8 ms·

At some point we will hopefully tire of meaningless (not random but actually purely statistical) interpolations of human creative works, whether text, sound or

At some point we will hopefully tire of meaningless (not random but actually purely statistical) interpolations of human creative works, whether text, sound or image being presented as intelligence. There will be some use for such algorithms, anything that processes information in controlled ways is a tool in our arsenal, but the deceit that these are actually "writing" anything is astonishing. In effect, driven purely by commercial objectives, an entire era of "AI" is selling humanity short.

bottled_poe 4y ago
This is a great take, but good luck explaining the difference to the majority who are unfamiliar with the technology/mathematics behind it. Most people won’t attempt to understand the difference - and worse they won’t care. It’s just another tragedy of the commons.
- college_physics 4y ago
  > It’s just another tragedy of the commons. Yep. The tragedy may be deepening with time. Objectively, the "commons" was never as integrated as in the current digital age. Collective phenomena (reaching the point of mass hysteria) feel like getting worse. There is already a large number of individuals that are experts at inciting viral propagation. Its not clear how we could institute counterbalances and circuit breakers that would restore some sanity. Traditionally this was the role of academics and journalists but both have been compromised.
macguillicuddy 4y ago
While we can make such a quality distinction between human and artifical generation at the moment, it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology.
- college_physics 4y ago
  > The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology. That is just a widespread analogy we use. The human brain is not a computer, although obviously some aspects of its function resemble the logical / mathematical model of a computer, which (I gently remind you) is a construction of the brain itself. > it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. I would not dispute that at all. The future of humanity is hopefully long and full of wondrous discoveries but arguing that we are "close" to "real AI" flies in the face of what is actually achieved on the ground with current approaches: clever utilization (where the one who is clever is the human) of rather limited algorithms to re-use productively the vast body of human generated information corpus. Not a useless exercise by any measure, but the mantle under which it is sold does not augur well for the sustainability of those efforts.
  - mgaunard 4y ago
    It is presomptuous to think the brain is anything more than a computer. The algorithm is doing pretty much the same thing that a brain is doing, except it's a smaller and slower brain, so it's not that smart, and we hardwired some parts to fill the gaps.
    - esailija 4y ago
      The brain is nothing like a computer, for the brain doing things that computers do easily are even in the most trivial cases very hard and otherwise impossible. And vice versa. Yet these things that have effectively zero overlap in capability are the same?
      - ihatepython 4y ago
        Perhaps in your case, you are correct, the brain is not a computer, but in the general case, the brain is probably a computer, and in some cases, it's a super-computer.
      - 4y ago
cortic 4y ago
I don't seen any fundamental difference between AI creating art and humans creating art. Both of these things absorb huge data sets and spit out something similar but different to the data sets they absorbed. Both can apply their 'art' within a defined scope by cross-referencing their data sets. Neither can create something that isn't in some way part of their data set.
- Jensson 4y ago
  Some humans creates novel things. You might not be able to think that way, but other humans can. For example, humans started making computer games, but there were no computer games before, and now we have all these genres and stuff. Humans are capable of doing creative novel works from nothing. So you personally might be an uncreative automaton who just copies what others said or did, but that isn't normal, other humans can think in novel ways.
  - krapp 4y ago
    Name one computer game created without any cultural or historical referents then, "from nothing" as it were. If you mention Pong or Spacewar, you've already lost. Table tennis and the Lensman books, respectively. Literally anything humans do is based on prior influences, referents and data. There's no aether out of which the "spark" of inspiration strikes, nor does anything emerge from the pure vaccuum, creativity is just neurons doing what they will with the information they already have. Therefore the only difference between human genius and the mediocre output of AIs is complexity, and the only question worth asking is how far that gap can reasonably be bridged. It's understandable that this is upsetting, because it threatens one of the last bastions of human divinity, and no one really wants to believe human beings in all their splendor, subtlety and complexity are just a pile of ad-hoc stochastic wetware algorithms running on a hemisphere of gelatinous goo, no more divine than a stone on the ground, but eventually as this technology matures we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that creativity can be manufactured, just like anything else, and like anything manufactured, its quality will inevitably surpass anything humans are capable of.
    - 4y ago
janalsncm 4y ago
