4 ms·

AI agents suck. It's too early. The first dominoes to fall will be art, music, and film. These don't require perfection and can be iterated on by the creator.

AI agents suck. It's too early. The first dominoes to fall will be art, music, and film. These don't require perfection and can be iterated on by the creator. The tools become a method in the process. Everyone in the agent space is bumping around until the next big innovation that actually unlocks the technique sparks a race to productize. Maybe some will get lucky and have a fast pivot. Or maybe they'll run out of funds before the big breakthrough.

spxneo 3y ago
right now the expected future cashflow from whoever "wins" is infinite justifying astronomical amount of capital expenditure. ex) Microsoft's $100 billion supercomputer Sometimes I get they are already sitting on some ground breaking stuff and slowly releasing it to test our responses and get feedbacks. I'm certain they will be reading this thread but if one theme repeats itself is the lack of trust in the output of the agents and the companies creating it.
- echelon 3y ago
  > right now the expected future cashflow from whoever "wins" is infinite justifying astronomical amount of capital expenditure. ex) Microsoft's $100 billion supercomputer Absolutely. These agent startups don't have PMF and haven't solved anything yet. They're playing in the kiddie pool while Microsoft is placing chess pieces with a GDP-level moat (which is frankly terrifying).
nonrandomstring 3y ago
> AI agents suck. The idea does not suck. On paper it's great. Just tell an "agent" what you want and off it goes to get it. And it's possible. LLMs open the interface to search planning and selection algorithms that have been around for 40 years and are mature. You could have this tomorrow. The assumption is that people want it. Tech business has come a long way exploiting people's vices, specifically laziness of thought we call "convenience". But at heart, tech is still seen as a tool, to empower people, to give them agency. Agents subtract agency. > It's too early.... the big breakthrough. Hoping for progress against human psychology seems a fool's errand.
- danielmarkbruce 3y ago
  This is wrong. You can't have this tomorrow. The LLMs make too many errors right now for most use cases. If you think it's possible right now, you haven't tried to build it.
ganzuul 3y ago
Talented artists see their creative output drown under a torrent of commercial and mass-produced art. There are dominoes to fell but we should not be reckless about it. With postmodernism art deconstructed its duty and without duty society does not grant rights. It is a big problem because art is often visionary about the future. We don’t know that we even have a future without vision.
- echelon 3y ago
  > Talented artists see their creative output drown under a torrent of commercial and mass-produced art. There isn't enough art in the world. I've spent the last two decades making films the photons-on-expensive-glass method, and it's a pain in the ass. I can start new software projects of scale easily. I can't do that with art. It's capital intensive, logistics intensive, and requires too many people in low-autonomy roles. It really sucks the fun out of storytelling when you're chasing down location rights, showing up at the prop house at 7 AM, arranging for catering, etc. > We don’t know that we even have a future without vision. As a creator, I've dreamed about a better way before GenAI was even on the radar. I'm not the only one. Existing processes suck and too much of the work isn't creative at all. As a consumer, my needs are barely being met at all. I want a show about steampunk vampires in space. I want a biopic film exploring Reimann, but told as a musical. I have creative notes for Benioff and Weiss, and I'd rather put those together for myself and my friends than echo words into the void. I want so much more than the canned limited selection I have available on Netflix and Criterion. It barely whets the palate, and my appetite is completely unsated. The closest I've ever gotten is performing in improv theater and exploring the worlds I want with the people I feel comfortable creating around. But that's only part of the experience I want. I want so much more. The art we have today is a pale shadow of the mind's unlimited canvas. A projection onto a caveman's wall. You can protect a vision of a priestly class of artists from the printing press all you want. I'm tired of living in the dark ages when we're sitting at the precipice of so much more. Their jobs won't go away any more than wedding and event photographers suffer in the advent of digital film. If anything, the artists will be the best primed to take advantage of the new alpha. Free of studio meddling, they can build their own audiences that they own without the chains of brand guidelines. Vivziepop, but a million fold. I saw a figure recently that said 80% of consumer film, games, and media originates in the US. Think about the rest of the world. So much culture and perspective that we should all share in remains unseen, and we're left with the lens of US media giants. Think, too, of all the dreamers lost in opportunity cost. There are a billion stories that die silently in the minds of dreamers because we couldn't help them. And the world is all the worse for it.
roncesvalles 3y ago
A major issue with generated art is precision - you never get perfectly repeatable details. Let's say if you try to make a Family Guy episode using generated video, the characters would come out slightly different in every scene. You could generate 100 outputs for every scene and try to pick the best one but it still won't be very good.

