4 ms·

Maybe, but don't discount media lobbying gov't, and trying to generate moral outrage about AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety, etc to make sure onl

by gedy 2y ago

Maybe, but don't discount media lobbying gov't, and trying to generate moral outrage about AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety, etc to make sure only big corps control AI.

jkolio 2y ago
One of the funniest moments in modern music history, to me, was when Kim Dotcom got a bunch of superstars to sing on a track about how much they loved MegaUpload. One of the least funny moments was when the RIAA and MPAA essentially directed American and New Zealand authorities to raid his house, shut down the MegaUpload website, seize all the servers, and jail a bunch of his employees (Kim himself only barely escaping extradition). Episodes like that really do make me fearful of what corporations might push government to do. If they want to get you on something that isn't illegal, they'll try to make it illegal. If it's already illegal, they'll try to make the punishment as severe as possible. Oversight of, and accountability from, these entities is paramount.
HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
>AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety This isn't generated outage, it's genuine, and objectively justified. Trying to find clients was hard enough for artists to begin with. We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction, but instead we're automating art and interaction so we can focus on slaving away even harder. This is somehow worse than any traditional dystopia story. Government propaganda posters were at least the work of a human hand.
- echelon 2y ago
  It's not a conscious choice. It's the fact that the convolutions that create human visual and auditory pleasure are simple signals relative to logic and reasoning. Nature itself is somehow shaped such that it is easier to create beautiful patterns than it is to engineer complex logical deductions. It is a fundamental aspect of physics and reality. Beauty is just simple patterns. We figured out that art is simple math. Engineering and law and planning not so much.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    I'd phrase it as: pop art and culture have been optimizing themselves against the human psyche for so long (much longer than engineering and law and planning) that we have a pretty firm bead on what an every-person will like (mathematically-speaking). There's tons of avant garde art, but on average it's less popular (because that's not what it's optimized for). I wouldn't be surprised if GenAI commoditizes pop art, but in turn creates greater demand for abstract, more unique forms.
    - skydhash 2y ago
      By its nature, pop art and culture reduce itself to the common expectations of everyone. And as such has only few knobs to tune. But humans can appreciate a wide range of qualities and the more you play on these dimensions, the more reduced the people that will "get" it and appreciate it. GenAI can be great for pop art, but try to create something unique to you or another person, and it will fail miserably.
      - echelon 2y ago
        > GenAI can be great for pop art, but try to create something unique to you or another person, and it will fail miserably. GenAI is just a tool. Creating unique art with unique perspectives is going to be more accessible to more people. Not everyone will put the work in, but there's a new opportunity in a world full of opportunity cost.
        internet101010 2y ago
        Yep. Imagine you are a producer that doesn't sing very well but knows exactly what you want. There are TTS VSTs that allow for custom models. You can change the key, length, modulation, etc. by just dragging the mouse along the word(s) and it integrates into your DAW like any other instrument.
        ethbr1 2y ago
        I'd make the argument that the nature of tools drives much of mass/low-cost art (that is, the majority). Very few people have the training and complete skill set to fully customize everything. Consequently, the further you get away from "doing the thing" (e.g. playing an instrument) to "operating the tool that does the thing" (e.g. writing music for a player piano), the stronger impression the tool leaves on your work. See also the corralling of c64 demos into hardware limitations. Or early electronic music vs 80s+.
- gedy 2y ago
  Don't blame "AI" for all the cheapening of the arts. It's been that way for a long time, largely due to mass media giving away for very cheap. No one already wants to pay for anything, and artists don't help by putting their works in digital form on the internet. If I want to train a computer model on all this digital stuff, so be it. If you want to be an artist: perform music live, make a real object like a painting or sculpture, act in a play, etc. Don't be a digital "artist" it's already worth next to nothing.
- Teever 2y ago
  The royal we. What steps have you personally taken to automating hard labour?
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    I never said I worked in AI. You're confused.
- echelon 2y ago
  > objectively justified. Subjectively. GenAI is just a tool. Artists learn the craft of analogy, allusion, satire, and storytelling. These are portable to new forms and methods of creation, and they'll continue to serve artists that use GenAI. Software engineers have been constantly reinventing themselves since forever. The stack and frameworks you learn won't last forever, and the field continually gets easier to enter year over year. This is no different than what artists now face. And now bigger forms of automation and process are available to artists. They don't need studios or big budgets to achieve monumental works - they'll be making movies and games soon. (Without publishers!) And the 99% of non-artists aren't going to put the work in. These tools are going to be incredible for the artists that adopt them. We're going to see a whole bunch of Vivienne Medranoses, Zach Hadels, and Michael Cusacks.
- devbent 2y ago
  > We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction We have being doing that for over 100 years now. Look at industrial productivity per worker, it skyrocketed throughout the 20th century. It has plateaued only because all the low and medium hanging fruit was long ago picked and now engineers are busy doing incremental improvements. I am genuinely curious what sacrifices would have to be made of we went with a fully automated community, from growing food to putting it on store shelves, to running the store, cleaning it, everything. Obviously not all foods are possible to automate end to end, but I wonder how far we could go.

