5 ms·

Humans often draw bad human hands, as well. Don’t even try to ask a human to draw a bicycle.

by rcme 4y ago

jfk13 4y ago
For those who haven't seen this little gem before: https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on-peoples-attempts-to-draw-them-from-memory/ https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on...
- woolion 4y ago
  It's astonishing how recently I saw a thread on Mastodon prompting artists to draw a bicycle and it was not much better than that. What about building a visual library? Now there's a lot of AI results coming up and it's not performing much better in that regard either though. https://mstdn.social/tags/CrabCycle https://mstdn.social/tags/CrabCycle
bakugo 4y ago
That's because hands and bycicles are complex 3D shapes and it's hard to picture them in your mind from arbitrary angles. It's not because the artist doesn't understand what a hand is or how many fingers it's supposed to have.
- rcme 4y ago
  Someone else posted this article about how people draw bicycles: https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on-peoples-attempts-to-draw-them-from-memory/ https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on... You can see that some people have a fundamental misunderstanding about how bicycles work, and this misunderstanding does not stem from the complex 3D shape of bicycles. Don't you think drawing a hand is a bit of an unfair "gotcha" for an AI that can accurately draw thousands of other things? Humans have hands and they're one of the most important parts of the body; humans use hands for everything. And yet, all but the most artistic humans cannot draw human hands accurately. An AI doesn't have hands. Hands make up a small part of its training data. Why should we consider the hand the standard upon which to judge the quality of the AI?
  - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
    Given that there are accurate representations of hands in it's data set, and also given that the AI would have no problem copying or averaging only these accurate representations, it seems the AI doesn't have the evaluative ability to recognize accurate versus inaccurate hand representations.
    - rcme 4y ago
      This seems like a huge leap. Sure, there are hands in the dataset, just like a human artist encounters hands every day of his or her life. Yet there are many artists that cannot draw hands but can easily draw other objects they encounter. Or, going back to bikes, some humans cannot accurately draw a bike despite encountering them frequently. Perhaps hands are simply a complex thing to draw accurately. Perhaps the AI's poor drawing of hands is itself evidence of understanding. Rather than produce an incorrectly oriented hand from its dataset, it "chooses" to draw something less specific as a reflection of its lack of ability to draw hands.
      - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
        And this seems like a huge leap to me. You're imputing a very specific human fallibility to a software that isn't human (or even derived from the same neurological underpinnings). I guess it would take someone who can look at and interpret the code to figure it out.
        rcme 4y ago
        I'm not imputing anything on the AI. I'm asking a question and then offering conjecture as to why the current answers the question are unsatisfying. The question is: Why do we accept that a human understands the concept of hand despite drawing hands poorly while simultaneously saying the AI draws hands poorly because it doesn't understand hands?
        anonymouskimmer 4y ago
thereddaikon 4y ago
Art is a skill that takes time to master. There are college level classes on mastering the human form. Just because most people are bad at drawing hands doesn't mean they don't understand what a hand is. That's a fundamentally different problem than what AI systems have. As for the bikes, I'm not surprised most people cant recall the exact shape or design of a mechanical object they don't use or work on every day. I'm sure a hobby cyclist could accurately lay out one.
- rcme 4y ago
  > That's a fundamentally different problem than what AI systems have. Is it? Humans understand that humans have hands, yet most are incapable of drawing a hand well. The AI also clearly understands that humans have hands. It does put something hand-like where a hand typically goes. But, like most humans, the AI is not good at accurately reproducing a hand.
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    A human's drawing of a hand will show a clear understanding of what a hand is on an intellectual level. The AI's drawing of a hand will not show such an understanding. "They are both inaccurate at reproducing a hand" flattens out this important difference - in fact, this difference is explicitly what the poster is getting at.
    - rcme 4y ago
      > A human's drawing of a hand will show a clear understanding of what a hand is on an intellectual level. What is the definition of "understanding on an intellectual level?" I have a friend who is an artist. She is doing a series of paintings with figures. She cannot paint hands to save her life. The hands she paints look very similar to the eerie vignettes produced by Stable Diffusion. I fail to see what makes the hands my friend paints somehow superior on an "intellectual level."
      - cool_dude85 4y ago
ROTMetro 4y ago
But were are talking about an AI whose purpose it art, so it only make sense to compare to humans who are art professionals. A human whose profession is art can draw a hand, or at least get an approx. close number of correct fingers. And attach said fingers to actual hands.
- rcme 4y ago
  And many profession artists cannot draw hands either. We're talking the distinction between "sounds smart" and "is smart." People here are arguing that the AI not "smart"; it only "sounds smart." The evidence provided is that AI cannot draw hands well. But we don't apply this same standard to people, even professional artists.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Do humans artist routinely fail to connect hands/fingers to the rest of the body? That draw fingers with finger nails on both ends? Hands that have 12 fingers when doing realism? We are not talking about 'not very good at draws the details of a hand' but not able to understand fundamental details of what a hand is.
    - rcme 4y ago
      > Do humans artist routinely fail to connect hands/fingers to the rest of the body? Children do all the time, and I'm pretty sure children have a rudimentary understanding of hands.
      - Noneofya 4y ago
        But they lack the abstraction necessary to call them self-aware (by the current definition). That’s actually a test to check the development of a child. A child is not very intelligent yet. But it is able to become it on its own just by observing. ChatGPT isn’t.
        rcme 4y ago

Humans often draw bad human hands, as well. Don’t even try to ask a human to draw a bicycle.

by rcme 4y ago

Humans often draw bad human hands, as well. Don’t even try to ask a human to draw a bicycle.

