16 ms·

I hate this so very much. Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts.

lfkdev 4y ago
If it works, it'll be used. Are you grossed out when using a calculator? I hope so
- mysterydip 4y ago
  The square root of 3.5 is always the same value, so why bother doing it less efficiently? The same is not true for creativity.
- makoto12 4y ago
  Mathematical concepts are in the public domain. The art used to train these models are not
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I mean the concept of public domain is fungible when companies like Disney can pay off their favorite politicians to get 20 more years of monopolies on their ideas that 'steal' from the society they live in. Being that there is enough of a debate on this topic alone that's been raging for decades it's not easily decidable by a one liner.
    - makoto12 4y ago
      true. Personally I think the concept of public/private domain is a good thing. But like all good things, they get abused by bad actors who are huge corporations. But the artwork and texts used for training these models are often coming from small independent creators. The same creators who will be sidelined by this new technology. Bitter pill to swallow
robertlagrant 4y ago
If a person learns how to paint expertly by looking at (and even copying, stroke for stroke) paintings, would you consider that immoral, and those paintings having been stolen? If not, what would you say the difference is?
- infinitezest 4y ago
  There is the notable difference in the speed and scale at which a computer can be trained. The analogy doesn't really hold up in my opinion.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Being able to do something faster isn't automatically a moral principle. Even between two humans there will be big differences.
  - neoromantique 4y ago
    So the analogy doesn't hold up because computer does it more efficiently?
    - jxf 4y ago
      That can be a valid reason to reject an analogy. For example, many people who would accept regular police patrols are not fine with the police installing a tireless ALPR scanner.
      - neoromantique 4y ago
        Well, in police scanner example, problem people have with it is not its efficacy, but rather other surrounding concerns (like privacy).
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    So if there were a genius painter that learned various artistic styles on sight you would say that their work had no value? I think you might be in trouble there, a number of savants have been known throughout history who have been able to learn various things with no instruction and simply by hearing or seeing a work done by someone else have been able to recreate it or produce something in their style.
svantana 4y ago
On an emotional level, I totally agree. But as a developer of creative tools, I've been trying to make sense of what's good and bad in this field. Arguably, all creative software is at least partially automating creativity (photoshop, ableton etc). But my conclusion so far is that the gross part is when the user inputs a vague request and a finished product comes out. Contrastingly, if the user can make continuous changes with realtime monitoring of their actions, then that is an instrument - mostly amplifying the creative impulses of its user (which is good).
- dalbasal 4y ago
  It usually trends to the way over time. When you're demonstrating or studying a tech (like we're doing with gpt now), there's a tendency to go "here's what it can do." Once people start using it for more mundane work, the focus becomes "here's what I can do with it." It probably doesn't matter what children's stories language models can write themselves. It matters what stories people can write using them. Same for software/graphic design/law/etc. These are just tech demos. This becomes clearer once demos play out. 2 years ago, scripting a philosophical debate using language models felt like AIs expressing their opinion. By now, we're past that.
  - svantana 4y ago
    I think (and hope) you're right. Recently, someone coined the phrase "bach faucet" to describe the mundanity of an "AI" that can compose millions of novel bach fugues that are indistinguishable from the real thing [1]. At the end of the day that is just pointless - abundant art serves no purpose in society, and its value will be zero when considering supply and demand. [1] https://twitter.com/galaxykate/status/1583907942834716672 https://twitter.com/galaxykate/status/1583907942834716672
    - dalbasal 4y ago
      Precisely. OTOH... using AI to create art shifts around supply and demand such that there will be practical implications. The way email correspondence between A customer and a bank may look very different once both are using GPT enabled email clients.
newswasboring 4y ago
All advances in creative tooling are automating creativity. What are you on about? Look at photoshop color selector automates mixing paint, digital filters for audio automate analog mixers. This attitude towards AI creative tools is gatekeeping.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- legutierr 4y ago
  The people who wrote the Photoshop source code were paid for their contributions with full consent that their work would be included in the product and sold for a profit by Adobe. The artists whose work was fed into these systems did not consent, nor were they paid for their contribution. In fact, I have seen a few reports of people using these systems to generate lookalike artworks intended to resemble the work of specific working artists—artists whose livelihoods depend on client commissions. The only way that these systems could produce knock-off artwork after receiving a prompt containing that artist's specific name is if the artist's own copyrighted work was used in the training data. Do you have any doubt that many working artists' copyrighted work was included in the the training data that produced these systems, without those artists licensing their work for that purpose? It's not gatekeeping to insist that a project obtain a voluntary license from the people who contribute their work to a project. And it's not gatekeeping to point out the fact that these platforms have only been successful by using working artists' copyrighted work in violation of their rights, without asking permission or providing compensation.
