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People really love to make predictions about technologies way too early. It’s been a year or two, tops, since this stuff has gone mainstream. I very much doubt

People really love to make predictions about technologies way too early. It’s been a year or two, tops, since this stuff has gone mainstream. I very much doubt that the consumer ecosystem will remain the same while content undergoes an AI-powered paradigm shift. We will most likely see a growth of curated sites that help weed out the nonsense, as has been typical for most new developments. And on that note, I think the framing here is just wrong from the start. These new tools are awesome if you’re a creator. Complaining about the consumer-facing side of this new tech is a bit like complaining that cheaper video cameras will lead to junk films everywhere. Yeah, that happened, but who cares? It also allowed creative people to make stuff without needing a huge budget.

sorokod 4y ago
Yeah, that happened, but who cares? It also allowed creative people to make stuff without needing a huge budget Is it not too early to make predictions?
- keiferski 4y ago
  Filmmaking devices have gotten cheaper consistently over the last ~50 years. I don’t know about you, but I think some pretty good movies have come out since 1970, especially by directors working on very low budgets.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    I don't think the making of the original blade runner involved much in the way of modern AI. I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say.
    - keiferski 4y ago
      AI creation tools make it easier to make stuff. This process will result in a lot of junk, but it will also result in some super creative people making art they otherwise couldn’t. The same process happened with filmmaking. Fifty or sixty years ago, it was too expensive for anyone other than large corporations. You could even say the same thing for writing itself; a thousand years ago, paper was too expensive for the average person and most people couldn’t afford to buy books and become literate. Today, writing paper is functionally free.
      - adql 4y ago
        And it's not just creation of art from "scratch", I bet we will soon see AI being able to take painted animation frame, sketch of next and extrapolate next frame from it, and making whole process so much cheaper
    - fmajid 4y ago
      An Avid nonlinear video editing station used to cost $100K. Nowadays you can do the same with software costing $300 on the computer you already have. You can get a mirrorless video camera that blows away the Sony CineAlta ones George Lucas used to shoot the Star Wars prequels for under a grand. This has removed a huge chunk of production costs and make indie film-making much more viable. The only limits are your imagination and the salaries of the actors and camera crew. AI-generated animation is already being used by industry giants like Toei, and will likely be the first application to hit the screens.
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    > I don’t know about you, but I think some pretty good movies have come out since 1970, especially by directors working on very low budgets. On the whole, I think the average quality of cinematography in theater or wide-streaming releases has decreased. Which isn't disagreement with your point, as I think it says more about audience tastes and gatekeeping filters than technology. When film equipment was expensive and the bare minimum for creating a film was high, studios had a much tighter filter on who they'd fund to create a film. Consequently, the level of craft was higher.
    - tpxl 4y ago
      What needs to be said here is that average quality is more or less irrelevant. If the amount of high quality movies increases (it did) and the discoverability doesn't suffer (it didn't too much), then that's a plus.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        I'd argue discoverability is a currently unsolved problem. Or maybe "uncared about" (optimizing engagement >> enjoyment). At least when I'm getting far better recommendations from HN than any front-page algorithm I've seen.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - CuriouslyC 4y ago
      The thing that has tanked the quality of theatrical films on average isn't improved technology, it's the increasing commodification of art, risk aversion of business and the modern reliance on data to drive business decisions. That's why we have basically nothing but sequels, reboots and formulaic drivel coming out of the major studios.
      - ethbr0 4y ago
        And also hindsight filters. No one remembers the crap movies from 1982. We remember the best-of-80s. So we're comparing {recent movies} to {decades of best movies}.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    “It’s too early to make predictions. Here’s my prediction” ^^^ I think this is what the response meant. I noticed it too, you castigated folks for making predictions then led into your own :-) a real AI wouldn’t do that!
- ergonaught 4y ago
  Your quote isn’t a prediction, but a direct observation of what occurred.
  - fnordpiglet 4y ago
    How about this: People really love to make predictions about technologies way too early. It’s been a year or two, tops, since this stuff has gone mainstream. Prediction: I very much doubt that the consumer ecosystem will remain the same while content undergoes an AI-powered paradigm shift. We will most likely see a growth of curated sites that help weed out the nonsense, as has been typical for most new developments.
  - sorokod 4y ago
    You are drawing a parallel implying that in the future one will behave like the other - close enough.
marstall 4y ago
> These new tools are awesome if you’re a creator. you're typing "generate me an article about x" into gpt-3. who's the creator here?
- keiferski 4y ago
  I don’t exactly understand your question, but I’m assuming you mean something like, “What value is this person actually creating?” I can think of two direct use cases where I would find it helpful: - Creating a “précis” (concept from Neuromancer) video or article on a particular topic. For example, let’s say I want to learn about pre-20th century Indonesian art. Sure, I could Google and read some articles, but it would be vastly more enjoyable and efficient to just get a 5-minute video auto-generated on the topic. - For creating content that I want to read but don’t necessarily have the time to write. I’d love to create a website that catalogs subcultures, for example, but I just don’t have the time to do the research and writing myself. Both of these are dependent on the generated content being accurate, of course, but that seems like a temporary problem, not a flaw in the system itself.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    I think the nearby comment that points out that this is more closely related to editing than to creation as it has recently been understood is correct. Which is not a value judgement per se, but the distinction between those two activities is useful and to me provides a useful lens to understand this change.
    - keiferski 4y ago
      On the face of it, that is true. But on a deeper level, AI generation is really just a kind of rapid sketching, and sketching is a practice that goes back millennia. Additionally, it depends on how you are defining "creation" and there have been various artistic movements which "created" art in a manner not dissimilar to AI image generators. The cut-up technique or some Dadaists, for example. I certainly would consider works by Burroughs or Tzara to be real creations and not simply editing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique
baandam 4y ago
I we have already seen this play out in music though. Computers let anyone record music when it use to cost thousands of dollars to record music. The results have been a disaster outside the top 1% of music makers. Such a dramatic change that anyone under 30 doesn't even know what has been lost at this point. Music as a whole is laughably less creative as "popular" / pop music established total dominance. The money all flows upward that use to be much more dispersed.
- keiferski 4y ago
  I don't think that's true at all. There are a ton of niche music makers and a ton of ways to find them...infinitely more than there were a few decades ago. You just have to go looking for them. Which frankly isn't even that difficult with YouTube and SoundCloud. Maybe the musicians aren't making millions, but the creativity is definitely there.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  Sorry but no, this is completely the wrong take. Popular music is less diverse today for the same reason that half the movies released now are Marvel - art is more commoditized, and businesses are more data driven, with the shift towards more public companies also playing a role, as they can't take as many risks as private companies. What cheap music production tools have done is allow niche subcultures to create music that actually sounds good. Punk, metal and early hip hop all grew from people sharing rare tapes that were poorly produced and sounded like shit, but were a breath of creative fresh air. Now people's unusual creative divergences are stream-able and have production quality close to that of stuff on major labels.
- pixl97 4y ago
  This seems like a failure in statistics. Lets say in 1 year 10 songs are created and 2 of them are 'creative'. You'd think that 20% of music is creative. Now lets say we have the production explosion and now in 1 year 100 songs are created and 4 of them are creative. You would think creativity has fallen off a cliff when it has really doubled. In addition trying to compare with the previous payola ridden system were winners and losers systematically chosen by a wealthy cabal seems rather asinine. It only worked because there was a limited number of radio stations mostly. Even if production costs stayed high, distribution costs dropping would have changed the model dramatically anyway.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
The problem is, Google isn't very curated. All the AI-generated SEO spam is going to pollute its indexes.

