4 ms·

It's worse than copying parts of images, it's replacing artists. I know because I'm literally working on setting up Dreambooth to do what I'd otherwise have to

It's worse than copying parts of images, it's replacing artists. I know because I'm literally working on setting up Dreambooth to do what I'd otherwise have to pay an artist to do. And not only is it replacing artists, it's using their own work to do so. None of these could exist without being trained on the original artwork. Surely you can imagine why they're largely not happy?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
No one is happy when technology renders them obsolete or drives the marginal cost of what they produce to zero.
- kadoban 4y ago
  And in my lifetime it'll probably come for coders too. What happens to society when none of the workers are needed anymore, and any pretense of it being anything other than solely "the rich get richer" disappears?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    Transition to a superior compatible economic system? It’s all I’ve got honestly as a suggestion. The technology is coming regardless.
    - kadoban 4y ago
      Yeah, that's about the only real choice, but how messy will it be getting there? Certain political parties will absolutely burn everything down before they let anything like that happen.
- Daub 4y ago
  This is manifestly true. Artists worried that they would be rendered obselete by photography, and to a degree they were correct. Those that survide had to completely redifine their role and how they served that role.
  - frumper 4y ago
    I am not a portrait artist despite having a camera. Instead of hiring a portrait painter, I hire a photographer. It’s much cheaper now, so I can afford to hire many portraits throughout my life. It still takes an artist to get a good portrait.
    - Daub 4y ago
      Portraiture is a good example of what I mentioned. I am a painter, but I would say that a camera is far more capable of capturing the subtleties of the human face your than a painter. Don't believe me? Search for paintings made before 1800 that feature a smiling face. They exist, but even the lamest insta does a better job of showing us those fleeting facial moments. Landscapes are another matter. Try finding any photo of a landscape that is half as sublime as the landscape paintings made by the Hudson river school. An effective painter can improve upon optical reality in a way that beggers belief. They do this with a clever mix of increasing contrast and affinity in a way that would be almost impossible for a photographer.
      - bitwize 4y ago
        The Mona Lisa kind of proves your point: the smile is very slight. Were it broad, there would have to be exacting detail given to the configuration of the facial muscles in order to convey the emotion of the smile.
      - underwater 4y ago
        People didn't smile in painted portraits because of cultural norms. A smile was perceived as looking foolish (or drunk). Early photography followed this lead. A quote attributed to Mark Twain says “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.“
        Daub 4y ago
        > People didn't smile in painted portraits because of cultural norms. A smile was perceived as looking foolish (or drunk). Early photography followed this lead Not sure I would agree with that. Granted there may be a cultural component in the mix somewhere, but as someone who has painted from observation many faces, the fugitive nature of a smile presents almost insurmountable problems. Franz Hals (below) could do it because he painted insanely quickly. https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/hals-frans/thelaughingchild.html https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/hals-frans/thelaughin... https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/a671f804-2e03-4541-afa0-9aaf4519a4d4_fh5.jpg https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/a671f804-2e03-4541-afa0-9... https://az333960.vo.msecnd.net/images-9/laughing-boy-frans-hals-1625-20f244ee.jpg https://az333960.vo.msecnd.net/images-9/laughing-boy-frans-h... They key issue is that a smile involves the eyes as much as the face. This cannot be faked without the frozen effect: example: https://images7.alphacoders.com/694/694598.jpg https://images7.alphacoders.com/694/694598.jpg As for photography, the long exposures of early photography made the capture of anything fugitive an impossibility. However, the moment that snapshot photography was invented (Kodaks Box Brownie) smiles were being photographed all the time.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
  Traditionally technology renders people obsolete because the technologists figure out how to do something better than those people. Nobody's happy when it comes for them, but that's life. Someone invents the camera, and art is changed forever. In this case, technologists figured out how to exploit people's work without compensating them. A camera is possible without the artists it replaces. Generative modeling is not. It's fundamentally different. If people figured out how to generate this kind of art without exploiting uncompensated unwilling artists' free labor, it would be a different story.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bugfix-66 4y ago
    Thank you for saying it. We're surrounded by people who don't understand what's happening. They seem to think some kind of art intelligence has been invented. No, it's the aggregation and interpolation of vast amounts of existing art. The same thing is happening with software, through Microsoft's Copilot: https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304facc51cdacbba3f99654652bf428 https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304fa... I think people just don't understand what they're seeing. They have no idea what it is. They think it's really "intelligence", dreaming and imagining and simulating and feeling and experimenting and... It's none of these things. It's a sophisticated interpolation, not so different from linear interpolation: a*x + (1-a)*y
    - visarga 4y ago
      Memes (in the sense Dawkins used) have found easier replication into this new medium. Rather than jumping from brain to brain, with the intermediate step of writing, our old memes now replicate by language model. They do meaningful work when deployed without a human in the loop. I think both humans and AI without training are stupid. Take a human alone, raised alone, without culture. He/she will be closer to animals than humans. It's the culture that is the locus of intelligence and we're borrowing intelligence from it just like the AIs.
- antifa 4y ago
  What they like even less is being left behind via top-down enforced austerity in an economy of rapidly increasing inequality _after_ their mostly modest and ethical profession suddenly stops existing.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

