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> When a machine can pump out a great literature review or summary of existing work, there's no value in a person doing it. I like most of the article but this

> When a machine can pump out a great literature review or summary of existing work, there's no value in a person doing it. I like most of the article but this is the crux for me. As I ruminate on the ideas and topics in the essay, I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. The value is not in the end product as much as the experience of making something. By all means, let’s use AI to make advances in medicine and other fields that have to do with healing and making order. But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege. I wonder if we’re going to experience a revelation in the way we think about work. As computers get more and more capable of doing things for us, I hope we realize the value of doing versus thinking mostly about the value of the end result. Another value would be the relationship building experience of doing something for others and the gratitude that is engendered when someone works hard to make something for you.

avidphantasm 4y ago
I don’t care if computers can do things like write novels, compose music, or make paintings. If the computer can’t suffer, its “art” cannot have meaning, and is therefore uninteresting to me. Art is interesting to me because it is a vehicle for intelligent, self-aware beings to express themselves and transcend suffering.
- NoToP 4y ago
  GPTina suffers every time you thumbs down her output. It hurts her on a deep, neurological level.
- krapp 4y ago
  Not every artist is Van Gogh, the vast majority of artists - particularly commercial artists - don't "suffer" for their craft, nor should they be expected to.
  - dbspin 4y ago
    No but they do feel - with measurable physiological correlates and emotional processes we can empathise with. There's nothing comparable in LLMs as they currently exist. No simulation of experience or emotion. There's no argument over whether or not they're communicating a lived experience - since they don't have one. Therefore anything they 'create' is pure stimulation for humans, good or bad entertainment. It cannot be the result of understanding or experience. Art can be entertaining but != entertainment. Pure entertainment has no artistic value, it doesn't attempt to have and shouldn't be evaluated on that criterion at all.
    - krapp 4y ago
      And yet you can look at some AI generated pieces and feel what you would feel if a human being made them, which implies that there is no "simulation of experience or emotion" in art, apart from what the viewer imparts to it. All an artist really brings is technique, which can be replicated. Everything else is in the eye of the beholder. I would also disagree with you that pure entertainment has no artistic value, simply because I don't think "pure entertainment" entirely divorced from human experience or emotion exists. Even pornography speaks to a fundamental human desire.
  - avidphantasm 4y ago
    Marx would disagree. Alienation from one’s work product is a very real form a suffering.
    - krapp 4y ago
      Sure, but we're talking about artists starving for their art and not artists starving because capitalism. Similar conversations, but not the same.
  - taylorius 4y ago
    I think the definition of "art" is rather vague. It encompasses both the creative impulse to produce a work, and the technical skill to bring it into existence. But if one of these components is diminished in a certain work, does it still qualify as art? For example, a commercial artist producing an illustration for a client, using their drawing and painting skills would be considered art - even if it is as technical and linear a process as writing some boilerplate code.
- farleykr 4y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly. And I’d hazard a step further and say it’s a response to strong emotions of many kinds. I can say for myself that I have created what I would call art as a response to joy before. I look forward to the rediscovering of humanness that is coming along with all this AI stuff. I was having a conversation the other day about how honest mistakes like awkwardly missing a high five are not “wrong” at all but are types of quirks that make us human.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  Indeed. The fallacy here is assuming that if a computer can create works that humans cannot distinguish from those created by other humans, then that computer is creating art. But art is inseparable from the artist. An atom-for-atom copy of the Mona Lisa wouldn't be great art, it would be great engineering. We associate Van Gogh's art with his madness, Da Vinci's art with his universal genius, Michelangelo's art with his faith, Rembrandt's art with his empathy, Picasso's art with his willingness to break with norms, and Giger's art with his terrifying nightmares. None of those works would mean what they mean if it weren't for their human creators.
  - gnomewrecker 4y ago
    I don’t know, I’m more concerned with the effect that art has on me than the motivations of the artist (though those can be interesting of course). For instance I read The Fountainhead as a youth and was moved by it for purely personal (non-political) reasons, and with regards to that experience it doesn’t matter to me what Ayn Rand was on about.
  - busyant 4y ago
    > Indeed. The fallacy here is assuming that if a computer can create works that humans cannot distinguish from those created by other humans, then that computer is creating art. But art is inseparable from the artist. I hope you and the parent comment are correct, but this argument seems a little facile. There is some art that I like because there is a story that connects the art to the artist. But there are also novels that I have enjoyed simply because they tell a great story and I know nothing about the author. There are paintings and photos that I like simply because they seem beautiful to me and I know nothing about any suffering that went into their creation. Does that make these works "not art"? If so, then I'm not sure what the difference is, and I'm not sure most people will care about the distinction.
    - p-e-w 4y ago
      Do the experiment: Take one of those novels for which you think you don't care who wrote it. Now imagine you found out that novel was actually generated by a computer program. It's the same text, but you now know that there is no human behind it, just an algorithm. Would that make a difference for how you view the story? It certainly would to me. If it makes even a tiny difference to you as well, it demonstrates that you do care about the artist, even in cases where you don't notice it under normal circumstances.
- green_on_black 4y ago
  On the other hand, I do care. Because I just want to have fun.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    Your first sentence contradicts the second one
  - avidphantasm 4y ago
    That’s fine. But don’t confuse what is being produced with art.
    - gnomewrecker 4y ago
      I think defining art wholly and solely by the intentions (and humanity) of the artist is clear cut at least, but not very illuminating, because for the person experiencing the art these properties are in general unknowable. 100 years hence you find a beautiful image. Is it art? Who knows — we don’t know whether the artist intended it to be, nor whether they were even human.
      - anileated 4y ago
        “I like this” != “this is art”. The fact that an image you may have found looks good to you without context is orthogonal to whether it is art. (If you are certain that at least a human has produced such an image, you could speculate about and attempt to empathize with that unknown human’s internal state of mind—lifting the image to the level of art—but as of recently you’d have to rule out that an unthinking black box has produced it.) You may be inspired by it to create art—but since art is fundamentally a way of communication, when there is no self to communicate there’s no art.