sorokod 4y ago

Yeah, that happened, but who cares? It also allowed creative people to make stuff without needing a huge budget Is it not too early to make predictions?

keiferski 4y ago
Filmmaking devices have gotten cheaper consistently over the last ~50 years. I don’t know about you, but I think some pretty good movies have come out since 1970, especially by directors working on very low budgets.
- thfuran 4y ago
  I don't think the making of the original blade runner involved much in the way of modern AI. I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say.
  - keiferski 4y ago
    AI creation tools make it easier to make stuff. This process will result in a lot of junk, but it will also result in some super creative people making art they otherwise couldn’t. The same process happened with filmmaking. Fifty or sixty years ago, it was too expensive for anyone other than large corporations. You could even say the same thing for writing itself; a thousand years ago, paper was too expensive for the average person and most people couldn’t afford to buy books and become literate. Today, writing paper is functionally free.
    - adql 4y ago
      And it's not just creation of art from "scratch", I bet we will soon see AI being able to take painted animation frame, sketch of next and extrapolate next frame from it, and making whole process so much cheaper
  - fmajid 4y ago
    An Avid nonlinear video editing station used to cost $100K. Nowadays you can do the same with software costing $300 on the computer you already have. You can get a mirrorless video camera that blows away the Sony CineAlta ones George Lucas used to shoot the Star Wars prequels for under a grand. This has removed a huge chunk of production costs and make indie film-making much more viable. The only limits are your imagination and the salaries of the actors and camera crew. AI-generated animation is already being used by industry giants like Toei, and will likely be the first application to hit the screens.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  > I don’t know about you, but I think some pretty good movies have come out since 1970, especially by directors working on very low budgets. On the whole, I think the average quality of cinematography in theater or wide-streaming releases has decreased. Which isn't disagreement with your point, as I think it says more about audience tastes and gatekeeping filters than technology. When film equipment was expensive and the bare minimum for creating a film was high, studios had a much tighter filter on who they'd fund to create a film. Consequently, the level of craft was higher.
  - tpxl 4y ago
    What needs to be said here is that average quality is more or less irrelevant. If the amount of high quality movies increases (it did) and the discoverability doesn't suffer (it didn't too much), then that's a plus.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      I'd argue discoverability is a currently unsolved problem. Or maybe "uncared about" (optimizing engagement >> enjoyment). At least when I'm getting far better recommendations from HN than any front-page algorithm I've seen.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    The thing that has tanked the quality of theatrical films on average isn't improved technology, it's the increasing commodification of art, risk aversion of business and the modern reliance on data to drive business decisions. That's why we have basically nothing but sequels, reboots and formulaic drivel coming out of the major studios.
    - ethbr0 4y ago
      And also hindsight filters. No one remembers the crap movies from 1982. We remember the best-of-80s. So we're comparing {recent movies} to {decades of best movies}.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  “It’s too early to make predictions. Here’s my prediction” ^^^ I think this is what the response meant. I noticed it too, you castigated folks for making predictions then led into your own :-) a real AI wouldn’t do that!
ergonaught 4y ago
Your quote isn’t a prediction, but a direct observation of what occurred.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago
  How about this: People really love to make predictions about technologies way too early. It’s been a year or two, tops, since this stuff has gone mainstream. Prediction: I very much doubt that the consumer ecosystem will remain the same while content undergoes an AI-powered paradigm shift. We will most likely see a growth of curated sites that help weed out the nonsense, as has been typical for most new developments.
- sorokod 4y ago
  You are drawing a parallel implying that in the future one will behave like the other - close enough.

