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There is arguably a connection between the "AI art" community and the crypto/web3/NFT[0] communities. There are also credible allegations that at least one prom

by hnbad 4y ago

There is arguably a connection between the "AI art" community and the crypto/web3/NFT[0] communities. There are also credible allegations that at least one prominent NFT project had a white supremacist undertones[1]. I wouldn't go so far as to say the AI/crypto communities are full of white supremacists or nazis but there's certainly a cultural underpinning there that is more welcoming to them than in other communities. That said, it's not exactly like tech spaces in general are doing a good job at keeping them out, especially ones celebrating "apoliticality" to a fault by regurgitating hacker culture myths about meritocracy. But yeah, I strongly believe that you can't separate the means from the ends. Human development is ultimately about people interacting more than technology. You can only introduce a technology designed with bad intentions to a community without poisoning it only when that community is innoculated against it and maintains its vigilance. But some technologies simply aren't worth salvaging because they're manifestations of the values they were designed with. Luckily I think that applies more to crypto than to AI, where the damage it causes is largely a consequence of the economical system we exist in rather than the tech itself. Namely, creators not being compensated for the creations that feed into the AI and jobs being lost to cheaper products generated by the AI. [0]: Noteworthy case in point being that many widely known NFTs are procedurally generated using templates created by artists who typically do not continue to benefit from the NFT sales themselves and that there is a massive problem of art from sites like Devian Art ending up as NFTs without the creators' knowledge or involvement. [1]: e.g. https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-video-revives-debate-over-bored-ape-yacht-club-s-alleged-racist-imagery https://cointelegraph.com/news/new-video-revives-debate-over...

kmeisthax 4y ago
In the AI community there is this desire to "cheat" at art; i.e. the belief that artistic talent is some kind of cabalistic conspiracy to keep them from making pretty illustrations. You can see this in how a lot of AI artists defend themselves by saying how it's "democratizing art", because the alternative is having to pick up a pencil and actually learn some basic techniques. This is also why there's far less interest in inpainting than there is in "push button, recieve bacon". Inpainting is more like an actual artistic technique that requires skill to use effectively, whereas a lot of people just want to go straight from idea to thing they can sell. Crypto is a technology cul-de-sac: it consists entirely of solutions to problems that only exist because of it's odd choice of problem domain. i.e. if you weren't trying to make a payment system for organized crime, then you wouldn't need to deal with Sybil-resistance. So it effectively counters my belief that you can wrestle good tech out of bad hands, because it's not actually good tech. I recall seeing something on Mastodon a while ago that I don't quite remember the source of, but I can paraphrase as "left-wingers tend to create social spaces and art, while right-wingers tend to consume and destroy them". While I absolutely despise this sort of one-dimensional thinking, there is a kernel of truth to this. Or, in other words, Hitler failed art school for a reason. Art is, first and foremost, a language used to communicate ideas. People on the far-right[0] do not have a whole lot to say. When listening, they tend to get caught up in superficialities and ignore the underlying idea. Their goal is not to speak, but to prevent speech[1]. So naturally they would be attracted to technologies that let them "gussy up" their nonsense into something that "looks" artistic. This even goes for the not explicitly far-right stuff, too. After all, to them, the purpose of art is to look pretty, not to say things. That's why there's such an odd focus on overdone cinematic aesthetics in AI art - because it "looks pretty". There's tweets of people saying that artists should just give up and submit to the machines because Stable Diffusion has already "perfected the female form". What they meant is that it generates sexier porn and panders to their tastes more. The AI does not communicate ideas with its art, and if it did, they would reject it and delete it. [0] I am specifically talking about the right-authoritarian corner of the political compass. Right-libertarians can put down their torches and pitchforks now. [1] This is also why I do not shed tears for them when they get banned from online spaces.

by hnbad 4y ago

kmeisthax 4y ago

In the AI community there is this desire to "cheat" at art; i.e. the belief that artistic talent is some kind of cabalistic conspiracy to keep them from making pretty illustrations. You can see this in how a lot of AI artists defend themselves by saying how it's "democratizing art", because the alternative is having to pick up a pencil and actually learn some basic techniques. This is also why there's far less interest in inpainting than there is in "push button, recieve bacon". Inpainting is more like an actual artistic technique that requires skill to use effectively, whereas a lot of people just want to go straight from idea to thing they can sell. Crypto is a technology cul-de-sac: it consists entirely of solutions to problems that only exist because of it's odd choice of problem domain. i.e. if you weren't trying to make a payment system for organized crime, then you wouldn't need to deal with Sybil-resistance. So it effectively counters my belief that you can wrestle good tech out of bad hands, because it's not actually good tech. I recall seeing something on Mastodon a while ago that I don't quite remember the source of, but I can paraphrase as "left-wingers tend to create social spaces and art, while right-wingers tend to consume and destroy them". While I absolutely despise this sort of one-dimensional thinking, there is a kernel of truth to this. Or, in other words, Hitler failed art school for a reason. Art is, first and foremost, a language used to communicate ideas. People on the far-right[0] do not have a whole lot to say. When listening, they tend to get caught up in superficialities and ignore the underlying idea. Their goal is not to speak, but to prevent speech[1]. So naturally they would be attracted to technologies that let them "gussy up" their nonsense into something that "looks" artistic. This even goes for the not explicitly far-right stuff, too. After all, to them, the purpose of art is to look pretty, not to say things. That's why there's such an odd focus on overdone cinematic aesthetics in AI art - because it "looks pretty". There's tweets of people saying that artists should just give up and submit to the machines because Stable Diffusion has already "perfected the female form". What they meant is that it generates sexier porn and panders to their tastes more. The AI does not communicate ideas with its art, and if it did, they would reject it and delete it. [0] I am specifically talking about the right-authoritarian corner of the political compass. Right-libertarians can put down their torches and pitchforks now. [1] This is also why I do not shed tears for them when they get banned from online spaces.