There’s an ocean of difference to me between ChatGPT and stable diffusion/DallE. Text is fundamentally different from art. For art, I see these not as major disruptions but as new tools. There’s no right or wrong answer in art. If anything, abstract expressionism solidified that point. A drunk with a paintbrush can mint a small fortune if people decide it’s capital A Art. More broadly, ML art models will allow more people to express themselves and more perfectly represent that weird dream they had or that place that doesn’t quite exist. We will all be richer for it. I have less rosy things to say about ChatGPT. I feel like a broken record here but while statistical language models can be amusing (and that’s what I’d classify most of these posts as: amusing, low-impact text where precision and internal consistency isn’t paramount) but they’re not much more than that. They’re not reliable, they’re not oracles, but yeah if you need a poem about SpongeBob in the style of a 1920s mobster they can do that. Maybe I’m a little too harsh on ChatGPT. Maybe I expect too much out of it. It can create mental eye candy and that’s awesome. I don’t know.
- rastapasta42 4y ago
  Verse 1: In Bikini Bottom town, where the sea folks gather round There's a squarepants wearin' mobster, they call him SpongeBob He's got a face so yellow, and a smile so broad He'll steal your krabby patty and leave you applaud Chorus: Cause SpongeBob, he's the boss, ain't no one gonna cross This cuddly little crook, with his cartoon looks He's got a pineapple for a pad, and a pet for a pal But don't let that fool ya, he'll still give you a squish or a squelch Verse 2: He's got a best friend named Patrick, a starfish of sorts Together they're a pair, of criminal sports They'll rob the Krusty Krab, and run from the law But somehow, they always come out on top, without a flaw
  - mcv 4y ago
    I can't help but think of Cyberiad. Has someone tried feeding ChatGPT those prompts?
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      Gwern already did that with regular GPT-3: https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3#stanislaw-lems-cyberiad https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3#stanislaw-lems-cyberiad I think my favourite bit is > A few moments later they were rolling on the floor, and Klapaucius was screaming and gesticulating in the hand-to-hand style of the famous master-scout Krool, while Trurl, in spite of his defective voice-box, was giving such excellent imitations of a dingo howling at the rising moon that even the robots—who, of course, must be presumed to have a good deal of sympathy for such primitive forms of expression—gave him an ovation.
scotty79 4y ago
Too bad we have very little data on meaning.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
I'm of the opposite opinion. The arts industry is heading toward a trillion dollar one and it is ripe for commoditization. Literature, photography, drawing and painting, poetry, other writing, music, even one day comedy, film, and television. Automating the majority of this has the potential to bring prices right down, you look at the insane production costs and profits that some are reaping in the process. Commercial "art" is not fundamentally different than the art of sewing a dress or forging a horseshoe or weaving cloth or making the coachwork of an automobile by hand, in my opinion, so bringing the price down helps poor people to be able to enjoy it too, and would free up a lot of people in the industry to do other things. The wealthy may continue to purchase custom "hand made" art as they might have cobblers make their boutique shoes, but a lot of the industry will die out IMO. A little disruptive for the people involved, but it will likely happen far more slowly than many other automation revolutions because it's far more diverse and subjective there won't be one day that a machine is invented which is more capable at creating art than humans, like Whitney's cotton gin. I don't think consumption of commercial art has some deep meaning to humanity. It is entertainment, and almost as impersonal and industrialized as it gets already, automating a little more of it is just another step along the way. If anything I think it could free more people to create their own art for themselves and to share with people they know.
- college_physics 4y ago
  I would not be so sure art production costs would go down. It all depends on how control of the technology is distributed, the willingness / ability to recognize and reward the still necessary human artistic input etc. Artists have been perenially on the receiving end as far as securing economic benefits from their work. On the basis of current / historical form the expected scenario is that intermediaries will create an oligopoly and will tax all such production at the maximum rate that won't kill the market. But I think we actually aggree on the broader point that automation becomes just another tool in various professional contexts. What is annoying is that, at least to the "masses" it is not sold like that at all. Software is endowed with agency and miraculous powers, diverting the discussion to bizarre and pointless metaphysical speculation and crowding out the real discussions that we need to have in the public: who gets access to what data, what can they do with them etc. etc.
williamcotton 4y ago
I’m excited for these tools like a poet would be excited to get their first rhyming dictionary. At this point GPT is utter garbage at writing lyrics or poetry. Words distilled to their very basics, where sound and meaning intertwine, places the most subtle of emphasis on every minor word choice. My rhyming dictionary from the 1930s remains a much better writing companion… for now!