marstall 4y ago

> These new tools are awesome if you’re a creator. you're typing "generate me an article about x" into gpt-3. who's the creator here?

keiferski 4y ago
I don’t exactly understand your question, but I’m assuming you mean something like, “What value is this person actually creating?” I can think of two direct use cases where I would find it helpful: - Creating a “précis” (concept from Neuromancer) video or article on a particular topic. For example, let’s say I want to learn about pre-20th century Indonesian art. Sure, I could Google and read some articles, but it would be vastly more enjoyable and efficient to just get a 5-minute video auto-generated on the topic. - For creating content that I want to read but don’t necessarily have the time to write. I’d love to create a website that catalogs subcultures, for example, but I just don’t have the time to do the research and writing myself. Both of these are dependent on the generated content being accurate, of course, but that seems like a temporary problem, not a flaw in the system itself.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  I think the nearby comment that points out that this is more closely related to editing than to creation as it has recently been understood is correct. Which is not a value judgement per se, but the distinction between those two activities is useful and to me provides a useful lens to understand this change.
  - keiferski 4y ago
    On the face of it, that is true. But on a deeper level, AI generation is really just a kind of rapid sketching, and sketching is a practice that goes back millennia. Additionally, it depends on how you are defining "creation" and there have been various artistic movements which "created" art in a manner not dissimilar to AI image generators. The cut-up technique or some Dadaists, for example. I certainly would consider works by Burroughs or Tzara to be real creations and not simply editing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique

baandam 4y ago

I we have already seen this play out in music though. Computers let anyone record music when it use to cost thousands of dollars to record music. The results have been a disaster outside the top 1% of music makers. Such a dramatic change that anyone under 30 doesn't even know what has been lost at this point. Music as a whole is laughably less creative as "popular" / pop music established total dominance. The money all flows upward that use to be much more dispersed.

keiferski 4y ago
I don't think that's true at all. There are a ton of niche music makers and a ton of ways to find them...infinitely more than there were a few decades ago. You just have to go looking for them. Which frankly isn't even that difficult with YouTube and SoundCloud. Maybe the musicians aren't making millions, but the creativity is definitely there.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
Sorry but no, this is completely the wrong take. Popular music is less diverse today for the same reason that half the movies released now are Marvel - art is more commoditized, and businesses are more data driven, with the shift towards more public companies also playing a role, as they can't take as many risks as private companies. What cheap music production tools have done is allow niche subcultures to create music that actually sounds good. Punk, metal and early hip hop all grew from people sharing rare tapes that were poorly produced and sounded like shit, but were a breath of creative fresh air. Now people's unusual creative divergences are stream-able and have production quality close to that of stuff on major labels.
pixl97 4y ago
This seems like a failure in statistics. Lets say in 1 year 10 songs are created and 2 of them are 'creative'. You'd think that 20% of music is creative. Now lets say we have the production explosion and now in 1 year 100 songs are created and 4 of them are creative. You would think creativity has fallen off a cliff when it has really doubled. In addition trying to compare with the previous payola ridden system were winners and losers systematically chosen by a wealthy cabal seems rather asinine. It only worked because there was a limited number of radio stations mostly. Even if production costs stayed high, distribution costs dropping would have changed the model dramatically anyway.

bufferoverflow 4y ago

The problem is, Google isn't very curated. All the AI-generated SEO spam is going to pollute its indexes.