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No they are not the same. An artist taking time and effort to study and learn a new art style is not the same as an company writing a program that gobbles up ev

No they are not the same. An artist taking time and effort to study and learn a new art style is not the same as an company writing a program that gobbles up every image on the internet. There is a fundamental difference between when a human does it and a machine does it. I feel like this is obvious and yet people keep making this argument for some reason.

nonbirithm 4y ago
> I feel like this is obvious and yet people keep making this argument for some reason. It's because scores of people coming from non-art domains are suddenly being exposed to the art domain without much real knowledge of working in that domain, find the diffusion tech convincing enough that it entrances them, and makes them believe that their original notions of art are the most important thing that matters. This debate has made me think, if there's some inability to automate a process, only the people that have spent months/years working in those domains will understand certain things about that process. The rest will be operating on only the beliefs they form from limited exposure. For example, I imagine for a lot of people, "art" is something that magically appears in their Twitter timeline within 5 seconds of opening the app, and years of opening Twitter and seeing new art almost instantly would probably condition some to believe that's all art really is, a thing that's plentiful and can be found near-instantly. So it's not controversial to them when they come across a piece of software that can give them thousands of new pictures near-instantly. But obviously, prior to around October of 2022, there was nearly always a human behind the art on those timelines. To a human artist, their own work is probably not as plentiful and takes way longer to produce than to consume. Those consumers never needed to interact with the artist or understand the process to appreciate the art privately. Up to now that was usually not a problem. Maybe that idea will undergo changes in the following years, that the tech is so advanced that a level of respect for the specific process of human artists is necessary for cordial communication of art to succeed. Otherwise it will be disparaged with the equivalent of "opinion discarded" from the nature of the thing. It makes me wonder, what are the implications of this for domains that haven't been automated to the extent of SD yet? SD has proven that many, many people wanted this level of "art" automation from the beginning. The singular event that made this fact clear was the release of SD. There could be millions of people out there with their own preconceived notions, correct or not, just waiting for the ability to cut out the middleman in their own domains. It's like a powder keg waiting for the tiniest spark of technological progress to be ignited. For the "respect of artists" angle, I'm reminded of this article[1] about a modern art installation from 12 years ago where people's art contest entries were trampled upon by visitors. People were upset by this. As Marshall McLuhan once stated, "art is anything you can get away with." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixiv#Chaos_Lounge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixiv#Chaos_Lounge
satvikpendem 4y ago
It's not obvious. Like the parent asked, what's the difference when an AI does it versus when a human does? If you're a reductivist like me, you'd see that humans are simply biological computers who are doing the same as an AI. If you think humans are somehow special, then of course you'd think there is some magic in learning a new style of art, magic that an AI doesn't have.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  You’re saying it’s not obvious that AI and humans are different, but that’s the default assumption. What’s the affirmative argument for how we’re the same?
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Physicalism, or more accurately that we're both made of matter and that the structure of brains gives rise to intelligent behavior in such a way as to be analogous to computers. Note that I did not say that computers or neural networks are like the brain's neurons, merely that matter gives rise to computational abilities when organized in particular ways. This is the physicalist approach in philosophy, that there is nothing beyond the physical. If this weren't true, then we wouldn't be able to identify parts of the brain that do certain things, and that damage to the brain in those areas wouldn't affect the ability to do said things. Of course, if you are a mind-body dualist or support idealism, you will think that humans are somehow different than other arrangements of matter that give rise to computation.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      To be clear, I’m not asking for the argument that it’s possible for a computer to be somehow “the same” as humans. I’m asking for the argument that AI as it presently exists is “the same”. Because you’re not making this argument about dogs or parrots or Markov chains or Microsoft Clippy, but you are making it about generative neural networks.
- throwaway20718 4y ago

nonbirithm 4y ago

> I feel like this is obvious and yet people keep making this argument for some reason. It's because scores of people coming from non-art domains are suddenly being exposed to the art domain without much real knowledge of working in that domain, find the diffusion tech convincing enough that it entrances them, and makes them believe that their original notions of art are the most important thing that matters. This debate has made me think, if there's some inability to automate a process, only the people that have spent months/years working in those domains will understand certain things about that process. The rest will be operating on only the beliefs they form from limited exposure. For example, I imagine for a lot of people, "art" is something that magically appears in their Twitter timeline within 5 seconds of opening the app, and years of opening Twitter and seeing new art almost instantly would probably condition some to believe that's all art really is, a thing that's plentiful and can be found near-instantly. So it's not controversial to them when they come across a piece of software that can give them thousands of new pictures near-instantly. But obviously, prior to around October of 2022, there was nearly always a human behind the art on those timelines. To a human artist, their own work is probably not as plentiful and takes way longer to produce than to consume. Those consumers never needed to interact with the artist or understand the process to appreciate the art privately. Up to now that was usually not a problem. Maybe that idea will undergo changes in the following years, that the tech is so advanced that a level of respect for the specific process of human artists is necessary for cordial communication of art to succeed. Otherwise it will be disparaged with the equivalent of "opinion discarded" from the nature of the thing. It makes me wonder, what are the implications of this for domains that haven't been automated to the extent of SD yet? SD has proven that many, many people wanted this level of "art" automation from the beginning. The singular event that made this fact clear was the release of SD. There could be millions of people out there with their own preconceived notions, correct or not, just waiting for the ability to cut out the middleman in their own domains. It's like a powder keg waiting for the tiniest spark of technological progress to be ignited. For the "respect of artists" angle, I'm reminded of this article[1] about a modern art installation from 12 years ago where people's art contest entries were trampled upon by visitors. People were upset by this. As Marshall McLuhan once stated, "art is anything you can get away with." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixiv#Chaos_Lounge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixiv#Chaos_Lounge

satvikpendem 4y ago

It's not obvious. Like the parent asked, what's the difference when an AI does it versus when a human does? If you're a reductivist like me, you'd see that humans are simply biological computers who are doing the same as an AI. If you think humans are somehow special, then of course you'd think there is some magic in learning a new style of art, magic that an AI doesn't have.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
You’re saying it’s not obvious that AI and humans are different, but that’s the default assumption. What’s the affirmative argument for how we’re the same?
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  Physicalism, or more accurately that we're both made of matter and that the structure of brains gives rise to intelligent behavior in such a way as to be analogous to computers. Note that I did not say that computers or neural networks are like the brain's neurons, merely that matter gives rise to computational abilities when organized in particular ways. This is the physicalist approach in philosophy, that there is nothing beyond the physical. If this weren't true, then we wouldn't be able to identify parts of the brain that do certain things, and that damage to the brain in those areas wouldn't affect the ability to do said things. Of course, if you are a mind-body dualist or support idealism, you will think that humans are somehow different than other arrangements of matter that give rise to computation.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    To be clear, I’m not asking for the argument that it’s possible for a computer to be somehow “the same” as humans. I’m asking for the argument that AI as it presently exists is “the same”. Because you’re not making this argument about dogs or parrots or Markov chains or Microsoft Clippy, but you are making it about generative neural networks.
throwaway20718 4y ago