4 ms·

This is a really solid article, and has a lot more meat to it than I expected. It's also a great example of how "AI" is such a boon to bad actors because neithe

This is a really solid article, and has a lot more meat to it than I expected. It's also a great example of how "AI" is such a boon to bad actors because neither the LLMs nor scammers care about the truth.

gumby 3y ago
> This is a really solid article, and has a lot more meat to it than I expected These guys have come out of the gate strong. I think they only launched in the last couple of weeks. Remains to be seen if they can sustain it.
ComputerGuru 3y ago
You could argue that in art it is folly to worry about authenticity and the real shame is when a masterful “fake” suddenly loses all its value when you find out it wasn’t painted or recorded by the person you thought it was. Edit: I am torn about how I feel on the matter but here’s a story worth sharing: I stayed up all night the day before the release of a much-awaited book in a series to read, leaked blurry jpeg by leaked blurry jpeg, hundreds of pages of the book that had just appeared online (I also went out and bought a copy the next day). While reading it, I knew there was no guarantee it was “real” and it could have been an elaborate hoax but the quality of the storytelling was such that I didn’t care (at least in the moment) if it was fan fiction or the real deal: it was good and I wouldn’t have regretted my time or enjoyed what I had read any less if it turned out to be a “fake.”
- wpietri 3y ago
  I could argue that, but it would be wrong. For me, art is about human connection. When I look at a work, I'm interested not just in the surface layer of the image, but what the work evokes in me and what was in the mind and context of its creator. If what I'm getting is just a synthetic, semi-random découpé, then that is lost. Similarly, looking at randomly generated maps can be fun, but it's a pretty shallow fun unless there's a real territory represented there. That said, it can also be interesting to look at the machinery that's generating it, in the same way I enjoy videos of how things get made. But it's a different kind of interest and engages different parts of my mind.
  - mc32 3y ago
    To me it's the basic, "does a a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it make a sound?" Perception vs reality.
    - arcticfox 3y ago
      I don't really get the connection between the scenarios - and trying to think through it I just ran into one more realization of how LLMs have changed things. If I was sure a human wrote this I'd probably put some more effort to see things from that perspective, maybe it's a good way to think about it. But unfortunately now that this type of comment can be the rambling of an LLM, I don't want to put in the effort when it could simply be a mechanical fever dream...
  - jnovek 3y ago
    “For me, art is about human connection.” I find the story of a human who makes an excellent fake pretty fascinating. There are noteworthy examples of forgery-as-art throughout history. I think art, as a concept, is a big enough space to house both things.
    - viciousvoxel 3y ago
      In fact, there's a museum of forgeries in Vienna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Art_Fakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Art_Fakes)
    - wpietri 3y ago
      Sure, I am also very interested in forgers. I'm also interested in the machinery of what's currently getting labeled as AI. But I'm not interested in having one confused for the others.
  - hypeit 3y ago
    > I could argue that, but it would be wrong. You wouldn't be wrong, you would just be post-modern. As a post-modernist viewer, I decide the context that I want to place media in.
- kevinventullo 3y ago
  I sympathize with this argument to some extent, but also would also warn that it conflicts with how many people consume art, to the point where they will respond almost hostilely.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  For me, the value of art is in the communication between the artist and myself. If I don't care about the artist, the art has little meaning to me. In the case of music, it transforms art into just a sequence of interesting noises.
  - hotnfresh 3y ago
    Yep. A body of work reveals bits and pieces of some real, human perspective and life and mind that evolves and moves through the world between each work, adding even more richness to it. A new work from an artist I like isn’t just exciting because I get more of a thing I like (that gets dull after a while) but because I’m excited about what they want to show me and tell me this time. How’s their work changed? How does it reflect on their prior work? What’s on their mind this, or last, year? Et c. I don’t really care about having some equivalent “conversation” with an LLM.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  So much of art's value is in originality, and what separates originality is first vs rest. There are likely thousands of people who can paint extremely high quality Monet-alikes, but they weren't there at the beginning of the impressionist movement. Granted, there's also name weight and limited supply due to creator death, but that "first!" can't be ignored. The artistic-economic tangle around originality wasn't something I'd thought about deeply until I saw some of Warhol's "X of Y" prints in person. Because he used an inexact process, there are subtle differences from frame to frame, which to me begged the question of whether a specific selection of frames and composition of them together was sufficient to re-establish a unique, original artistic work.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    I have no firm position on the matter but I am nevertheless intrigued by the debate so I’ll posit a question: let’s grant the originality is certainly important. Hypothetically: Hitchcock releases his first masterful suspense film. It rightfully gets and deserves all praise. His compatriot releases a “knock off” and Hitchcock simultaneously releases a second film along the lines of his first. How do you measure originality here in the context of these latter two movies, neither of which was “the first” in its niche?