spxneo 3y ago

right now the expected future cashflow from whoever "wins" is infinite justifying astronomical amount of capital expenditure. ex) Microsoft's $100 billion supercomputer Sometimes I get they are already sitting on some ground breaking stuff and slowly releasing it to test our responses and get feedbacks. I'm certain they will be reading this thread but if one theme repeats itself is the lack of trust in the output of the agents and the companies creating it.

echelon 3y ago
> right now the expected future cashflow from whoever "wins" is infinite justifying astronomical amount of capital expenditure. ex) Microsoft's $100 billion supercomputer Absolutely. These agent startups don't have PMF and haven't solved anything yet. They're playing in the kiddie pool while Microsoft is placing chess pieces with a GDP-level moat (which is frankly terrifying).

nonrandomstring 3y ago

> AI agents suck. The idea does not suck. On paper it's great. Just tell an "agent" what you want and off it goes to get it. And it's possible. LLMs open the interface to search planning and selection algorithms that have been around for 40 years and are mature. You could have this tomorrow. The assumption is that people want it. Tech business has come a long way exploiting people's vices, specifically laziness of thought we call "convenience". But at heart, tech is still seen as a tool, to empower people, to give them agency. Agents subtract agency. > It's too early.... the big breakthrough. Hoping for progress against human psychology seems a fool's errand.

danielmarkbruce 3y ago
This is wrong. You can't have this tomorrow. The LLMs make too many errors right now for most use cases. If you think it's possible right now, you haven't tried to build it.

ganzuul 3y ago

Talented artists see their creative output drown under a torrent of commercial and mass-produced art. There are dominoes to fell but we should not be reckless about it. With postmodernism art deconstructed its duty and without duty society does not grant rights. It is a big problem because art is often visionary about the future. We don’t know that we even have a future without vision.

echelon 3y ago
> Talented artists see their creative output drown under a torrent of commercial and mass-produced art. There isn't enough art in the world. I've spent the last two decades making films the photons-on-expensive-glass method, and it's a pain in the ass. I can start new software projects of scale easily. I can't do that with art. It's capital intensive, logistics intensive, and requires too many people in low-autonomy roles. It really sucks the fun out of storytelling when you're chasing down location rights, showing up at the prop house at 7 AM, arranging for catering, etc. > We don’t know that we even have a future without vision. As a creator, I've dreamed about a better way before GenAI was even on the radar. I'm not the only one. Existing processes suck and too much of the work isn't creative at all. As a consumer, my needs are barely being met at all. I want a show about steampunk vampires in space. I want a biopic film exploring Reimann, but told as a musical. I have creative notes for Benioff and Weiss, and I'd rather put those together for myself and my friends than echo words into the void. I want so much more than the canned limited selection I have available on Netflix and Criterion. It barely whets the palate, and my appetite is completely unsated. The closest I've ever gotten is performing in improv theater and exploring the worlds I want with the people I feel comfortable creating around. But that's only part of the experience I want. I want so much more. The art we have today is a pale shadow of the mind's unlimited canvas. A projection onto a caveman's wall. You can protect a vision of a priestly class of artists from the printing press all you want. I'm tired of living in the dark ages when we're sitting at the precipice of so much more. Their jobs won't go away any more than wedding and event photographers suffer in the advent of digital film. If anything, the artists will be the best primed to take advantage of the new alpha. Free of studio meddling, they can build their own audiences that they own without the chains of brand guidelines. Vivziepop, but a million fold. I saw a figure recently that said 80% of consumer film, games, and media originates in the US. Think about the rest of the world. So much culture and perspective that we should all share in remains unseen, and we're left with the lens of US media giants. Think, too, of all the dreamers lost in opportunity cost. There are a billion stories that die silently in the minds of dreamers because we couldn't help them. And the world is all the worse for it.

roncesvalles 3y ago

A major issue with generated art is precision - you never get perfectly repeatable details. Let's say if you try to make a Family Guy episode using generated video, the characters would come out slightly different in every scene. You could generate 100 outputs for every scene and try to pick the best one but it still won't be very good.