For those who haven't seen this little gem before: https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on-peoples-attempts-to-draw-them-from-memory/ https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on...

woolion 4y ago
It's astonishing how recently I saw a thread on Mastodon prompting artists to draw a bicycle and it was not much better than that. What about building a visual library? Now there's a lot of AI results coming up and it's not performing much better in that regard either though. https://mstdn.social/tags/CrabCycle https://mstdn.social/tags/CrabCycle

bakugo 4y ago

That's because hands and bycicles are complex 3D shapes and it's hard to picture them in your mind from arbitrary angles. It's not because the artist doesn't understand what a hand is or how many fingers it's supposed to have.

rcme 4y ago
Someone else posted this article about how people draw bicycles: https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on-peoples-attempts-to-draw-them-from-memory/ https://www.booooooom.com/2016/05/09/bicycles-built-based-on... You can see that some people have a fundamental misunderstanding about how bicycles work, and this misunderstanding does not stem from the complex 3D shape of bicycles. Don't you think drawing a hand is a bit of an unfair "gotcha" for an AI that can accurately draw thousands of other things? Humans have hands and they're one of the most important parts of the body; humans use hands for everything. And yet, all but the most artistic humans cannot draw human hands accurately. An AI doesn't have hands. Hands make up a small part of its training data. Why should we consider the hand the standard upon which to judge the quality of the AI?
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  Given that there are accurate representations of hands in it's data set, and also given that the AI would have no problem copying or averaging only these accurate representations, it seems the AI doesn't have the evaluative ability to recognize accurate versus inaccurate hand representations.
  - rcme 4y ago
    This seems like a huge leap. Sure, there are hands in the dataset, just like a human artist encounters hands every day of his or her life. Yet there are many artists that cannot draw hands but can easily draw other objects they encounter. Or, going back to bikes, some humans cannot accurately draw a bike despite encountering them frequently. Perhaps hands are simply a complex thing to draw accurately. Perhaps the AI's poor drawing of hands is itself evidence of understanding. Rather than produce an incorrectly oriented hand from its dataset, it "chooses" to draw something less specific as a reflection of its lack of ability to draw hands.
    - anonymouskimmer 4y ago
      And this seems like a huge leap to me. You're imputing a very specific human fallibility to a software that isn't human (or even derived from the same neurological underpinnings). I guess it would take someone who can look at and interpret the code to figure it out.
      - rcme 4y ago
        I'm not imputing anything on the AI. I'm asking a question and then offering conjecture as to why the current answers the question are unsatisfying. The question is: Why do we accept that a human understands the concept of hand despite drawing hands poorly while simultaneously saying the AI draws hands poorly because it doesn't understand hands?
        anonymouskimmer 4y ago

thereddaikon 4y ago

Art is a skill that takes time to master. There are college level classes on mastering the human form. Just because most people are bad at drawing hands doesn't mean they don't understand what a hand is. That's a fundamentally different problem than what AI systems have. As for the bikes, I'm not surprised most people cant recall the exact shape or design of a mechanical object they don't use or work on every day. I'm sure a hobby cyclist could accurately lay out one.

rcme 4y ago
> That's a fundamentally different problem than what AI systems have. Is it? Humans understand that humans have hands, yet most are incapable of drawing a hand well. The AI also clearly understands that humans have hands. It does put something hand-like where a hand typically goes. But, like most humans, the AI is not good at accurately reproducing a hand.
- cool_dude85 4y ago
  A human's drawing of a hand will show a clear understanding of what a hand is on an intellectual level. The AI's drawing of a hand will not show such an understanding. "They are both inaccurate at reproducing a hand" flattens out this important difference - in fact, this difference is explicitly what the poster is getting at.
  - rcme 4y ago
    > A human's drawing of a hand will show a clear understanding of what a hand is on an intellectual level. What is the definition of "understanding on an intellectual level?" I have a friend who is an artist. She is doing a series of paintings with figures. She cannot paint hands to save her life. The hands she paints look very similar to the eerie vignettes produced by Stable Diffusion. I fail to see what makes the hands my friend paints somehow superior on an "intellectual level."
    - cool_dude85 4y ago

ROTMetro 4y ago

But were are talking about an AI whose purpose it art, so it only make sense to compare to humans who are art professionals. A human whose profession is art can draw a hand, or at least get an approx. close number of correct fingers. And attach said fingers to actual hands.

rcme 4y ago
And many profession artists cannot draw hands either. We're talking the distinction between "sounds smart" and "is smart." People here are arguing that the AI not "smart"; it only "sounds smart." The evidence provided is that AI cannot draw hands well. But we don't apply this same standard to people, even professional artists.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Do humans artist routinely fail to connect hands/fingers to the rest of the body? That draw fingers with finger nails on both ends? Hands that have 12 fingers when doing realism? We are not talking about 'not very good at draws the details of a hand' but not able to understand fundamental details of what a hand is.
  - rcme 4y ago
    > Do humans artist routinely fail to connect hands/fingers to the rest of the body? Children do all the time, and I'm pretty sure children have a rudimentary understanding of hands.
    - Noneofya 4y ago
      But they lack the abstraction necessary to call them self-aware (by the current definition). That’s actually a test to check the development of a child. A child is not very intelligent yet. But it is able to become it on its own just by observing. ChatGPT isn’t.
      - rcme 4y ago