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      I'd further tighten the scenario a bit before opining, while hopefully staying true to what you're asking. Let's imagine Hitchcock's compatriot releases a film that is Hitchcock-esque in every way it can be (camera, lighting, themes, sound... the whole package), while featuring a novel plot. Then let's say Hitchcock also releases an equally-equivalent film to his first work. There is no non-plot innovation in either work, and the plot is as similar as can be while remaining distinct. What are the values these works could likely command? To me... I think the Hitchcock work would be more valuable, by virtue of his name, which in turn originated its value from his first masterful and original work. His compatriot's film would be valuable. After all, Hitchcock's original work was acclaimed, appreciated, and popular, so it stands to a reason an extremely similar work would be as well. But I can't see it approaching the value of Hitchcock's second, despite them being functionally identical artistic works. It's instead discounted by the lack of Hitchcock's name, itself valuable from the link to his first, original work. Interesting thought exercise! The follow-up would be what would happen if the market were flooded with first-alike films, either from Hitchcock or his compatriot!
- gumby 3y ago
  A lot of people care about authenticity, but I'm with the crowd that couldn't care less. A book once owned by Issac Newton vs a used paperback with the same text are the same to me. A copy of a famous print vs one of the prints actualy made by the artist (or by someone in her studio!): I wouldn't pay extra for that. Really nice music by someone who likes the same famous musician as I do? Great! I'm not denying the appeal of "authenticity" but I can't for the life of me understand it.
- esafak 3y ago
  In certain modern arts (esp. the visual ones) the connection between the art and the artist is valuable in itself. The creation is considered primarily in relation to its creator. It is curious why some arts are more susceptible to this thinking than others. I think it is a consequence of maturity; when technique is exhausted, the art seeks development in other avenues.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
empath-nirvana 3y ago
I don't think it's really that interesting that LLMs can lie. People have been lying with the written word since the written word existed. Hoaxes and scams are not new. I think what is new is that there are certain signals in text and creative work in general that would ordinarily demonstrate that some care and effort and resources have been used in the process of creating it, which makes it seem more likely that it's legitimate, and that now those signals are no longer valid. I think that people will rather quickly adjust from default credibility to default skepticism for text online, and will rely more on "provenance" for determining what to trust.
- fragmede 3y ago
  I think that people actually don't lie about some of the things LLMs lie about, which is why it's so jarring that they do. I'm not saying people don't lie - they obviously do. It's that someone's not going to give me documentation about a Unix command line utility that doesn't exist, or a programming library API, and then have be believe them a second time, so when Guido tells me about awk one liners, I believe him. When Ellie the LLM comes around and feeds me lies in a way a person wouldn't, it's really jarring.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Agreed, it's quite a crazy and fascinating article. Had me laughing cynically in a way that doesn't feel good. > no one is really sure what’s real, what’s fake, whether they’re being scammed, or who or what made the songs that they’re listening to. This is close to the definition of technologically induced societal madness Jaron Lanier sketched in an article about a year ago. Pop will eat itself. We always knew that. Pop is the spirit of whimsical, ephemeral, self-devouring, involuted art. It's to be expected. But so much else has become like Pop; news media, food, medicine, clothing, even the cars we drive... At some point AI combined with appalling cyber-security and our over-reliance on tech will start to tear all of these things apart. This kinda started in the pandemic, even before AI. Is it really government advice to drink bleach? Or a terrorist plot? Philip K. Dick would not know how to write this stuff.

gumby 3y ago

> This is a really solid article, and has a lot more meat to it than I expected These guys have come out of the gate strong. I think they only launched in the last couple of weeks. Remains to be seen if they can sustain it.