by gedy 2y ago

Maybe, but don't discount media lobbying gov't, and trying to generate moral outrage about AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety, etc to make sure only big corps control AI.

jkolio 2y ago

One of the funniest moments in modern music history, to me, was when Kim Dotcom got a bunch of superstars to sing on a track about how much they loved MegaUpload. One of the least funny moments was when the RIAA and MPAA essentially directed American and New Zealand authorities to raid his house, shut down the MegaUpload website, seize all the servers, and jail a bunch of his employees (Kim himself only barely escaping extradition). Episodes like that really do make me fearful of what corporations might push government to do. If they want to get you on something that isn't illegal, they'll try to make it illegal. If it's already illegal, they'll try to make the punishment as severe as possible. Oversight of, and accountability from, these entities is paramount.

HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago

>AI stealing from artists, deep fakes, AI safety This isn't generated outage, it's genuine, and objectively justified. Trying to find clients was hard enough for artists to begin with. We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction, but instead we're automating art and interaction so we can focus on slaving away even harder. This is somehow worse than any traditional dystopia story. Government propaganda posters were at least the work of a human hand.

echelon 2y ago
It's not a conscious choice. It's the fact that the convolutions that create human visual and auditory pleasure are simple signals relative to logic and reasoning. Nature itself is somehow shaped such that it is easier to create beautiful patterns than it is to engineer complex logical deductions. It is a fundamental aspect of physics and reality. Beauty is just simple patterns. We figured out that art is simple math. Engineering and law and planning not so much.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  I'd phrase it as: pop art and culture have been optimizing themselves against the human psyche for so long (much longer than engineering and law and planning) that we have a pretty firm bead on what an every-person will like (mathematically-speaking). There's tons of avant garde art, but on average it's less popular (because that's not what it's optimized for). I wouldn't be surprised if GenAI commoditizes pop art, but in turn creates greater demand for abstract, more unique forms.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    By its nature, pop art and culture reduce itself to the common expectations of everyone. And as such has only few knobs to tune. But humans can appreciate a wide range of qualities and the more you play on these dimensions, the more reduced the people that will "get" it and appreciate it. GenAI can be great for pop art, but try to create something unique to you or another person, and it will fail miserably.
    - echelon 2y ago
      > GenAI can be great for pop art, but try to create something unique to you or another person, and it will fail miserably. GenAI is just a tool. Creating unique art with unique perspectives is going to be more accessible to more people. Not everyone will put the work in, but there's a new opportunity in a world full of opportunity cost.
      - internet101010 2y ago
        Yep. Imagine you are a producer that doesn't sing very well but knows exactly what you want. There are TTS VSTs that allow for custom models. You can change the key, length, modulation, etc. by just dragging the mouse along the word(s) and it integrates into your DAW like any other instrument.
      - ethbr1 2y ago
        I'd make the argument that the nature of tools drives much of mass/low-cost art (that is, the majority). Very few people have the training and complete skill set to fully customize everything. Consequently, the further you get away from "doing the thing" (e.g. playing an instrument) to "operating the tool that does the thing" (e.g. writing music for a player piano), the stronger impression the tool leaves on your work. See also the corralling of c64 demos into hardware limitations. Or early electronic music vs 80s+.
gedy 2y ago
Don't blame "AI" for all the cheapening of the arts. It's been that way for a long time, largely due to mass media giving away for very cheap. No one already wants to pay for anything, and artists don't help by putting their works in digital form on the internet. If I want to train a computer model on all this digital stuff, so be it. If you want to be an artist: perform music live, make a real object like a painting or sculpture, act in a play, etc. Don't be a digital "artist" it's already worth next to nothing.
Teever 2y ago
The royal we. What steps have you personally taken to automating hard labour?
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  I never said I worked in AI. You're confused.
echelon 2y ago
> objectively justified. Subjectively. GenAI is just a tool. Artists learn the craft of analogy, allusion, satire, and storytelling. These are portable to new forms and methods of creation, and they'll continue to serve artists that use GenAI. Software engineers have been constantly reinventing themselves since forever. The stack and frameworks you learn won't last forever, and the field continually gets easier to enter year over year. This is no different than what artists now face. And now bigger forms of automation and process are available to artists. They don't need studios or big budgets to achieve monumental works - they'll be making movies and games soon. (Without publishers!) And the 99% of non-artists aren't going to put the work in. These tools are going to be incredible for the artists that adopt them. We're going to see a whole bunch of Vivienne Medranoses, Zach Hadels, and Michael Cusacks.
devbent 2y ago
> We should be automating hard labor so we can focus on art and human interaction We have being doing that for over 100 years now. Look at industrial productivity per worker, it skyrocketed throughout the 20th century. It has plateaued only because all the low and medium hanging fruit was long ago picked and now engineers are busy doing incremental improvements. I am genuinely curious what sacrifices would have to be made of we went with a fully automated community, from growing food to putting it on store shelves, to running the store, cleaning it, everything. Obviously not all foods are possible to automate end to end, but I wonder how far we could go.