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What about taking a solitary walk in the forest. Assuming no Intelligent Design, the trees and everything else there was created without any guiding plan. And i

What about taking a solitary walk in the forest. Assuming no Intelligent Design, the trees and everything else there was created without any guiding plan. And if it's a large forest, it's reasonably likely that by the time the next person goes there, even if they end up following the same path, the vegetation will look entirely different. Does that uniqueness of "content" make the forest devoid of soul? And if you do accept Intelligent Design, then arguably the RNG of AI images is also guided by it to the same extent.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
I can't answer that - I'm bored out of my skull by nature. Always have been. Solitary walks in forests or parks, I find them great for clearing out my thoughts - I'll be thinking about lots of things, but at no point I'll be thinking about nature around me. Which is perhaps preferable to taking a walk in an urban neighbourhood, because I'll always find something interesting there that will let me avoid uncomfortable thoughts. (Except in context of biotech or dynamic systems; those are lenses that make me appreciate nature, but I realize this is an engineer's point of view - I'm excited about possibility of applying what we're learning, and/or repurposing what's already there.)
I_Am_Nous 3y ago
With nature, I believe it's interesting because unlike something like Minecraft, where a single chunk is entirely dictated by math, everything in nature is dictated by life. A fully grown tree exists because a previous animal didn't eat it as a sapling. A hole which was dug by rabbits now houses snakes. A path has been created by various animals moving between the trees, so there's less vegetation there, and it allows for an easier walk through the forest...but that path wasn't there originally and animals had to choose to go that way and make the path. Whether there is intelligent design or not, you can see the effects of life existing and changing in a forest. You can detect choices, individual and collective.
- zeroonetwothree 3y ago
  We could argue the universe follows mathematical laws in the same way. It's more a matter of how complex those laws are. With gen AI we finally see human-created mathematical rules that approach the scale of natural ones.
- vidarh 3y ago
  I can say with some surety that I find things that on the whole has not been visible affected by life as beautiful as those that have. And I've found many Minecraft landscapes beautiful too.
D13Fd 3y ago
I strongly disagree with this comparison but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why. Part of it is that all current AI generated imagery is an imitation of something, but an imitation that doesn’t and can’t follow the rules of the original or understand the meaning of the original. It’s fake. Nature feels like the opposite. It’s real and brutal and, for living things, it is driven by millions of years of evolution. It’s entirely grounded in the physical laws of our universe.
- vidarh 3y ago
  AI is entirely grounded in the physical laws of our universe too. And all art is imitation - that is how we learn to follow and follow rules, how the rules come into being, and how we communicate. It's reasonable to think that they are not good artists who consistently know when to follow rules and when and how to break them, but I don't see how this is any different than anyone else making mistakes while learning. (As for understanding, I'd bet ChatGPT could give a more convincing analysis of an artwork than most people)
palata 3y ago
It makes me sad to think that some people don't make the difference between life ("nature") and some kind of interpolation of data (as impressive as it may be). Maybe that's why we are destroying the biodiversity and most tech people seem to love it!
- falcor84 3y ago
  Apologies if I'm obtuse, but what exactly is the difference? I mean, if we accept philosophical reductionism, isn't nature just the result of (very complex and impressive) data-intensive physical processes?

TeMPOraL 3y ago

I can't answer that - I'm bored out of my skull by nature. Always have been. Solitary walks in forests or parks, I find them great for clearing out my thoughts - I'll be thinking about lots of things, but at no point I'll be thinking about nature around me. Which is perhaps preferable to taking a walk in an urban neighbourhood, because I'll always find something interesting there that will let me avoid uncomfortable thoughts. (Except in context of biotech or dynamic systems; those are lenses that make me appreciate nature, but I realize this is an engineer's point of view - I'm excited about possibility of applying what we're learning, and/or repurposing what's already there.)

I_Am_Nous 3y ago

With nature, I believe it's interesting because unlike something like Minecraft, where a single chunk is entirely dictated by math, everything in nature is dictated by life. A fully grown tree exists because a previous animal didn't eat it as a sapling. A hole which was dug by rabbits now houses snakes. A path has been created by various animals moving between the trees, so there's less vegetation there, and it allows for an easier walk through the forest...but that path wasn't there originally and animals had to choose to go that way and make the path. Whether there is intelligent design or not, you can see the effects of life existing and changing in a forest. You can detect choices, individual and collective.

zeroonetwothree 3y ago
We could argue the universe follows mathematical laws in the same way. It's more a matter of how complex those laws are. With gen AI we finally see human-created mathematical rules that approach the scale of natural ones.
vidarh 3y ago
I can say with some surety that I find things that on the whole has not been visible affected by life as beautiful as those that have. And I've found many Minecraft landscapes beautiful too.

D13Fd 3y ago

I strongly disagree with this comparison but I’m having a hard time putting my finger on why. Part of it is that all current AI generated imagery is an imitation of something, but an imitation that doesn’t and can’t follow the rules of the original or understand the meaning of the original. It’s fake. Nature feels like the opposite. It’s real and brutal and, for living things, it is driven by millions of years of evolution. It’s entirely grounded in the physical laws of our universe.

vidarh 3y ago
AI is entirely grounded in the physical laws of our universe too. And all art is imitation - that is how we learn to follow and follow rules, how the rules come into being, and how we communicate. It's reasonable to think that they are not good artists who consistently know when to follow rules and when and how to break them, but I don't see how this is any different than anyone else making mistakes while learning. (As for understanding, I'd bet ChatGPT could give a more convincing analysis of an artwork than most people)

palata 3y ago

It makes me sad to think that some people don't make the difference between life ("nature") and some kind of interpolation of data (as impressive as it may be). Maybe that's why we are destroying the biodiversity and most tech people seem to love it!

falcor84 3y ago
Apologies if I'm obtuse, but what exactly is the difference? I mean, if we accept philosophical reductionism, isn't nature just the result of (very complex and impressive) data-intensive physical processes?