ComputerGuru 3y ago

You could argue that in art it is folly to worry about authenticity and the real shame is when a masterful “fake” suddenly loses all its value when you find out it wasn’t painted or recorded by the person you thought it was. Edit: I am torn about how I feel on the matter but here’s a story worth sharing: I stayed up all night the day before the release of a much-awaited book in a series to read, leaked blurry jpeg by leaked blurry jpeg, hundreds of pages of the book that had just appeared online (I also went out and bought a copy the next day). While reading it, I knew there was no guarantee it was “real” and it could have been an elaborate hoax but the quality of the storytelling was such that I didn’t care (at least in the moment) if it was fan fiction or the real deal: it was good and I wouldn’t have regretted my time or enjoyed what I had read any less if it turned out to be a “fake.”

wpietri 3y ago
I could argue that, but it would be wrong. For me, art is about human connection. When I look at a work, I'm interested not just in the surface layer of the image, but what the work evokes in me and what was in the mind and context of its creator. If what I'm getting is just a synthetic, semi-random découpé, then that is lost. Similarly, looking at randomly generated maps can be fun, but it's a pretty shallow fun unless there's a real territory represented there. That said, it can also be interesting to look at the machinery that's generating it, in the same way I enjoy videos of how things get made. But it's a different kind of interest and engages different parts of my mind.
- mc32 3y ago
  To me it's the basic, "does a a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it make a sound?" Perception vs reality.
  - arcticfox 3y ago
    I don't really get the connection between the scenarios - and trying to think through it I just ran into one more realization of how LLMs have changed things. If I was sure a human wrote this I'd probably put some more effort to see things from that perspective, maybe it's a good way to think about it. But unfortunately now that this type of comment can be the rambling of an LLM, I don't want to put in the effort when it could simply be a mechanical fever dream...
- jnovek 3y ago
  “For me, art is about human connection.” I find the story of a human who makes an excellent fake pretty fascinating. There are noteworthy examples of forgery-as-art throughout history. I think art, as a concept, is a big enough space to house both things.
  - viciousvoxel 3y ago
    In fact, there's a museum of forgeries in Vienna (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Art_Fakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Art_Fakes)
  - wpietri 3y ago
    Sure, I am also very interested in forgers. I'm also interested in the machinery of what's currently getting labeled as AI. But I'm not interested in having one confused for the others.
- hypeit 3y ago
  > I could argue that, but it would be wrong. You wouldn't be wrong, you would just be post-modern. As a post-modernist viewer, I decide the context that I want to place media in.
kevinventullo 3y ago
I sympathize with this argument to some extent, but also would also warn that it conflicts with how many people consume art, to the point where they will respond almost hostilely.
JohnFen 3y ago
For me, the value of art is in the communication between the artist and myself. If I don't care about the artist, the art has little meaning to me. In the case of music, it transforms art into just a sequence of interesting noises.
- hotnfresh 3y ago
  Yep. A body of work reveals bits and pieces of some real, human perspective and life and mind that evolves and moves through the world between each work, adding even more richness to it. A new work from an artist I like isn’t just exciting because I get more of a thing I like (that gets dull after a while) but because I’m excited about what they want to show me and tell me this time. How’s their work changed? How does it reflect on their prior work? What’s on their mind this, or last, year? Et c. I don’t really care about having some equivalent “conversation” with an LLM.
ethbr1 3y ago
So much of art's value is in originality, and what separates originality is first vs rest. There are likely thousands of people who can paint extremely high quality Monet-alikes, but they weren't there at the beginning of the impressionist movement. Granted, there's also name weight and limited supply due to creator death, but that "first!" can't be ignored. The artistic-economic tangle around originality wasn't something I'd thought about deeply until I saw some of Warhol's "X of Y" prints in person. Because he used an inexact process, there are subtle differences from frame to frame, which to me begged the question of whether a specific selection of frames and composition of them together was sufficient to re-establish a unique, original artistic work.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  I have no firm position on the matter but I am nevertheless intrigued by the debate so I’ll posit a question: let’s grant the originality is certainly important. Hypothetically: Hitchcock releases his first masterful suspense film. It rightfully gets and deserves all praise. His compatriot releases a “knock off” and Hitchcock simultaneously releases a second film along the lines of his first. How do you measure originality here in the context of these latter two movies, neither of which was “the first” in its niche?
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    I'd further tighten the scenario a bit before opining, while hopefully staying true to what you're asking. Let's imagine Hitchcock's compatriot releases a film that is Hitchcock-esque in every way it can be (camera, lighting, themes, sound... the whole package), while featuring a novel plot. Then let's say Hitchcock also releases an equally-equivalent film to his first work. There is no non-plot innovation in either work, and the plot is as similar as can be while remaining distinct. What are the values these works could likely command? To me... I think the Hitchcock work would be more valuable, by virtue of his name, which in turn originated its value from his first masterful and original work. His compatriot's film would be valuable. After all, Hitchcock's original work was acclaimed, appreciated, and popular, so it stands to a reason an extremely similar work would be as well. But I can't see it approaching the value of Hitchcock's second, despite them being functionally identical artistic works. It's instead discounted by the lack of Hitchcock's name, itself valuable from the link to his first, original work. Interesting thought exercise! The follow-up would be what would happen if the market were flooded with first-alike films, either from Hitchcock or his compatriot!
gumby 3y ago
A lot of people care about authenticity, but I'm with the crowd that couldn't care less. A book once owned by Issac Newton vs a used paperback with the same text are the same to me. A copy of a famous print vs one of the prints actualy made by the artist (or by someone in her studio!): I wouldn't pay extra for that. Really nice music by someone who likes the same famous musician as I do? Great! I'm not denying the appeal of "authenticity" but I can't for the life of me understand it.
esafak 3y ago
In certain modern arts (esp. the visual ones) the connection between the art and the artist is valuable in itself. The creation is considered primarily in relation to its creator. It is curious why some arts are more susceptible to this thinking than others. I think it is a consequence of maturity; when technique is exhausted, the art seeks development in other avenues.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