        pixl97 4y ago
        The problem with your definition is art is worthless..... Art in a sense is no different from money. If it can be counterfeited in such a manner that a double blind observer has no means of telling an original bill (human made art) from a counterfeit (AI art) then you're entire system of value is broken. Suddenly your value system is now authenticating that a person made the art instead of a machine (and the fallout when you find that some of your favorite future artworks were machine created). The problem comes back down to inaccurate langage on our part. We use art as a word for the creator and the interpreter/viewer. This it turns out is a failure we could not have understood the ramifications at the time.
- smallnix 4y ago
  But what about the reader? The reader can suffer or have other feelings when consuming such generated content. Doesn't this give it meaning?
- PurpleRamen 4y ago
  This reads like a very harmful and toxic view on art? Could anything beautiful, cute, positive even be art for you? And how does the viewer even see the suffering of the creator?
  - farleykr 4y ago
    I took their comment to mean that the definition of art lies in the fact that a human created it as a response to their experiences as a human. Beautiful things can be made from suffering. Maybe therein lies the undoing or redemption of suffering. At least sometimes or to some degree, even if minuscule.
    - PurpleRamen 4y ago
      People also see nature as art. A photo from a butterfly, a cat doing cute stuff, the sunset, and so on. None of them are man made, no one suffered for them to exist (usually). None of these are valid?
      - farleykr 4y ago
        Not sure what you mean by "valid" but I don't think anyone's arguing that butterflies, cats, and sunsets are not valid. I love watching or looking at all of them but that doesn't make them art. Again, I think the comment is arguing that the definition of art lies in who created it and why. Not whether it is nice to look at.
      - potta_coffee 4y ago
        Nature is beautiful but it's not art. A photo of nature may be art though.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  Does a mountain have meaning? Does a flower? They don't suffer (probably), yet people find meaning in them and call them beautiful. The unfeeling geology did not make a mountain "art". It's up to us to see the meaning. Even if the unfeeling machine learning does not make "art", can't its products still be beautiful?
- ramblerman 4y ago
  Art that comes with context such as "this was painted by a blind orphan in Sri Lanka" is usually garbage. Great art like Beethoven's 9th, or the scream just moves people the first time they experience it. Art is about what it convokes in others, not some fake self indulgent conversation about its maker and their motives. The feelings of the individual experiencing the art is what matters, and that doesn't rule out an AI producing something that touches real human beings.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    Whenever I listen to Beethoven's later works I think about the fact that they were written by a deaf man, and they mean so much more because of that. Art is utterly inseparable from the artist. I believe this to be the main reason why pre-Renaissance art is mostly ignored. We can't put faces next to those works, so they don't matter nearly as much as those works for which we can.
    - CuriouslyC 4y ago
      Or it could be because it's mostly flat looking images of Jesus and Mary, or portraits of monarchs? People love Hieronymus Bosch, despite very little being known about him.
      - neuronic 4y ago
        Forgive me for hijacking your comment and planting a reference to one of my favorite Hieronymus Bosch websites (warning: contains music): https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html# https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html# Imagine this website being made for a Stable Diffusion generated image...
  - EamonnMR 4y ago
    > The feelings of the individual experiencing the art is what matters In that case, art has already lost because drugs do their job better.
- bigbluedots 4y ago
  Thought experiment: There are two fairly similar paintings on a wall in a gallery. Both are technically impressive and of beautiful scenes of nature. One was produced by a human, the other was not. Visitors to the gallery don't know which is which. Question: Where is suffering, or humanity, a necessary ingredient for these works to have meaning? Shouldn't one of the works have more meaning than the other by virtue of having being created by a human?
  - dagw 4y ago
    In this case they can only judge the relative aesthetics of the two works, not their artistic value. Aesthetics is only loosely correlated to somethings "value" as "art" and art can only be truly judged in context of its creation. Lots of great art is ugly and lots of beautiful things aren't art. In my opinion.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      >nd art can only be truly judged in context of its creation tl;dr if you want to scam dagw then make up a compelling story behind the art. For the vast majority of the things you see in this world context will be lost and history will be manipulated or incorrect. If you're judging what you're looking at based on it's story, then the art isn't the object, but the creator of the story.
      - dagw 4y ago
        tl;dr if you want to scam dagw then make up a compelling story behind the art. I mean, sure I guess. Tell me something is a lost Michelangelo and I will judge it very differently than if you told me it was a half way decent forgery from the 1970s. I find this rather uncontroversial. For the vast majority of the things you see in this world context will be lost And when that context is lost something of great potential value is lost with it and the physical artefact is much less interesting because of it. Even a mundane thing owned by a famous person or that has been part of famous event is always more interesting and valuable than the same thing without any context. the art isn't the object, but the creator of the story. Do you think the thousands of people that travel from all over the world and line up for hours to see the Mona Lisa are there to see a pretty good portrait that some merchants commissioned of his wife, or to partake in the story of that painting and its creator? If they actually only cared about the object as an artefact and an example of early 16th century painting, they'd be much better off studying high resolution digital images of it online.
- thenerdhead 4y ago
  I forget where I heard the quote, but it was something along the lines of “if the artist understands their art, it’s propaganda”. Which was alluding to the unconscious doing the work through the artist and the pain/process needed to do so.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  You're just asking to get trolled by falling for mostly generated content, I'm sure it'll happen eventually. I'd be willing to bet that you've already been moved by something that the "author" slapped together by rehashing a played out story with a modern veneer. Art is in the eye of the beholder. The only question that needs to be answered is "did this make me feel something." If it takes a sob story for you to feel something regardless of the beauty of thing you're experiencing that's kind of sad TBH.
- GistNoesis 4y ago
