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The problem I have with the 'effort' theory of value - which I also used to use! - is that you can take it to absurd conclusions. For example, a beginner pain

The problem I have with the 'effort' theory of value - which I also used to use! - is that you can take it to absurd conclusions. For example, a beginner painter will take much longer to make the same painting as a master; so judged on effort, it should be better? Or if I make a minature cathedral out of matchsticks, then it might take me decades - is that therefore more interesting artistic output than a sketch that Picasso (say) made in one smooth line that took minutes? Of course, a reasonable answer is that it is some combination of effort, aesthetics, personal choice, and fashion. Maybe it's like a recipe where the balance of these ingredients has to be right.

jack_riminton 3y ago
There's also the aspect of the time it takes to learn to draw/paint well, sometimes the simplest-looking things take the longest to learn "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child" - Picasso
webmaven 3y ago
To a certain extent, your argument is mitigated by considering the cumulative effort of learning to produce art, AKA "knowing where to hammer", AKA "it took a lot of hard work to make this look easy".
- gsk22 3y ago
  If we incorporate cumulative effort, then the original assertion that AI art is low-effort falls flat. In fact, since AI is trained on a much bigger data set than humans, AI art is in fact higher-effort than human-made art (and therefore, according to the GP, more interesting).
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    That seems like a pretty huge stretch to me. I don't think it's valid to count the effort in developing and training AI as part of the effort to produce the art.
    - krisoft 3y ago
      > I don't think it's valid to count the effort in developing and training AI as part of the effort to produce the art. But that is what webmaven was proposing. "your argument is mitigated by considering the cumulative effort of learning to produce art" So do you count the training and practice a human and the AI took in order to be able to produce the art, or do you not count either of them?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Counting the development of AI software as part of the effort to produce art would be like counting the the process of growing up as part of the human effort to produce art. I don't think either of those count because they're not art-specific. They're both the baseline "effort" needed in order to just function.
        krisoft 3y ago
        Sure. Just a few questions so that I understand you. Do you subscribe to the view that effort is what makes art valuable? A master painter paints an amazing portrait with a few brush strokes in 10 minutes. A teenager creates a matchstick cathedral by working extremely diligently for 2 years. Do you think that the matchstick cathedral is more artistic than the portrait? If you say yes to the first, and no to the second then there is a seeming contradiction. Because clearly more effort went into the years to cut matchsticks than the minutes to draw the portrait. To resolve this seeming contradiction webmaven proposed that we should count the hours spent acquiring the skill. The master spent a lifetime drawing and painting until he got good enough to capture the essence of someone with a few brush strokes. Are you agreeing with that argument? If yes, why does it not apply to an AI? If not how do you resolve the contradiction? > I don't think either of those count because they're not art-specific. The training of a neural network is very art specific. It looks at art. It creates, gets criticised, creates again on repeat. Don't get me wrong. I don't think the AI is more artistic just because it encapsulates more effort. I think the mistake is that effort is not what makes art valuable. It is not a pineapple pooping competition. Emotional impact is what makes art art in my opinion. (Which is a different question from what makes art have monetary value.)
  - GTP 3y ago
    But then, that effort is rarely sustained by the "Ai artist" himself. It is usually someone else that builds and trains the model.
  - crq-yml 3y ago
    This argument rests on your views of labor theory of property, which suggests that you "own something" by "putting labor into" that thing. We loosely apply this as a premise for intellectual property rights, but it's contingent on the state being the referee - and many cases have ended in rights being taken away from inventors because someone else worked the legal system to take it away. In the case of generative training data, it's largely being used as a commons resource. The more you are inclined towards labor theory of property, the more it "feels like" theft, because the original laborer would be credited as owner - the labor of the machine is derivative of that labor, and largely non-transformative since it results in imagery resembling the original, versus metadata, statistics, etc. Labor theory of property has many philosophical issues, as outlined with the "monkey selfie" case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disp...

jack_riminton 3y ago

There's also the aspect of the time it takes to learn to draw/paint well, sometimes the simplest-looking things take the longest to learn "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child" - Picasso

webmaven 3y ago

To a certain extent, your argument is mitigated by considering the cumulative effort of learning to produce art, AKA "knowing where to hammer", AKA "it took a lot of hard work to make this look easy".

gsk22 3y ago
If we incorporate cumulative effort, then the original assertion that AI art is low-effort falls flat. In fact, since AI is trained on a much bigger data set than humans, AI art is in fact higher-effort than human-made art (and therefore, according to the GP, more interesting).
- JohnFen 3y ago
  That seems like a pretty huge stretch to me. I don't think it's valid to count the effort in developing and training AI as part of the effort to produce the art.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > I don't think it's valid to count the effort in developing and training AI as part of the effort to produce the art. But that is what webmaven was proposing. "your argument is mitigated by considering the cumulative effort of learning to produce art" So do you count the training and practice a human and the AI took in order to be able to produce the art, or do you not count either of them?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Counting the development of AI software as part of the effort to produce art would be like counting the the process of growing up as part of the human effort to produce art. I don't think either of those count because they're not art-specific. They're both the baseline "effort" needed in order to just function.
      - krisoft 3y ago
        Sure. Just a few questions so that I understand you. Do you subscribe to the view that effort is what makes art valuable? A master painter paints an amazing portrait with a few brush strokes in 10 minutes. A teenager creates a matchstick cathedral by working extremely diligently for 2 years. Do you think that the matchstick cathedral is more artistic than the portrait? If you say yes to the first, and no to the second then there is a seeming contradiction. Because clearly more effort went into the years to cut matchsticks than the minutes to draw the portrait. To resolve this seeming contradiction webmaven proposed that we should count the hours spent acquiring the skill. The master spent a lifetime drawing and painting until he got good enough to capture the essence of someone with a few brush strokes. Are you agreeing with that argument? If yes, why does it not apply to an AI? If not how do you resolve the contradiction? > I don't think either of those count because they're not art-specific. The training of a neural network is very art specific. It looks at art. It creates, gets criticised, creates again on repeat. Don't get me wrong. I don't think the AI is more artistic just because it encapsulates more effort. I think the mistake is that effort is not what makes art valuable. It is not a pineapple pooping competition. Emotional impact is what makes art art in my opinion. (Which is a different question from what makes art have monetary value.)
- GTP 3y ago
  But then, that effort is rarely sustained by the "Ai artist" himself. It is usually someone else that builds and trains the model.
- crq-yml 3y ago
  This argument rests on your views of labor theory of property, which suggests that you "own something" by "putting labor into" that thing. We loosely apply this as a premise for intellectual property rights, but it's contingent on the state being the referee - and many cases have ended in rights being taken away from inventors because someone else worked the legal system to take it away. In the case of generative training data, it's largely being used as a commons resource. The more you are inclined towards labor theory of property, the more it "feels like" theft, because the original laborer would be credited as owner - the labor of the machine is derivative of that labor, and largely non-transformative since it results in imagery resembling the original, versus metadata, statistics, etc. Labor theory of property has many philosophical issues, as outlined with the "monkey selfie" case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disp...