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    Be real, copyright/attribution is only one complaint, a tiny part of the sudden hatred against AI art/creativity. When somebody brings up the invention of photoshop, they're not trying to disprove a point about paying salaries to the devs, and I am sure you knew that.
    - Quarrelsome 4y ago
social_quotient 4y ago
Don't take this as a trolling question, but I can't help but wonder if this sentiment towards AI generated art and creativity is similar to how a chef might feel about shrink wrapped frozen food factories. Just like how a frozen meal can be thrown in the microwave and still be considered a meal, AI generated art can still be considered creative and beautiful. But, as we all know, the timing and execution to properly deliver a "real meal" from a chef is far different than a frozen meal from a factory. I find myself conflicted on this topic as I can see how the makers of yesterday have been replaced by process automation, taking away some of the magic of the creation process. But, just as a frozen meal from Costco has its place, so does AI generated art. The macro level ingredients may be the same, but the final product is different. Before fast food, the number of chefs and home cooking would have had to be far higher and/or more frequent than now. Some would argue that we are paying the price for all that processed food now, but others would argue it's the only way to scale people's lives and their time. I agree that something "feels" different about midjourney making artwork that I likely could never make myself, but I'm struggling to fully have a reason or complete reasoning for why. And then I wrestle with, is this a normal evolution problem? Just this time it hit something nearer to me personally and it impacts my life. Would love to hear other's thoughts on this.
- jxf 4y ago
  I think there are important differences between this situation and your chef/frozen food analogy that cause it to break down: * A digital image is permanent. A meal, by design, is consumed and has a very specific lifespan. * A digital image is trivial to duplicate and consume again. A meal can be very hard to duplicate (and may even require another chef, or food scientists). No two people can consume exactly the same meal. * A digital image is not required to survival. Regular intake of food and water is (at least for humans). and so on.
  - glofish 4y ago
    I think the whole food analogy is missing the main point we are not reusing someone else's food to create a new frozen food. Frozen-ness is about mass production - but not about the origin of that food. It just conflates unrelated issues.
tomp 4y ago
At best you could claim “pirated”, definitely not “stolen”. IMO piracy should be morally encouraged
- makoto12 4y ago
  Do you think it's moral for a big corporation to profit on pirating works from small artists?
  - tomp 4y ago
    For-profit piracy is questionable (there’s pros and cons, it could unleash a ton of creativity) but what we’re discussing here is non-profit, personal use piracy.
    - makoto12 4y ago
      I'm more referring to the companies offering the tools. While some are free to use (for now), they are still profiting from this type of personal use. often being able to convert to a paid model later down the line, think github copilot
chinathrow 4y ago
I hate it as well but at this point, I think the cat's out of the bag. I think it's unlikely that legislation will be able to curtail any copyright infringement.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
[flagged]
grugagag 4y ago
Did we really NEED automation for writing kids books? And for whoever is saying not automating these is gatekeeping let me ask you gatekeeping from what? You could write a kids book yourself without AI if you put your mind to it. It’s a super easy feat. Can we strive to automate more boring stuff such as scrum meetings, filling out forms and paperwork in general?
- dinkumthinkum 4y ago
  This “gatekeeping” accusation is so stupid. It’s a laughable conclusion of the current woke/victimization culture. I have seen people on HN refer to the idea of needing sone kind skill to do something creative/difficult as “ableist”.
batch12 4y ago
As someone who is not that great at creating art, I like it. It enables me to build more things than I could before. I don't find it much different than a website builder is for people who lack those skills. Thinking more deeply, I find that AI art has no real value to me, though. I wouldn't hang it on my walls or hope it survives for my kids. If I had written the algorithms that power the model, then I'd feel like more of a stakeholder and maybe I would see the output as something with long term value. To me it feels more like fast food. It fills the void, but it's nothing special-- it's disposable 'art'. But maybe that's just me.
thfuran 4y ago
Yeah, cameras are just the worst. Won't someone please think of the painters?
gardenhedge 4y ago
Kids books don't take much creativity
adamsmith143 4y ago
>Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts. King of bad takes. Painters literally said the same thing about Photography. >these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts. And the neural networks in human artists' brains is exempt from this logic why? Because it's biological and not silicon?
- the_af 4y ago
  > Painters literally said the same thing about Photography. I think this is itself a bad take, for several reasons. First, that something false was said in the past doesn't make it false today for a different thing. Second, that wasn't the argument painters "literally" used. Did they claim that taking photos was "stealing" their paintings/reality? What some may have claimed is that it took no skill or that it was cheating, or that it would put painters out of work. We now know all of these assumptions were wrong. Photography doesn't "automate" creativity, as anyone struggling to take an interesting photo that tells a story can tell you.