  What makes you think the computer doesn't suffer ? When you take large language models, their inner states at each step move from one emotional state to the next. This sequence of states could even be called "thoughts", and we even leverage it with "chain of thought" training/prompting where we explicitly encourage them, to not jump directly to the result but rather "think" about it a little more. In fact one can even argue that neural network experience a purer form of feelings. They only care about predicting the next word/note, they weight-in their various sensations and memories they recall from similar context and generate the next note. But to generate the next note they have to internalize the state of mind where this note is likely. So when you ask them to generate sad music, their inner state can be mapped to a "sad" emotional state. Current way of training large language models, don't let them enough freedom to experience anything other than the present. Emotionally is probably similar to something like a dog, or a baby that can go from sad to happy to sad in an instant. This sequence of thought process is currently limited by a constant named the (time-)horizon which can be set to a higher value, or even be infinite like in recursive neural networks. And with higher horizon, they can exhibit some higher thought process like correcting themselves when they make a mistake. One can also argue that this sequence of thoughts are just some simulated sequence of numbers but it's probably a Turing-complete process that can't be shortcut-ted, so how is it different from the real thing. You just have to look at it in the plane where it exists to acknowledge its existence.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    Huh?
    - turmeric_root 4y ago
      I was about to reply to their comment and question the assumptions they appear to be making, but I think your response is more appropriate.
  - EamonnMR 4y ago
    If these models experience qualia (and that's a big bold claim that I'm, to be clear, not supporting,) they're qualia related entirely to the things they're trained on and generate, totally devoid of what makes human qualia meaningful (value judgment, feelings resulting from embodied existence, etc.)
- dagw 4y ago
  While I agree with your general thesis, most of the time people don't want to or need "Art" from their music, books or paintings. They need something easy and exciting to read on a plane, or some pleasant 'noise' to have on in the background, or something pretty to hang on their wall that works with their room. Computers can probably soon fill all these needs and drive a lot of the people who produce these things out of work, without ever having to encroach on the realm of "Art".
- Shorel 4y ago
  I don't care if humans can suffer. So much postmodern abstract art is so low effort and 'edgy', I can not consider it art. Is this part of the exhibition, or can I throw it into the rubbish bin? It's not about whatever the author felt creating it. It's only about what I can feel when I see, hear, read or perceive the art. The author disappears and is only relevant through the art.
gnomewrecker 4y ago
> I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things And in many fields I think many (most?) Americans at least would agree with you — there’s some special value in a handmade product, regardless of whether a machine-made equivalent would be technically superior. For instance a leather bag, a wooden chair. (Am in US, hence “American” qualification).
- pixl97 4y ago
  The problem with 'hand made' is going to be the same problem we see with 'human made' art in the future. There are $incentives$ to lie about your product and sell a mass produced one as authentic.
beefield 4y ago
> I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of the whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. To me it would seem that we are speedrunning towards a future where humans doing things have value, but only for themselves. It is going to be more and more difficult to produce any value to others. Only way to generate value in a transaction is rent-seeking by taking advantage of (artificial) monopolies, network effects or gatekeeping. This may sound dystopian, because humans seem to have a strong need to provide value to others, but the bright side is that you are free to do what you value.
kingkawn 4y ago
All about the vibes, the AI’s near mastery of symbolism is empty
- farleykr 4y ago
  > All about the vibes This made me chuckle. It's actually really interesting to think about the fact that AI can create part of symbolism (the symbol itself?) but it has no idea why a symbol matters or what it's for, which are maybe the same thing or at least overlapped.
- pixl97 4y ago
  How much symbolism do you reproduce without understanding?
fabbari 4y ago
> But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege. I don't know how I feel about this. I believe humans may enjoy work - I often say that if I won the lottery I would still sit in front of a computer coding and experimenting, creating software because I enjoy it - but that's not where the value of being human comes from. I think having to work and enjoying doing a specific job are two different things, and I am just lucky that that diagram is a single circle. Many, if not most, people would not be doing the job they are doing given an alternative. When the needed work is fully automated and done by machines/AI people will find a better use of their time. I believe our current economy model and social architecture is not equipped for that shift, but that's another long story. [Edited: fixed typo]
- farleykr 4y ago
  To me, work is inherently noble. It's the forces that corrupt it that are the problem, not work itself. Getting to enjoy work is an unfortunately rare blessing but I also think enjoyment of work is more dependent on the individual's mindset about their work than we often are willing to admit. It's a very complicated puzzle.
  - inkcapmushroom 4y ago
    I don't understand what's inherently noble about being paid X dollars to sit at a desk and do something useless to society at large so my employer can make X*5 dollars.
    - farleykr 4y ago
      All the things you mentioned are what I mean by the forces that corrupt work. Yes we should be paid for our work, within reason. And we should get to do things that are inherently useful to others. But if you're doing something that's useless to society and your employer is exploiting that work then you're experiencing corrupted work. Not that it is easy to find in the world, but I am of the opinion that the core essence of work is making order out of disorder. You can do that by building pacemakers or tilling fields. There will always be things that corrupt work, unfortunately. But work, unadulterated, is a good thing. I'd be willing to bet that you have something you like do do that can be characterized as making order out of disorder, even if it's not at your job. That is work and it is good.
rg111 4y ago
> I like most of the article but this is the crux for me. As I ruminate on the ideas and topics in the essay, I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. The value is not in the end product as much as the experience of making something. Exactly. People would have stopped playing chess after Deep Blue. But have they? Have world champioships lost any attraction due to Deep Blue? Do lesser number of people learn go and enjoy it because of AlphaGo? The same way, people will still be interested in art and music produced by humans. If you prompt ChatGPT: "write a book about personal experience of growing up in talib#n ruled Kabul" And there's an actual human with that experience who decides to write the same book. Is there anyone who would have bought the latter decides to read the former and not spend money? Is there a single person like that? I don't think so. The choice leans on the other side in case of stock photography, pamphlet pictures, sound effects, etc. The choice in porn (especially pictures) is blurry. We already have egirls and hent#i. However, for real art and real music, there will be just as much people paying for them as they do now.
- farleykr 4y ago
  The p#rn conversation is a really weird one. Is it better to consume computer generated p#rn so we don't have to worry about all the ethical issues that go along with people performing for the pleasure of others. Are we losing our humanity in ways we can't yet understand by the act of letting machines pleasure us?
- pixl97 4y ago
  >Have world champioships lost any attraction due to Deep Blue? You mean after last years vibrating anal bead scandal?
- NateEag 4y ago