No one is happy when technology renders them obsolete or drives the marginal cost of what they produce to zero.

kadoban 4y ago
And in my lifetime it'll probably come for coders too. What happens to society when none of the workers are needed anymore, and any pretense of it being anything other than solely "the rich get richer" disappears?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Transition to a superior compatible economic system? It’s all I’ve got honestly as a suggestion. The technology is coming regardless.
  - kadoban 4y ago
    Yeah, that's about the only real choice, but how messy will it be getting there? Certain political parties will absolutely burn everything down before they let anything like that happen.
Daub 4y ago
This is manifestly true. Artists worried that they would be rendered obselete by photography, and to a degree they were correct. Those that survide had to completely redifine their role and how they served that role.
- frumper 4y ago
  I am not a portrait artist despite having a camera. Instead of hiring a portrait painter, I hire a photographer. It’s much cheaper now, so I can afford to hire many portraits throughout my life. It still takes an artist to get a good portrait.
  - Daub 4y ago
    Portraiture is a good example of what I mentioned. I am a painter, but I would say that a camera is far more capable of capturing the subtleties of the human face your than a painter. Don't believe me? Search for paintings made before 1800 that feature a smiling face. They exist, but even the lamest insta does a better job of showing us those fleeting facial moments. Landscapes are another matter. Try finding any photo of a landscape that is half as sublime as the landscape paintings made by the Hudson river school. An effective painter can improve upon optical reality in a way that beggers belief. They do this with a clever mix of increasing contrast and affinity in a way that would be almost impossible for a photographer.
    - bitwize 4y ago
      The Mona Lisa kind of proves your point: the smile is very slight. Were it broad, there would have to be exacting detail given to the configuration of the facial muscles in order to convey the emotion of the smile.
    - underwater 4y ago
      People didn't smile in painted portraits because of cultural norms. A smile was perceived as looking foolish (or drunk). Early photography followed this lead. A quote attributed to Mark Twain says “A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.“
      - Daub 4y ago
        > People didn't smile in painted portraits because of cultural norms. A smile was perceived as looking foolish (or drunk). Early photography followed this lead Not sure I would agree with that. Granted there may be a cultural component in the mix somewhere, but as someone who has painted from observation many faces, the fugitive nature of a smile presents almost insurmountable problems. Franz Hals (below) could do it because he painted insanely quickly. https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/hals-frans/thelaughingchild.html https://www.art-prints-on-demand.com/a/hals-frans/thelaughin... https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/a671f804-2e03-4541-afa0-9aaf4519a4d4_fh5.jpg https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/a671f804-2e03-4541-afa0-9... https://az333960.vo.msecnd.net/images-9/laughing-boy-frans-hals-1625-20f244ee.jpg https://az333960.vo.msecnd.net/images-9/laughing-boy-frans-h... They key issue is that a smile involves the eyes as much as the face. This cannot be faked without the frozen effect: example: https://images7.alphacoders.com/694/694598.jpg https://images7.alphacoders.com/694/694598.jpg As for photography, the long exposures of early photography made the capture of anything fugitive an impossibility. However, the moment that snapshot photography was invented (Kodaks Box Brownie) smiles were being photographed all the time.
6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
Traditionally technology renders people obsolete because the technologists figure out how to do something better than those people. Nobody's happy when it comes for them, but that's life. Someone invents the camera, and art is changed forever. In this case, technologists figured out how to exploit people's work without compensating them. A camera is possible without the artists it replaces. Generative modeling is not. It's fundamentally different. If people figured out how to generate this kind of art without exploiting uncompensated unwilling artists' free labor, it would be a different story.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bugfix-66 4y ago
  Thank you for saying it. We're surrounded by people who don't understand what's happening. They seem to think some kind of art intelligence has been invented. No, it's the aggregation and interpolation of vast amounts of existing art. The same thing is happening with software, through Microsoft's Copilot: https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304facc51cdacbba3f99654652bf428 https://bugfix-66.com/7a82559a13b39c7fa404320c14f47ce0c304fa... I think people just don't understand what they're seeing. They have no idea what it is. They think it's really "intelligence", dreaming and imagining and simulating and feeling and experimenting and... It's none of these things. It's a sophisticated interpolation, not so different from linear interpolation: a*x + (1-a)*y
  - visarga 4y ago
    Memes (in the sense Dawkins used) have found easier replication into this new medium. Rather than jumping from brain to brain, with the intermediate step of writing, our old memes now replicate by language model. They do meaningful work when deployed without a human in the loop. I think both humans and AI without training are stupid. Take a human alone, raised alone, without culture. He/she will be closer to animals than humans. It's the culture that is the locus of intelligence and we're borrowing intelligence from it just like the AIs.
antifa 4y ago
What they like even less is being left behind via top-down enforced austerity in an economy of rapidly increasing inequality _after_ their mostly modest and ethical profession suddenly stops existing.