bottled_poe 4y ago

This is a great take, but good luck explaining the difference to the majority who are unfamiliar with the technology/mathematics behind it. Most people won’t attempt to understand the difference - and worse they won’t care. It’s just another tragedy of the commons.

college_physics 4y ago
> It’s just another tragedy of the commons. Yep. The tragedy may be deepening with time. Objectively, the "commons" was never as integrated as in the current digital age. Collective phenomena (reaching the point of mass hysteria) feel like getting worse. There is already a large number of individuals that are experts at inciting viral propagation. Its not clear how we could institute counterbalances and circuit breakers that would restore some sanity. Traditionally this was the role of academics and journalists but both have been compromised.

macguillicuddy 4y ago

While we can make such a quality distinction between human and artifical generation at the moment, it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology.

college_physics 4y ago
> The human brain is, after all, a computer operating on input in the form of experience and biology. That is just a widespread analogy we use. The human brain is not a computer, although obviously some aspects of its function resemble the logical / mathematical model of a computer, which (I gently remind you) is a construction of the brain itself. > it seems plausible that there's a future where such a distinction is either not meaningful, or perhaps even skewed against humanity. I would not dispute that at all. The future of humanity is hopefully long and full of wondrous discoveries but arguing that we are "close" to "real AI" flies in the face of what is actually achieved on the ground with current approaches: clever utilization (where the one who is clever is the human) of rather limited algorithms to re-use productively the vast body of human generated information corpus. Not a useless exercise by any measure, but the mantle under which it is sold does not augur well for the sustainability of those efforts.
- mgaunard 4y ago
  It is presomptuous to think the brain is anything more than a computer. The algorithm is doing pretty much the same thing that a brain is doing, except it's a smaller and slower brain, so it's not that smart, and we hardwired some parts to fill the gaps.
  - esailija 4y ago
    The brain is nothing like a computer, for the brain doing things that computers do easily are even in the most trivial cases very hard and otherwise impossible. And vice versa. Yet these things that have effectively zero overlap in capability are the same?
    - ihatepython 4y ago
      Perhaps in your case, you are correct, the brain is not a computer, but in the general case, the brain is probably a computer, and in some cases, it's a super-computer.
    - 4y ago

cortic 4y ago

I don't seen any fundamental difference between AI creating art and humans creating art. Both of these things absorb huge data sets and spit out something similar but different to the data sets they absorbed. Both can apply their 'art' within a defined scope by cross-referencing their data sets. Neither can create something that isn't in some way part of their data set.

Jensson 4y ago
Some humans creates novel things. You might not be able to think that way, but other humans can. For example, humans started making computer games, but there were no computer games before, and now we have all these genres and stuff. Humans are capable of doing creative novel works from nothing. So you personally might be an uncreative automaton who just copies what others said or did, but that isn't normal, other humans can think in novel ways.
- krapp 4y ago
  Name one computer game created without any cultural or historical referents then, "from nothing" as it were. If you mention Pong or Spacewar, you've already lost. Table tennis and the Lensman books, respectively. Literally anything humans do is based on prior influences, referents and data. There's no aether out of which the "spark" of inspiration strikes, nor does anything emerge from the pure vaccuum, creativity is just neurons doing what they will with the information they already have. Therefore the only difference between human genius and the mediocre output of AIs is complexity, and the only question worth asking is how far that gap can reasonably be bridged. It's understandable that this is upsetting, because it threatens one of the last bastions of human divinity, and no one really wants to believe human beings in all their splendor, subtlety and complexity are just a pile of ad-hoc stochastic wetware algorithms running on a hemisphere of gelatinous goo, no more divine than a stone on the ground, but eventually as this technology matures we're going to have to come to terms with the fact that creativity can be manufactured, just like anything else, and like anything manufactured, its quality will inevitably surpass anything humans are capable of.
  - 4y ago