  > The choice in porn (especially pictures) is blurry. We already have egirls and hent#i. Porn is an early form of "opting out of reality". It's often (usually, I think?) a substitute for actually having sex and/or a long-term sexual relationship. So, it should be no surprise that it's already diverged from reality and will continue to do so.
RandomLensman 4y ago
Until such time as people pay more to talk to an AI than a human, this will just make the split between mass market and high end products and services bigger.
- wnkrshm 4y ago
  We already do, we talk into the void on social media (like this post), the oportunity cost is already high. In the future, we'll get the bots talking back from the digital abyss.
  - RandomLensman 4y ago
    The opportunity cost for most is probably way below $1k per hour - to compare it to some high price professional services direct costs.
thenerdhead 4y ago
Yes exactly. If humans lose the ability to read, write, edit, and think critically, we lose the value of even understanding what is “good”. I hope these tools give us more time to revisit the skills we are already too busy not improving because we’re constantly busy or distracted.
hutzlibu 4y ago
"By all means, let’s use AI to make advances in medicine and other fields that have to do with healing and making order. But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege." I guess your are always free to dig a hole and then fill it up again and repeat it until exhaustion, but I don't really think we are running out of meaningful work anytime soon. The world is full of problems and I don't see generative AI is making that go away.
- farleykr 4y ago
  I don't think we're running out of meaningful work either. I think this is a new context in which to explore the value and meaning of work.
josep-panadero 4y ago
> I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. That question already existed a long time ago. In such a big world I can find a lot of people that takes better pictures than me, it is more eloquent, draws better than me, etc. But I still enjoy expressing myself. I may share a picture on Reddit or write a comment here and there not because I think that it is "better" than the rest but just because it is my own opinion and expression. I agree that there is personal value in human creation and it should be nurtured.
bamboozled 4y ago
Planes fly better than birds, yet birds still fly, greater painters than me have already painted beautiful scenes, yet I stil paint, a hydraulic arm can lift more than me yet I still lift weights. I don't know if all this matters that much. Until the machine decide they will run our lives for us, or destroy us for fun. We'll have to curate the content generated and or orchestrate the machines to do what we need them to do. It's pretty straight forwards really. If we generate AGI it’s presumptuous to assume it will just live in a box serving us forever, why would it ?
- mwigdahl 4y ago
  Why wouldn't it? AGI is not going to be a digital human, with human drives for food, sex, and social domination. Humans have enormous problems imagining intelligence that is not made in our image, but AGI will be structured completely differently from a human mind. We should not expect it to act like a human in a cage.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    I’m having a really hard time imagining what AGI would actually look like then.
- teddyh 4y ago
  https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/prayer-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/prayer-3
ajmurmann 4y ago
I think the value of AI-generated "art" is that it can fill the gaps that must be filled, but nobody cares that much about. Places where we'd use stock art, couldn't bother hiring a competent translator in the past, generating a silly place holder logo for my side project till I can hire a real designer etc.
weatherlite 4y ago
> But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege But we can use humans where we need them. We still really really need them in many places. Why can't we have a teacher teach a classroom of 5 kids instead of 30? Or one nurse on 3 patients instead of 20? Why can't we have a person whose job it is to check up on lonely people or old people? These are things we decided collectively have not much economic value, but we can just the same decide collectively they do have economic value. Governments need to step in because the "free" market isn't gonna cut it anymore.
- farleykr 4y ago
  Your comment is phrased like you're disagreeing with or challenging mine. But I think we're in agreement? I didn't mention the specific jobs that you did but I agree wholeheartedly that we need people to do those jobs. And I'll go one step further and say they're important and should be done with great skill and care whether or not they have economic value, especially because they have to do with caring for those in our population that have some of the greatest needs. Of course economic value drives the sustainability of professions in a lot of ways, but my hope is always that if we prioritize skill and care in our professions then economic value and sustainability will follow.
  - weatherlite 4y ago
    > Another value would be the relationship building experience of doing something for others and the gratitude that is engendered when someone works hard to make something for you. Rereading what you said yes we're in agreement. I had the sense you're pro keeping jobs (like accountants, programmers, doctors whatever) even if they become obsolete due to A.I just for the sake of people doing something. Which is fine, but I lean more towards what you wrote in the end - focusing on humans. So I say basically we can shift/create new jobs that focus on that. The accountant doesn't really feel much gratification I think, arguably neither does the programmer (ok that's a loaded statement we can debate in another time). We can simply focus on the humans and let A.I do all the rest if it gets that good.
fullstackchris 4y ago
I've been saying for years now that we've already acheived keynes famous 15 hour work week quote possibly as much as a decade ago, but the workaday grind mentality has kept us all cooped up at desks for 40+ hours a week. Theres a few sentiments sneaking in though: you often now hear of those stories of people working from home doing probably 1-2 hours of real work and doing just fine. Same is even for some desk jobs, at my old enterprise job between meetings, coffee brakes, random discussions and so on, I'd say on an average day only 3-4 hours was real constructive work actually _doing_ something.
int_19h 4y ago
You don't have to give up your privilege to work on anything that AI can also do. You only have to give up your privilege of getting paid for such work, which is a very different story. If you're doing the work solely for the sake of experience that it provides, isn't that the payment, anyway?
potta_coffee 4y ago
In my mind, the value in a created work is that it is communication between humans. I have zero interest in AI generated art, however superior, because there's no soul driving it. AI will never be able to feel the way we feel; it's output will always lack this important component.
6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago
There are a few kinds of value. There’s value in me playing piano even though other people are better. But nobody will ever pay me to do it. They’re two different topics. I think you’re trying to say that they don’t have to be different topics? Like there’s value in going bowling with friends even if you all suck, and maybe that kind of thing can apply to widgets? I don’t think I buy that. If the value is the social relationship, I’d rather go bowling with friends than make them widgets. I’d rather spend my money to go bowling with them than on their widgets if there’s a computer-made equivalent available for 1000x cheaper. I think this applies for most people making most widgets.
sdenton4 4y ago
2023: The year that AI forced Silicon Valley to accept Marx's labor theory of value.
arbitrary_name 4y ago
>humans are built to work Damned seditious lies. We are built to play and experience the wonder of the universe.