lfkdev 4y ago

If it works, it'll be used. Are you grossed out when using a calculator? I hope so

mysterydip 4y ago
The square root of 3.5 is always the same value, so why bother doing it less efficiently? The same is not true for creativity.
makoto12 4y ago
Mathematical concepts are in the public domain. The art used to train these models are not
- pixl97 4y ago
  I mean the concept of public domain is fungible when companies like Disney can pay off their favorite politicians to get 20 more years of monopolies on their ideas that 'steal' from the society they live in. Being that there is enough of a debate on this topic alone that's been raging for decades it's not easily decidable by a one liner.
  - makoto12 4y ago
    true. Personally I think the concept of public/private domain is a good thing. But like all good things, they get abused by bad actors who are huge corporations. But the artwork and texts used for training these models are often coming from small independent creators. The same creators who will be sidelined by this new technology. Bitter pill to swallow

robertlagrant 4y ago

If a person learns how to paint expertly by looking at (and even copying, stroke for stroke) paintings, would you consider that immoral, and those paintings having been stolen? If not, what would you say the difference is?

infinitezest 4y ago
There is the notable difference in the speed and scale at which a computer can be trained. The analogy doesn't really hold up in my opinion.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Being able to do something faster isn't automatically a moral principle. Even between two humans there will be big differences.
- neoromantique 4y ago
  So the analogy doesn't hold up because computer does it more efficiently?
  - jxf 4y ago
    That can be a valid reason to reject an analogy. For example, many people who would accept regular police patrols are not fine with the police installing a tireless ALPR scanner.
    - neoromantique 4y ago
      Well, in police scanner example, problem people have with it is not its efficacy, but rather other surrounding concerns (like privacy).
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  So if there were a genius painter that learned various artistic styles on sight you would say that their work had no value? I think you might be in trouble there, a number of savants have been known throughout history who have been able to learn various things with no instruction and simply by hearing or seeing a work done by someone else have been able to recreate it or produce something in their style.

svantana 4y ago

On an emotional level, I totally agree. But as a developer of creative tools, I've been trying to make sense of what's good and bad in this field. Arguably, all creative software is at least partially automating creativity (photoshop, ableton etc). But my conclusion so far is that the gross part is when the user inputs a vague request and a finished product comes out. Contrastingly, if the user can make continuous changes with realtime monitoring of their actions, then that is an instrument - mostly amplifying the creative impulses of its user (which is good).

dalbasal 4y ago
It usually trends to the way over time. When you're demonstrating or studying a tech (like we're doing with gpt now), there's a tendency to go "here's what it can do." Once people start using it for more mundane work, the focus becomes "here's what I can do with it." It probably doesn't matter what children's stories language models can write themselves. It matters what stories people can write using them. Same for software/graphic design/law/etc. These are just tech demos. This becomes clearer once demos play out. 2 years ago, scripting a philosophical debate using language models felt like AIs expressing their opinion. By now, we're past that.
- svantana 4y ago
  I think (and hope) you're right. Recently, someone coined the phrase "bach faucet" to describe the mundanity of an "AI" that can compose millions of novel bach fugues that are indistinguishable from the real thing [1]. At the end of the day that is just pointless - abundant art serves no purpose in society, and its value will be zero when considering supply and demand. [1] https://twitter.com/galaxykate/status/1583907942834716672 https://twitter.com/galaxykate/status/1583907942834716672
  - dalbasal 4y ago
    Precisely. OTOH... using AI to create art shifts around supply and demand such that there will be practical implications. The way email correspondence between A customer and a bank may look very different once both are using GPT enabled email clients.

newswasboring 4y ago

All advances in creative tooling are automating creativity. What are you on about? Look at photoshop color selector automates mixing paint, digital filters for audio automate analog mixers. This attitude towards AI creative tools is gatekeeping.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
legutierr 4y ago
The people who wrote the Photoshop source code were paid for their contributions with full consent that their work would be included in the product and sold for a profit by Adobe. The artists whose work was fed into these systems did not consent, nor were they paid for their contribution. In fact, I have seen a few reports of people using these systems to generate lookalike artworks intended to resemble the work of specific working artists—artists whose livelihoods depend on client commissions. The only way that these systems could produce knock-off artwork after receiving a prompt containing that artist's specific name is if the artist's own copyrighted work was used in the training data. Do you have any doubt that many working artists' copyrighted work was included in the the training data that produced these systems, without those artists licensing their work for that purpose? It's not gatekeeping to insist that a project obtain a voluntary license from the people who contribute their work to a project. And it's not gatekeeping to point out the fact that these platforms have only been successful by using working artists' copyrighted work in violation of their rights, without asking permission or providing compensation.
- scrollaway 4y ago
  Be real, copyright/attribution is only one complaint, a tiny part of the sudden hatred against AI art/creativity. When somebody brings up the invention of photoshop, they're not trying to disprove a point about paying salaries to the devs, and I am sure you knew that.
  - Quarrelsome 4y ago