janalsncm 4y ago

There’s an ocean of difference to me between ChatGPT and stable diffusion/DallE. Text is fundamentally different from art. For art, I see these not as major disruptions but as new tools. There’s no right or wrong answer in art. If anything, abstract expressionism solidified that point. A drunk with a paintbrush can mint a small fortune if people decide it’s capital A Art. More broadly, ML art models will allow more people to express themselves and more perfectly represent that weird dream they had or that place that doesn’t quite exist. We will all be richer for it. I have less rosy things to say about ChatGPT. I feel like a broken record here but while statistical language models can be amusing (and that’s what I’d classify most of these posts as: amusing, low-impact text where precision and internal consistency isn’t paramount) but they’re not much more than that. They’re not reliable, they’re not oracles, but yeah if you need a poem about SpongeBob in the style of a 1920s mobster they can do that. Maybe I’m a little too harsh on ChatGPT. Maybe I expect too much out of it. It can create mental eye candy and that’s awesome. I don’t know.

rastapasta42 4y ago
Verse 1: In Bikini Bottom town, where the sea folks gather round There's a squarepants wearin' mobster, they call him SpongeBob He's got a face so yellow, and a smile so broad He'll steal your krabby patty and leave you applaud Chorus: Cause SpongeBob, he's the boss, ain't no one gonna cross This cuddly little crook, with his cartoon looks He's got a pineapple for a pad, and a pet for a pal But don't let that fool ya, he'll still give you a squish or a squelch Verse 2: He's got a best friend named Patrick, a starfish of sorts Together they're a pair, of criminal sports They'll rob the Krusty Krab, and run from the law But somehow, they always come out on top, without a flaw
- mcv 4y ago
  I can't help but think of Cyberiad. Has someone tried feeding ChatGPT those prompts?
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    Gwern already did that with regular GPT-3: https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3#stanislaw-lems-cyberiad https://www.gwern.net/GPT-3#stanislaw-lems-cyberiad I think my favourite bit is > A few moments later they were rolling on the floor, and Klapaucius was screaming and gesticulating in the hand-to-hand style of the famous master-scout Krool, while Trurl, in spite of his defective voice-box, was giving such excellent imitations of a dingo howling at the rising moon that even the robots—who, of course, must be presumed to have a good deal of sympathy for such primitive forms of expression—gave him an ovation.

scotty79 4y ago

Too bad we have very little data on meaning.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

I'm of the opposite opinion. The arts industry is heading toward a trillion dollar one and it is ripe for commoditization. Literature, photography, drawing and painting, poetry, other writing, music, even one day comedy, film, and television. Automating the majority of this has the potential to bring prices right down, you look at the insane production costs and profits that some are reaping in the process. Commercial "art" is not fundamentally different than the art of sewing a dress or forging a horseshoe or weaving cloth or making the coachwork of an automobile by hand, in my opinion, so bringing the price down helps poor people to be able to enjoy it too, and would free up a lot of people in the industry to do other things. The wealthy may continue to purchase custom "hand made" art as they might have cobblers make their boutique shoes, but a lot of the industry will die out IMO. A little disruptive for the people involved, but it will likely happen far more slowly than many other automation revolutions because it's far more diverse and subjective there won't be one day that a machine is invented which is more capable at creating art than humans, like Whitney's cotton gin. I don't think consumption of commercial art has some deep meaning to humanity. It is entertainment, and almost as impersonal and industrialized as it gets already, automating a little more of it is just another step along the way. If anything I think it could free more people to create their own art for themselves and to share with people they know.

college_physics 4y ago
I would not be so sure art production costs would go down. It all depends on how control of the technology is distributed, the willingness / ability to recognize and reward the still necessary human artistic input etc. Artists have been perenially on the receiving end as far as securing economic benefits from their work. On the basis of current / historical form the expected scenario is that intermediaries will create an oligopoly and will tax all such production at the maximum rate that won't kill the market. But I think we actually aggree on the broader point that automation becomes just another tool in various professional contexts. What is annoying is that, at least to the "masses" it is not sold like that at all. Software is endowed with agency and miraculous powers, diverting the discussion to bizarre and pointless metaphysical speculation and crowding out the real discussions that we need to have in the public: who gets access to what data, what can they do with them etc. etc.

williamcotton 4y ago

I’m excited for these tools like a poet would be excited to get their first rhyming dictionary. At this point GPT is utter garbage at writing lyrics or poetry. Words distilled to their very basics, where sound and meaning intertwine, places the most subtle of emphasis on every minor word choice. My rhyming dictionary from the 1930s remains a much better writing companion… for now!