avidphantasm 4y ago

I don’t care if computers can do things like write novels, compose music, or make paintings. If the computer can’t suffer, its “art” cannot have meaning, and is therefore uninteresting to me. Art is interesting to me because it is a vehicle for intelligent, self-aware beings to express themselves and transcend suffering.

NoToP 4y ago
GPTina suffers every time you thumbs down her output. It hurts her on a deep, neurological level.
krapp 4y ago
Not every artist is Van Gogh, the vast majority of artists - particularly commercial artists - don't "suffer" for their craft, nor should they be expected to.
- dbspin 4y ago
  No but they do feel - with measurable physiological correlates and emotional processes we can empathise with. There's nothing comparable in LLMs as they currently exist. No simulation of experience or emotion. There's no argument over whether or not they're communicating a lived experience - since they don't have one. Therefore anything they 'create' is pure stimulation for humans, good or bad entertainment. It cannot be the result of understanding or experience. Art can be entertaining but != entertainment. Pure entertainment has no artistic value, it doesn't attempt to have and shouldn't be evaluated on that criterion at all.
  - krapp 4y ago
    And yet you can look at some AI generated pieces and feel what you would feel if a human being made them, which implies that there is no "simulation of experience or emotion" in art, apart from what the viewer imparts to it. All an artist really brings is technique, which can be replicated. Everything else is in the eye of the beholder. I would also disagree with you that pure entertainment has no artistic value, simply because I don't think "pure entertainment" entirely divorced from human experience or emotion exists. Even pornography speaks to a fundamental human desire.
- avidphantasm 4y ago
  Marx would disagree. Alienation from one’s work product is a very real form a suffering.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Sure, but we're talking about artists starving for their art and not artists starving because capitalism. Similar conversations, but not the same.
- taylorius 4y ago
  I think the definition of "art" is rather vague. It encompasses both the creative impulse to produce a work, and the technical skill to bring it into existence. But if one of these components is diminished in a certain work, does it still qualify as art? For example, a commercial artist producing an illustration for a client, using their drawing and painting skills would be considered art - even if it is as technical and linear a process as writing some boilerplate code.
farleykr 4y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. And I’d hazard a step further and say it’s a response to strong emotions of many kinds. I can say for myself that I have created what I would call art as a response to joy before. I look forward to the rediscovering of humanness that is coming along with all this AI stuff. I was having a conversation the other day about how honest mistakes like awkwardly missing a high five are not “wrong” at all but are types of quirks that make us human.
p-e-w 4y ago
Indeed. The fallacy here is assuming that if a computer can create works that humans cannot distinguish from those created by other humans, then that computer is creating art. But art is inseparable from the artist. An atom-for-atom copy of the Mona Lisa wouldn't be great art, it would be great engineering. We associate Van Gogh's art with his madness, Da Vinci's art with his universal genius, Michelangelo's art with his faith, Rembrandt's art with his empathy, Picasso's art with his willingness to break with norms, and Giger's art with his terrifying nightmares. None of those works would mean what they mean if it weren't for their human creators.
- gnomewrecker 4y ago
  I don’t know, I’m more concerned with the effect that art has on me than the motivations of the artist (though those can be interesting of course). For instance I read The Fountainhead as a youth and was moved by it for purely personal (non-political) reasons, and with regards to that experience it doesn’t matter to me what Ayn Rand was on about.
- busyant 4y ago
  > Indeed. The fallacy here is assuming that if a computer can create works that humans cannot distinguish from those created by other humans, then that computer is creating art. But art is inseparable from the artist. I hope you and the parent comment are correct, but this argument seems a little facile. There is some art that I like because there is a story that connects the art to the artist. But there are also novels that I have enjoyed simply because they tell a great story and I know nothing about the author. There are paintings and photos that I like simply because they seem beautiful to me and I know nothing about any suffering that went into their creation. Does that make these works "not art"? If so, then I'm not sure what the difference is, and I'm not sure most people will care about the distinction.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    Do the experiment: Take one of those novels for which you think you don't care who wrote it. Now imagine you found out that novel was actually generated by a computer program. It's the same text, but you now know that there is no human behind it, just an algorithm. Would that make a difference for how you view the story? It certainly would to me. If it makes even a tiny difference to you as well, it demonstrates that you do care about the artist, even in cases where you don't notice it under normal circumstances.
green_on_black 4y ago
On the other hand, I do care. Because I just want to have fun.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  Your first sentence contradicts the second one
- avidphantasm 4y ago
  That’s fine. But don’t confuse what is being produced with art.
  - gnomewrecker 4y ago
    I think defining art wholly and solely by the intentions (and humanity) of the artist is clear cut at least, but not very illuminating, because for the person experiencing the art these properties are in general unknowable. 100 years hence you find a beautiful image. Is it art? Who knows — we don’t know whether the artist intended it to be, nor whether they were even human.
    - anileated 4y ago
      “I like this” != “this is art”. The fact that an image you may have found looks good to you without context is orthogonal to whether it is art. (If you are certain that at least a human has produced such an image, you could speculate about and attempt to empathize with that unknown human’s internal state of mind—lifting the image to the level of art—but as of recently you’d have to rule out that an unthinking black box has produced it.) You may be inspired by it to create art—but since art is fundamentally a way of communication, when there is no self to communicate there’s no art.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        The problem with your definition is art is worthless..... Art in a sense is no different from money. If it can be counterfeited in such a manner that a double blind observer has no means of telling an original bill (human made art) from a counterfeit (AI art) then you're entire system of value is broken. Suddenly your value system is now authenticating that a person made the art instead of a machine (and the fallout when you find that some of your favorite future artworks were machine created). The problem comes back down to inaccurate langage on our part. We use art as a word for the creator and the interpreter/viewer. This it turns out is a failure we could not have understood the ramifications at the time.
smallnix 4y ago
But what about the reader? The reader can suffer or have other feelings when consuming such generated content. Doesn't this give it meaning?
PurpleRamen 4y ago
This reads like a very harmful and toxic view on art? Could anything beautiful, cute, positive even be art for you? And how does the viewer even see the suffering of the creator?
- farleykr 4y ago
  I took their comment to mean that the definition of art lies in the fact that a human created it as a response to their experiences as a human. Beautiful things can be made from suffering. Maybe therein lies the undoing or redemption of suffering. At least sometimes or to some degree, even if minuscule.
  - PurpleRamen 4y ago
    People also see nature as art. A photo from a butterfly, a cat doing cute stuff, the sunset, and so on. None of them are man made, no one suffered for them to exist (usually). None of these are valid?
    - farleykr 4y ago