social_quotient 4y ago

Don't take this as a trolling question, but I can't help but wonder if this sentiment towards AI generated art and creativity is similar to how a chef might feel about shrink wrapped frozen food factories. Just like how a frozen meal can be thrown in the microwave and still be considered a meal, AI generated art can still be considered creative and beautiful. But, as we all know, the timing and execution to properly deliver a "real meal" from a chef is far different than a frozen meal from a factory. I find myself conflicted on this topic as I can see how the makers of yesterday have been replaced by process automation, taking away some of the magic of the creation process. But, just as a frozen meal from Costco has its place, so does AI generated art. The macro level ingredients may be the same, but the final product is different. Before fast food, the number of chefs and home cooking would have had to be far higher and/or more frequent than now. Some would argue that we are paying the price for all that processed food now, but others would argue it's the only way to scale people's lives and their time. I agree that something "feels" different about midjourney making artwork that I likely could never make myself, but I'm struggling to fully have a reason or complete reasoning for why. And then I wrestle with, is this a normal evolution problem? Just this time it hit something nearer to me personally and it impacts my life. Would love to hear other's thoughts on this.

jxf 4y ago
I think there are important differences between this situation and your chef/frozen food analogy that cause it to break down: * A digital image is permanent. A meal, by design, is consumed and has a very specific lifespan. * A digital image is trivial to duplicate and consume again. A meal can be very hard to duplicate (and may even require another chef, or food scientists). No two people can consume exactly the same meal. * A digital image is not required to survival. Regular intake of food and water is (at least for humans). and so on.
- glofish 4y ago
  I think the whole food analogy is missing the main point we are not reusing someone else's food to create a new frozen food. Frozen-ness is about mass production - but not about the origin of that food. It just conflates unrelated issues.

tomp 4y ago

At best you could claim “pirated”, definitely not “stolen”. IMO piracy should be morally encouraged

makoto12 4y ago
Do you think it's moral for a big corporation to profit on pirating works from small artists?
- tomp 4y ago
  For-profit piracy is questionable (there’s pros and cons, it could unleash a ton of creativity) but what we’re discussing here is non-profit, personal use piracy.
  - makoto12 4y ago
    I'm more referring to the companies offering the tools. While some are free to use (for now), they are still profiting from this type of personal use. often being able to convert to a paid model later down the line, think github copilot

chinathrow 4y ago

I hate it as well but at this point, I think the cat's out of the bag. I think it's unlikely that legislation will be able to curtail any copyright infringement.

throwaway4aday 4y ago

[flagged]

grugagag 4y ago

Did we really NEED automation for writing kids books? And for whoever is saying not automating these is gatekeeping let me ask you gatekeeping from what? You could write a kids book yourself without AI if you put your mind to it. It’s a super easy feat. Can we strive to automate more boring stuff such as scrum meetings, filling out forms and paperwork in general?

dinkumthinkum 4y ago
This “gatekeeping” accusation is so stupid. It’s a laughable conclusion of the current woke/victimization culture. I have seen people on HN refer to the idea of needing sone kind skill to do something creative/difficult as “ableist”.

batch12 4y ago

As someone who is not that great at creating art, I like it. It enables me to build more things than I could before. I don't find it much different than a website builder is for people who lack those skills. Thinking more deeply, I find that AI art has no real value to me, though. I wouldn't hang it on my walls or hope it survives for my kids. If I had written the algorithms that power the model, then I'd feel like more of a stakeholder and maybe I would see the output as something with long term value. To me it feels more like fast food. It fills the void, but it's nothing special-- it's disposable 'art'. But maybe that's just me.

thfuran 4y ago

Yeah, cameras are just the worst. Won't someone please think of the painters?

gardenhedge 4y ago

Kids books don't take much creativity

adamsmith143 4y ago

>Automating creativity is so gross. Never mind the fact that these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts. King of bad takes. Painters literally said the same thing about Photography. >these models are trained on stolen artwork and texts. And the neural networks in human artists' brains is exempt from this logic why? Because it's biological and not silicon?

the_af 4y ago
> Painters literally said the same thing about Photography. I think this is itself a bad take, for several reasons. First, that something false was said in the past doesn't make it false today for a different thing. Second, that wasn't the argument painters "literally" used. Did they claim that taking photos was "stealing" their paintings/reality? What some may have claimed is that it took no skill or that it was cheating, or that it would put painters out of work. We now know all of these assumptions were wrong. Photography doesn't "automate" creativity, as anyone struggling to take an interesting photo that tells a story can tell you.