empath-nirvana 3y ago

I don't think it's really that interesting that LLMs can lie. People have been lying with the written word since the written word existed. Hoaxes and scams are not new. I think what is new is that there are certain signals in text and creative work in general that would ordinarily demonstrate that some care and effort and resources have been used in the process of creating it, which makes it seem more likely that it's legitimate, and that now those signals are no longer valid. I think that people will rather quickly adjust from default credibility to default skepticism for text online, and will rely more on "provenance" for determining what to trust.

fragmede 3y ago
I think that people actually don't lie about some of the things LLMs lie about, which is why it's so jarring that they do. I'm not saying people don't lie - they obviously do. It's that someone's not going to give me documentation about a Unix command line utility that doesn't exist, or a programming library API, and then have be believe them a second time, so when Guido tells me about awk one liners, I believe him. When Ellie the LLM comes around and feeds me lies in a way a person wouldn't, it's really jarring.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Agreed, it's quite a crazy and fascinating article. Had me laughing cynically in a way that doesn't feel good. > no one is really sure what’s real, what’s fake, whether they’re being scammed, or who or what made the songs that they’re listening to. This is close to the definition of technologically induced societal madness Jaron Lanier sketched in an article about a year ago. Pop will eat itself. We always knew that. Pop is the spirit of whimsical, ephemeral, self-devouring, involuted art. It's to be expected. But so much else has become like Pop; news media, food, medicine, clothing, even the cars we drive... At some point AI combined with appalling cyber-security and our over-reliance on tech will start to tear all of these things apart. This kinda started in the pandemic, even before AI. Is it really government advice to drink bleach? Or a terrorist plot? Philip K. Dick would not know how to write this stuff.