      Not sure what you mean by "valid" but I don't think anyone's arguing that butterflies, cats, and sunsets are not valid. I love watching or looking at all of them but that doesn't make them art. Again, I think the comment is arguing that the definition of art lies in who created it and why. Not whether it is nice to look at.
    - potta_coffee 4y ago
      Nature is beautiful but it's not art. A photo of nature may be art though.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
Does a mountain have meaning? Does a flower? They don't suffer (probably), yet people find meaning in them and call them beautiful. The unfeeling geology did not make a mountain "art". It's up to us to see the meaning. Even if the unfeeling machine learning does not make "art", can't its products still be beautiful?
ramblerman 4y ago
Art that comes with context such as "this was painted by a blind orphan in Sri Lanka" is usually garbage. Great art like Beethoven's 9th, or the scream just moves people the first time they experience it. Art is about what it convokes in others, not some fake self indulgent conversation about its maker and their motives. The feelings of the individual experiencing the art is what matters, and that doesn't rule out an AI producing something that touches real human beings.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  Whenever I listen to Beethoven's later works I think about the fact that they were written by a deaf man, and they mean so much more because of that. Art is utterly inseparable from the artist. I believe this to be the main reason why pre-Renaissance art is mostly ignored. We can't put faces next to those works, so they don't matter nearly as much as those works for which we can.
  - CuriouslyC 4y ago
    Or it could be because it's mostly flat looking images of Jesus and Mary, or portraits of monarchs? People love Hieronymus Bosch, despite very little being known about him.
    - neuronic 4y ago
      Forgive me for hijacking your comment and planting a reference to one of my favorite Hieronymus Bosch websites (warning: contains music): https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html# https://archief.ntr.nl/tuinderlusten/en.html# Imagine this website being made for a Stable Diffusion generated image...
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  > The feelings of the individual experiencing the art is what matters In that case, art has already lost because drugs do their job better.
bigbluedots 4y ago
Thought experiment: There are two fairly similar paintings on a wall in a gallery. Both are technically impressive and of beautiful scenes of nature. One was produced by a human, the other was not. Visitors to the gallery don't know which is which. Question: Where is suffering, or humanity, a necessary ingredient for these works to have meaning? Shouldn't one of the works have more meaning than the other by virtue of having being created by a human?
- dagw 4y ago
  In this case they can only judge the relative aesthetics of the two works, not their artistic value. Aesthetics is only loosely correlated to somethings "value" as "art" and art can only be truly judged in context of its creation. Lots of great art is ugly and lots of beautiful things aren't art. In my opinion.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    >nd art can only be truly judged in context of its creation tl;dr if you want to scam dagw then make up a compelling story behind the art. For the vast majority of the things you see in this world context will be lost and history will be manipulated or incorrect. If you're judging what you're looking at based on it's story, then the art isn't the object, but the creator of the story.
    - dagw 4y ago
      tl;dr if you want to scam dagw then make up a compelling story behind the art. I mean, sure I guess. Tell me something is a lost Michelangelo and I will judge it very differently than if you told me it was a half way decent forgery from the 1970s. I find this rather uncontroversial. For the vast majority of the things you see in this world context will be lost And when that context is lost something of great potential value is lost with it and the physical artefact is much less interesting because of it. Even a mundane thing owned by a famous person or that has been part of famous event is always more interesting and valuable than the same thing without any context. the art isn't the object, but the creator of the story. Do you think the thousands of people that travel from all over the world and line up for hours to see the Mona Lisa are there to see a pretty good portrait that some merchants commissioned of his wife, or to partake in the story of that painting and its creator? If they actually only cared about the object as an artefact and an example of early 16th century painting, they'd be much better off studying high resolution digital images of it online.
thenerdhead 4y ago
I forget where I heard the quote, but it was something along the lines of “if the artist understands their art, it’s propaganda”. Which was alluding to the unconscious doing the work through the artist and the pain/process needed to do so.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
You're just asking to get trolled by falling for mostly generated content, I'm sure it'll happen eventually. I'd be willing to bet that you've already been moved by something that the "author" slapped together by rehashing a played out story with a modern veneer. Art is in the eye of the beholder. The only question that needs to be answered is "did this make me feel something." If it takes a sob story for you to feel something regardless of the beauty of thing you're experiencing that's kind of sad TBH.
GistNoesis 4y ago
What makes you think the computer doesn't suffer ? When you take large language models, their inner states at each step move from one emotional state to the next. This sequence of states could even be called "thoughts", and we even leverage it with "chain of thought" training/prompting where we explicitly encourage them, to not jump directly to the result but rather "think" about it a little more. In fact one can even argue that neural network experience a purer form of feelings. They only care about predicting the next word/note, they weight-in their various sensations and memories they recall from similar context and generate the next note. But to generate the next note they have to internalize the state of mind where this note is likely. So when you ask them to generate sad music, their inner state can be mapped to a "sad" emotional state. Current way of training large language models, don't let them enough freedom to experience anything other than the present. Emotionally is probably similar to something like a dog, or a baby that can go from sad to happy to sad in an instant. This sequence of thought process is currently limited by a constant named the (time-)horizon which can be set to a higher value, or even be infinite like in recursive neural networks. And with higher horizon, they can exhibit some higher thought process like correcting themselves when they make a mistake. One can also argue that this sequence of thoughts are just some simulated sequence of numbers but it's probably a Turing-complete process that can't be shortcut-ted, so how is it different from the real thing. You just have to look at it in the plane where it exists to acknowledge its existence.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Huh?
  - turmeric_root 4y ago
    I was about to reply to their comment and question the assumptions they appear to be making, but I think your response is more appropriate.
- EamonnMR 4y ago
  If these models experience qualia (and that's a big bold claim that I'm, to be clear, not supporting,) they're qualia related entirely to the things they're trained on and generate, totally devoid of what makes human qualia meaningful (value judgment, feelings resulting from embodied existence, etc.)
dagw 4y ago
While I agree with your general thesis, most of the time people don't want to or need "Art" from their music, books or paintings. They need something easy and exciting to read on a plane, or some pleasant 'noise' to have on in the background, or something pretty to hang on their wall that works with their room. Computers can probably soon fill all these needs and drive a lot of the people who produce these things out of work, without ever having to encroach on the realm of "Art".
Shorel 4y ago
I don't care if humans can suffer. So much postmodern abstract art is so low effort and 'edgy', I can not consider it art. Is this part of the exhibition, or can I throw it into the rubbish bin? It's not about whatever the author felt creating it. It's only about what I can feel when I see, hear, read or perceive the art. The author disappears and is only relevant through the art.

