usual. There's simply no reason for the owners and inheritors of an increasingly automated economy to share the value increase with their workers. The worker's wages will be market-determined just as before. Perhaps if unemployment gets too high it will be in their interests to offer something like UBI, though no reason for anything beyond what's strictly necessary for the economy to function, and the minimum required to avoid excessive social turmoil.

Der_Einzige 4y ago

The future is now old man.

mrfusion 4y ago

Maybe an artist can make huge images or whole catalogs of images with technology like this. Maybe more people can be game developers with access to free original artwork at their fingertips. I don’t see it as replacing artists, I see it as amplifying artists.

blurbleblurble 4y ago

meanwhile artists are like the most curious about this

zackbrown 4y ago

Last week at a birthday party, I met a 74-year-old career visual artist who still creates with various media: paint, colored pencils, sculpture, etc. Curious for her thoughts on DALL-E, I pulled out my phone and invited her to generate some imagery. (I have early access via a family member at OpenAI.) She didn't skip a beat, and immediately started getting creative with it. We even did a "collaborative piece" à la Mad Lib. I asked her if she felt threatened by DALL-E. Surprised by the question, she said: "No! I could see this really accelerating my process. Sometimes I'm blocked on an idea and I could see this being a great tool for finding inspiration. Can I get access to this?" My take-away was that art is not zero-sum: someone's art isn't "less" because more entities are creating art. If computers can do it too — even if they're arguably more mechanical in the recombination of existing ideas (note: humans do the same) — nothing stops human art from being art.

izzygonzalez 4y ago
Arguably, the biggest barrier to any creative domain is technical capability. An immediate thought is that locked-in people who can only communicate by text would be able to share their thoughts more expressively. In terms of the creation loop, anyone can create a bunch of AI-generated images. Wombo is huge right now. The differentiating factors will be prompt design, commitment to iteration, aesthetic-driven curation of generated works and presentation. Photographers take and process thousands of photos to create just one masterpiece.
andreilys 4y ago
My take-away was that art is not zero-sum: Art is zero sum in that there are a limited number of artist residencies, exhibitions and funds available. In this case, we will likely see further contraction in the number of artists able to support themselves. There will ofc always be the super stars and hobbyists.
- rictic 4y ago
  The amount of art that people want in their lives is much larger than the amount that's there now. Artists who are willing to direct their talents towards satisfying others' desires for art will find the world is very positive sum. Those that vie for a limited number of spots in a prestige game may find that it's zero or even negative sum, but those are not good games to play anyways.

password54321 4y ago

Well they won’t be alone at least. Even us programmers are eventually going to be replaced.

alar44 4y ago

Only non-artists say this. Every graphic designer I know thinks this is great.

chrisco255 4y ago

I'm less worried about the jobs angle, as this can be viewed as a productivity tool. I'm more worried about the ability to use this tech for deep fakes. It's going to erode trust in society even further than it already has.

MartinCron 4y ago
The cynic in me is wondering if that will make any difference. It's not like people need deep fakes or even the possibility of deep fakes to believe that the world is flat or that Obama was born in Kenya or that lizard people are running sex trafficking rings out the basements of pizza parlors with no basements. People look at the objective reality, provided by the sources that should have the most credibility, and just shrug it off.
- wormer 4y ago
  Right people should but this will only increase people being deluded, because of it's ease of use. And it's not like any of us are immune to being deluded either; I'm sure there are things I and others take as truths because the facts we found them upon were carefully fabricated to have no holes. If I saw a masterfully crafted video of vaccines actually being implanted with microchips, wouldn't I believe it? I'm not an expert on identifying deepfakes, nor should I be just to consume media. I think this is a valid cause for concern and will make things worse rather than keep it the same.
  - MartinCron 4y ago
    Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I wouldn't believe a masterfully crafted video of vaccines actually being implanted with microchips unless the video were authenticated by at least one reputable news source. Provenance matters, and just like we don't believe extraordinary things based on single out-of-context photograph, we shouldn't believe extraordinary things based on a single out-of-context video.
    - chrisco255 4y ago

MarcoZavala 4y ago

karmasimida 4y ago

technology once invented is not going back you can't demand some technology not to be used when it is not a weapon there isn't a reason to believe that our current world is in a stage that is free from changes, in fact our world become what it is due to invention of disruptive technologies, regardless you like it or not.