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Once again, the hubris of developers when trying to evaluate art just kills me. The most important part of art is deciding exactly what needs to be in the image

Once again, the hubris of developers when trying to evaluate art just kills me. The most important part of art is deciding exactly what needs to be in the image and how it should look-- not the act of actually creating it. Even using plain language, describing these things in plain English with the precision needed would take way longer than current experts take to make them using existing tools, and the refinement process is full of uncertainty. At most, getting a base layer for people to modify using the professional tools of the trade. Much like development work, the final 10% takes 90% of the time. In dev, you're figuring out how to make it. Usually in VFX, it's figuring out how it should look. That's a fundamentally human process. Whether it accomplishes its goal is evaluated by humans and it needs to satisfy human tastes. No matter how good the tools get at creating images, they just won't be able to speak to human needs and emotions like people will, maybe ever.

satvikpendem 4y ago
> they just won't be able to speak to human needs and emotions like people will, maybe ever. Until the AI knows what you want and like by analyzing your browser and viewing history. There is a part in the Three Body Problem trilogy where the aliens create art that's on par if not better than human-made art, and humans are shocked because the aliens do not even resemble any sort of human intelligence at all.
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  Customizing marketing experiences for consumers is a vastly different task than creating art. Creating images is a vastly different process than creating art though creating art might involve it. If you think art is merely customizing imagery things to suit people's preferences, you don't understand art. No matter how hard sci-fi gets, what you're talking about is still very much "fi".
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    > If you think art is merely customizing imagery things to suit people's preferences, you don't understand art. No, art is whatever the artist wants to call art, and it's whatever people want to find meaning in. Sure, you can't equate it to producing images, but the vast majority of people won't really care, if they can see some cool images or videos then that's what they'll want. This is the same argument that was used when Stable Diffusion released, yet the inexorable wheel of progress turns on.
    - DrewADesign 4y ago
      > No, art is whatever the artist wants to call art, and it's whatever people want to find meaning in. Your non-definition of art has no relevance to this discussion. You assume this is all very simple because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're engaged in the sort of discussion that inspired the dunning kruger research. > the vast majority of people won't really care If the vast majority of people won't care, why do all major movies and games spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on VFX when they could get lower quality versions of the same exact imagery for 1/20th the budget like SyFy productions do? It provides a huge ROI because people care. If your taste and/or perception isn't sophisticated enough for it to matter, you can't just assume that's the case for everybody else. Truthfully, you almost certainly do have the perceptual sophistication to care-- you just haven't spent much time breaking down all of the incredibly important details that escape your notice that heavily influence your impression of the end product. There's no shame in not knowing something, but there is shame in the hubris of trying to explain that thing to subject matter experts. ---- EDIT: I can't reply to your comment but it doesn't matter. You're clearly way outside of your depth and I have no interest in playing along to help you avoid having to confront that. Bye.
      - satvikpendem 4y ago
        > You assume this is all very simple because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're engaged in the sort of discussion that inspired the dunning kruger research. Not really. Don't assume you're the only artist on this site, there are others too. Why don't you provide a valid definition of art then? Then we'll use that one for this discussion. > If the vast majority of people won't care, why do all major movies and games spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on VFX when they could get lower quality versions of the same exact imagery for 1/20th the budget like SyFy productions do? That's...my point. This is basically what I said (or perhaps what I meant to say, if that didn't come across clearly). Then you said, > Creating images is a vastly different process than creating art though creating art might involve it. If you think art is merely customizing imagery things to suit people's preferences, you don't understand art. I understood this to mean that you see something beyond creating images (ie, fancy VFX) and that there is some deeper meaning of "art." My point is that as long as people see pretty, expensive pictures on the screen, many of them won't care about some ideal artistic merit. See how much money Avatar or Transformers make over generally more highly-regarded artistic films like Everything Everywhere All At Once which didn't make nearly as much.
- astrange 4y ago
  This is a completely different problem than image generation and we do not know how to do it well. Don't just assume AI can do whatever you just imagined they can. Besides, humans have the power of boredom and so it's not possible to create "perfect" images that would hold their attention forever.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    Netflix and other sites already have recommendation engines. It might not be the best but it seems to work fine so far.
    - astrange 4y ago
      TikTok is the only recommender I've heard actually work for people. Netflix is tuned for what they want to show people, not what people want to watch. Algorithmic timelines generally aren't popular with users though. (Although a lot of "recommendation algorithms" are actually spam fighting, not engagement promoting.)
      - satvikpendem 4y ago
        > Algorithmic timelines generally aren't popular with users though. Depends on how well they work, as you say, TikTok is a big one where I doubt many people want their feed in a chronological manner instead. Technical people especially seem to dislike algorithmic feeds but for the layperson, they don't really mind it (indeed, they don't even think about it at all, based on personal experience some of the people I've talked to don't even know that chronological feeds are even a thing).
refulgentis 4y ago
I’m sorry about these replies they’re so funny. I’m an engineer and wish more of us understood that these aren’t workflow replacements, we’d build much better tools. Been in AI art for 2 years so I also grok that we’re not one more model away from reading your mind and always perfect results
- DrewADesign 4y ago
  Yeah. Convincing people that they don't know something they think they know is always a tough task. Convincing developers they don't know something they think they know just might be impossible. I feel like the kid in the Starfish parable.