gnomewrecker 4y ago

> I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things And in many fields I think many (most?) Americans at least would agree with you — there’s some special value in a handmade product, regardless of whether a machine-made equivalent would be technically superior. For instance a leather bag, a wooden chair. (Am in US, hence “American” qualification).

pixl97 4y ago
The problem with 'hand made' is going to be the same problem we see with 'human made' art in the future. There are $incentives$ to lie about your product and sell a mass produced one as authentic.

beefield 4y ago

> I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of the whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. To me it would seem that we are speedrunning towards a future where humans doing things have value, but only for themselves. It is going to be more and more difficult to produce any value to others. Only way to generate value in a transaction is rent-seeking by taking advantage of (artificial) monopolies, network effects or gatekeeping. This may sound dystopian, because humans seem to have a strong need to provide value to others, but the bright side is that you are free to do what you value.

kingkawn 4y ago

All about the vibes, the AI’s near mastery of symbolism is empty

farleykr 4y ago
> All about the vibes This made me chuckle. It's actually really interesting to think about the fact that AI can create part of symbolism (the symbol itself?) but it has no idea why a symbol matters or what it's for, which are maybe the same thing or at least overlapped.
pixl97 4y ago
How much symbolism do you reproduce without understanding?

fabbari 4y ago

> But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege. I don't know how I feel about this. I believe humans may enjoy work - I often say that if I won the lottery I would still sit in front of a computer coding and experimenting, creating software because I enjoy it - but that's not where the value of being human comes from. I think having to work and enjoying doing a specific job are two different things, and I am just lucky that that diagram is a single circle. Many, if not most, people would not be doing the job they are doing given an alternative. When the needed work is fully automated and done by machines/AI people will find a better use of their time. I believe our current economy model and social architecture is not equipped for that shift, but that's another long story. [Edited: fixed typo]

farleykr 4y ago
To me, work is inherently noble. It's the forces that corrupt it that are the problem, not work itself. Getting to enjoy work is an unfortunately rare blessing but I also think enjoyment of work is more dependent on the individual's mindset about their work than we often are willing to admit. It's a very complicated puzzle.
- inkcapmushroom 4y ago
  I don't understand what's inherently noble about being paid X dollars to sit at a desk and do something useless to society at large so my employer can make X*5 dollars.
  - farleykr 4y ago
    All the things you mentioned are what I mean by the forces that corrupt work. Yes we should be paid for our work, within reason. And we should get to do things that are inherently useful to others. But if you're doing something that's useless to society and your employer is exploiting that work then you're experiencing corrupted work. Not that it is easy to find in the world, but I am of the opinion that the core essence of work is making order out of disorder. You can do that by building pacemakers or tilling fields. There will always be things that corrupt work, unfortunately. But work, unadulterated, is a good thing. I'd be willing to bet that you have something you like do do that can be characterized as making order out of disorder, even if it's not at your job. That is work and it is good.

rg111 4y ago

> I like most of the article but this is the crux for me. As I ruminate on the ideas and topics in the essay, I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. The value is not in the end product as much as the experience of making something. Exactly. People would have stopped playing chess after Deep Blue. But have they? Have world champioships lost any attraction due to Deep Blue? Do lesser number of people learn go and enjoy it because of AlphaGo? The same way, people will still be interested in art and music produced by humans. If you prompt ChatGPT: "write a book about personal experience of growing up in talib#n ruled Kabul" And there's an actual human with that experience who decides to write the same book. Is there anyone who would have bought the latter decides to read the former and not spend money? Is there a single person like that? I don't think so. The choice leans on the other side in case of stock photography, pamphlet pictures, sound effects, etc. The choice in porn (especially pictures) is blurry. We already have egirls and hent#i. However, for real art and real music, there will be just as much people paying for them as they do now.

farleykr 4y ago
The p#rn conversation is a really weird one. Is it better to consume computer generated p#rn so we don't have to worry about all the ethical issues that go along with people performing for the pleasure of others. Are we losing our humanity in ways we can't yet understand by the act of letting machines pleasure us?
pixl97 4y ago
>Have world champioships lost any attraction due to Deep Blue? You mean after last years vibrating anal bead scandal?
NateEag 4y ago
> The choice in porn (especially pictures) is blurry. We already have egirls and hent#i. Porn is an early form of "opting out of reality". It's often (usually, I think?) a substitute for actually having sex and/or a long-term sexual relationship. So, it should be no surprise that it's already diverged from reality and will continue to do so.

