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I feel as if I just read an article from an 18th century cobbler complaining about how only humans will be able to make shoes because of their innate understand

I feel as if I just read an article from an 18th century cobbler complaining about how only humans will be able to make shoes because of their innate understanding of the human experience of making and wearing shoes. 1. If 'art' is expression, then it should be judged by the 'quality' of the expression, not the tools used to make it. 2. Most 'commercial art' is made to a spec generated by a customer for a specific need, not for 'expression'. Future DALLE variants will do it faster and cheaper (arguable even better) so that will be what is used regardless of the philosophical implications. Artists are not going to be needed to same extent as today (we already saw this with clip art, public font databases, and gig sites). The economic impact will be the same regardless of your interpretation of 'art'. 3. I am sure There will still be famous and acknowledged 'artists' known for their ground breaking work regardless of what tools they use. As an analogy, There are still companies that make shoes by hand, they are just an expensive luxury. I am guessing we will next see article from a translator about how automated translations system lack the innate 'sensitivity' to the human condition to be used in professional translation (it's true to a certain extent - for now).

zenkat 4y ago
For me, the primary concern isn't about Art as an economic activity. It's about what happens to human society when communication becomes divorced from human meaning. The original purpose of art (and language) was to communicate the thoughts & views of one human mind to another. It's a fundamental need, the essence of being human, the cornerstone of culture and society. DALL-E and GPT-3 are about to unleash a tidal wave of content that no longer performs that function, simply because _there is no human mind at its source_. What happens to us then, when we are constantly receiving an overwhelming babble of voices that appear on their surface to be meaningful, but lack any true meaning at their core? What happens to our voices, our relationships, our society?
- dougabug 4y ago
  Someone still wrote the prompts, perhaps iteratively until they got results which pleased them enough to save and share with others. Other tools allow modifying the results by coarsely sketching where you want semantic changes. You could have a dialogue with the AI criticizing whatever you did or didn’t like about the current draft, and what changes you wanted to explore. If someone made a comic book with these kinds of tools, I’d score it as a win for enabling personal creative expression. When writing was invented, I suppose one could have feared the loss of natural human bilateral aspect of communication. Writing detaches the writer from what is natively a direct interaction between people, and allows us to “speak into a shell,” so to speak.
- taylorius 4y ago
  100% agree. It's going to shatter communication into a thousand shards. Maybe hipsters will save us - they might bring back unmediated face to face communication as one of their anachronistic hobbies.
- sdenton4 4y ago
  Isn't that Reddit?
amelius 4y ago
> 1. If 'art' is expression, then it should be judged by the 'quality' of the expression, not the tools used to make it. What about the amount of effort it took the artist to make the expression? Doesn't that count?

zenkat 4y ago

For me, the primary concern isn't about Art as an economic activity. It's about what happens to human society when communication becomes divorced from human meaning. The original purpose of art (and language) was to communicate the thoughts & views of one human mind to another. It's a fundamental need, the essence of being human, the cornerstone of culture and society. DALL-E and GPT-3 are about to unleash a tidal wave of content that no longer performs that function, simply because _there is no human mind at its source_. What happens to us then, when we are constantly receiving an overwhelming babble of voices that appear on their surface to be meaningful, but lack any true meaning at their core? What happens to our voices, our relationships, our society?

dougabug 4y ago
Someone still wrote the prompts, perhaps iteratively until they got results which pleased them enough to save and share with others. Other tools allow modifying the results by coarsely sketching where you want semantic changes. You could have a dialogue with the AI criticizing whatever you did or didn’t like about the current draft, and what changes you wanted to explore. If someone made a comic book with these kinds of tools, I’d score it as a win for enabling personal creative expression. When writing was invented, I suppose one could have feared the loss of natural human bilateral aspect of communication. Writing detaches the writer from what is natively a direct interaction between people, and allows us to “speak into a shell,” so to speak.
taylorius 4y ago
100% agree. It's going to shatter communication into a thousand shards. Maybe hipsters will save us - they might bring back unmediated face to face communication as one of their anachronistic hobbies.
sdenton4 4y ago
Isn't that Reddit?

amelius 4y ago

> 1. If 'art' is expression, then it should be judged by the 'quality' of the expression, not the tools used to make it. What about the amount of effort it took the artist to make the expression? Doesn't that count?