satvikpendem 4y ago

> they just won't be able to speak to human needs and emotions like people will, maybe ever. Until the AI knows what you want and like by analyzing your browser and viewing history. There is a part in the Three Body Problem trilogy where the aliens create art that's on par if not better than human-made art, and humans are shocked because the aliens do not even resemble any sort of human intelligence at all.

DrewADesign 4y ago
Customizing marketing experiences for consumers is a vastly different task than creating art. Creating images is a vastly different process than creating art though creating art might involve it. If you think art is merely customizing imagery things to suit people's preferences, you don't understand art. No matter how hard sci-fi gets, what you're talking about is still very much "fi".
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  > If you think art is merely customizing imagery things to suit people's preferences, you don't understand art. No, art is whatever the artist wants to call art, and it's whatever people want to find meaning in. Sure, you can't equate it to producing images, but the vast majority of people won't really care, if they can see some cool images or videos then that's what they'll want. This is the same argument that was used when Stable Diffusion released, yet the inexorable wheel of progress turns on.
  - DrewADesign 4y ago
    > No, art is whatever the artist wants to call art, and it's whatever people want to find meaning in. Your non-definition of art has no relevance to this discussion. You assume this is all very simple because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're engaged in the sort of discussion that inspired the dunning kruger research. > the vast majority of people won't really care If the vast majority of people won't care, why do all major movies and games spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on VFX when they could get lower quality versions of the same exact imagery for 1/20th the budget like SyFy productions do? It provides a huge ROI because people care. If your taste and/or perception isn't sophisticated enough for it to matter, you can't just assume that's the case for everybody else. Truthfully, you almost certainly do have the perceptual sophistication to care-- you just haven't spent much time breaking down all of the incredibly important details that escape your notice that heavily influence your impression of the end product. There's no shame in not knowing something, but there is shame in the hubris of trying to explain that thing to subject matter experts. ---- EDIT: I can't reply to your comment but it doesn't matter. You're clearly way outside of your depth and I have no interest in playing along to help you avoid having to confront that. Bye.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      > You assume this is all very simple because you have no idea what you're talking about. You're engaged in the sort of discussion that inspired the dunning kruger research. Not really. Don't assume you're the only artist on this site, there are others too. Why don't you provide a valid definition of art then? Then we'll use that one for this discussion. > If the vast majority of people won't care, why do all major movies and games spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on VFX when they could get lower quality versions of the same exact imagery for 1/20th the budget like SyFy productions do? That's...my point. This is basically what I said (or perhaps what I meant to say, if that didn't come across clearly). Then you said, > Creating images is a vastly different process than creating art though creating art might involve it. If you think art is merely customizing imagery things to suit people's preferences, you don't understand art. I understood this to mean that you see something beyond creating images (ie, fancy VFX) and that there is some deeper meaning of "art." My point is that as long as people see pretty, expensive pictures on the screen, many of them won't care about some ideal artistic merit. See how much money Avatar or Transformers make over generally more highly-regarded artistic films like Everything Everywhere All At Once which didn't make nearly as much.
astrange 4y ago
This is a completely different problem than image generation and we do not know how to do it well. Don't just assume AI can do whatever you just imagined they can. Besides, humans have the power of boredom and so it's not possible to create "perfect" images that would hold their attention forever.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  Netflix and other sites already have recommendation engines. It might not be the best but it seems to work fine so far.
  - astrange 4y ago
    TikTok is the only recommender I've heard actually work for people. Netflix is tuned for what they want to show people, not what people want to watch. Algorithmic timelines generally aren't popular with users though. (Although a lot of "recommendation algorithms" are actually spam fighting, not engagement promoting.)
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      > Algorithmic timelines generally aren't popular with users though. Depends on how well they work, as you say, TikTok is a big one where I doubt many people want their feed in a chronological manner instead. Technical people especially seem to dislike algorithmic feeds but for the layperson, they don't really mind it (indeed, they don't even think about it at all, based on personal experience some of the people I've talked to don't even know that chronological feeds are even a thing).

refulgentis 4y ago

I’m sorry about these replies they’re so funny. I’m an engineer and wish more of us understood that these aren’t workflow replacements, we’d build much better tools. Been in AI art for 2 years so I also grok that we’re not one more model away from reading your mind and always perfect results

DrewADesign 4y ago
Yeah. Convincing people that they don't know something they think they know is always a tough task. Convincing developers they don't know something they think they know just might be impossible. I feel like the kid in the Starfish parable.