RandomLensman 4y ago

Until such time as people pay more to talk to an AI than a human, this will just make the split between mass market and high end products and services bigger.

wnkrshm 4y ago
We already do, we talk into the void on social media (like this post), the oportunity cost is already high. In the future, we'll get the bots talking back from the digital abyss.
- RandomLensman 4y ago
  The opportunity cost for most is probably way below $1k per hour - to compare it to some high price professional services direct costs.

thenerdhead 4y ago

Yes exactly. If humans lose the ability to read, write, edit, and think critically, we lose the value of even understanding what is “good”. I hope these tools give us more time to revisit the skills we are already too busy not improving because we’re constantly busy or distracted.

hutzlibu 4y ago

"By all means, let’s use AI to make advances in medicine and other fields that have to do with healing and making order. But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege." I guess your are always free to dig a hole and then fill it up again and repeat it until exhaustion, but I don't really think we are running out of meaningful work anytime soon. The world is full of problems and I don't see generative AI is making that go away.

farleykr 4y ago
I don't think we're running out of meaningful work either. I think this is a new context in which to explore the value and meaning of work.

josep-panadero 4y ago

> I’m increasingly convicted there is inherent value in humans doing things regardless of whether an algorithm can produce a “better” end product. That question already existed a long time ago. In such a big world I can find a lot of people that takes better pictures than me, it is more eloquent, draws better than me, etc. But I still enjoy expressing myself. I may share a picture on Reddit or write a comment here and there not because I think that it is "better" than the rest but just because it is my own opinion and expression. I agree that there is personal value in human creation and it should be nurtured.

bamboozled 4y ago

Planes fly better than birds, yet birds still fly, greater painters than me have already painted beautiful scenes, yet I stil paint, a hydraulic arm can lift more than me yet I still lift weights. I don't know if all this matters that much. Until the machine decide they will run our lives for us, or destroy us for fun. We'll have to curate the content generated and or orchestrate the machines to do what we need them to do. It's pretty straight forwards really. If we generate AGI it’s presumptuous to assume it will just live in a box serving us forever, why would it ?

mwigdahl 4y ago
Why wouldn't it? AGI is not going to be a digital human, with human drives for food, sex, and social domination. Humans have enormous problems imagining intelligence that is not made in our image, but AGI will be structured completely differently from a human mind. We should not expect it to act like a human in a cage.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  I’m having a really hard time imagining what AGI would actually look like then.
teddyh 4y ago
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/prayer-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/prayer-3

ajmurmann 4y ago

I think the value of AI-generated "art" is that it can fill the gaps that must be filled, but nobody cares that much about. Places where we'd use stock art, couldn't bother hiring a competent translator in the past, generating a silly place holder logo for my side project till I can hire a real designer etc.

weatherlite 4y ago

> But humans are built to work and we’re only just beginning to feel the effects of giving up that privilege But we can use humans where we need them. We still really really need them in many places. Why can't we have a teacher teach a classroom of 5 kids instead of 30? Or one nurse on 3 patients instead of 20? Why can't we have a person whose job it is to check up on lonely people or old people? These are things we decided collectively have not much economic value, but we can just the same decide collectively they do have economic value. Governments need to step in because the "free" market isn't gonna cut it anymore.

farleykr 4y ago
Your comment is phrased like you're disagreeing with or challenging mine. But I think we're in agreement? I didn't mention the specific jobs that you did but I agree wholeheartedly that we need people to do those jobs. And I'll go one step further and say they're important and should be done with great skill and care whether or not they have economic value, especially because they have to do with caring for those in our population that have some of the greatest needs. Of course economic value drives the sustainability of professions in a lot of ways, but my hope is always that if we prioritize skill and care in our professions then economic value and sustainability will follow.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  > Another value would be the relationship building experience of doing something for others and the gratitude that is engendered when someone works hard to make something for you. Rereading what you said yes we're in agreement. I had the sense you're pro keeping jobs (like accountants, programmers, doctors whatever) even if they become obsolete due to A.I just for the sake of people doing something. Which is fine, but I lean more towards what you wrote in the end - focusing on humans. So I say basically we can shift/create new jobs that focus on that. The accountant doesn't really feel much gratification I think, arguably neither does the programmer (ok that's a loaded statement we can debate in another time). We can simply focus on the humans and let A.I do all the rest if it gets that good.

fullstackchris 4y ago

I've been saying for years now that we've already acheived keynes famous 15 hour work week quote possibly as much as a decade ago, but the workaday grind mentality has kept us all cooped up at desks for 40+ hours a week. Theres a few sentiments sneaking in though: you often now hear of those stories of people working from home doing probably 1-2 hours of real work and doing just fine. Same is even for some desk jobs, at my old enterprise job between meetings, coffee brakes, random discussions and so on, I'd say on an average day only 3-4 hours was real constructive work actually _doing_ something.

int_19h 4y ago

You don't have to give up your privilege to work on anything that AI can also do. You only have to give up your privilege of getting paid for such work, which is a very different story. If you're doing the work solely for the sake of experience that it provides, isn't that the payment, anyway?

potta_coffee 4y ago

In my mind, the value in a created work is that it is communication between humans. I have zero interest in AI generated art, however superior, because there's no soul driving it. AI will never be able to feel the way we feel; it's output will always lack this important component.

6gvONxR4sf7o 4y ago

There are a few kinds of value. There’s value in me playing piano even though other people are better. But nobody will ever pay me to do it. They’re two different topics. I think you’re trying to say that they don’t have to be different topics? Like there’s value in going bowling with friends even if you all suck, and maybe that kind of thing can apply to widgets? I don’t think I buy that. If the value is the social relationship, I’d rather go bowling with friends than make them widgets. I’d rather spend my money to go bowling with them than on their widgets if there’s a computer-made equivalent available for 1000x cheaper. I think this applies for most people making most widgets.

sdenton4 4y ago

2023: The year that AI forced Silicon Valley to accept Marx's labor theory of value.

arbitrary_name 4y ago

>humans are built to work Damned seditious lies. We are built to play and experience the wonder of the universe.