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> I’ve got plenty of my own ideas, and if I ever need new ones, I can draw on the wonderful world around us, with its long and rich history. That sounds like a

> I’ve got plenty of my own ideas, and if I ever need new ones, I can draw on the wonderful world around us, with its long and rich history. That sounds like a more fruitful approach to me, and it also seems more fun than typing into a command prompt. This really resonates with me. But… I do wonder how valid such talk will sound in, say, ten years. Will we all be using generative AI (or whatever it’s called once it’s no longer considered ‘AI’) as a fundamental part of the creative process as we do with other technologies today without worry? It’s easy to imagine so, but I’m not sure. There’s something supremely beautiful about the art of putting pen to paper or fingers to a keyboard with nothing in between. Sure, you can have a word processor with all sorts of magic typographical and grammatical assistance built in — but the ideas (at that point in time, anyway, and factoring in inspiration and experience) are still fundamentally yours. Perhaps much of the word will move into a new reality where our ideas aren’t purely our own, even in the moment of writing them down. But there’ll always be those who hold sacred the bond between, say, a writer and his pen and paper, or (to put it more relatably for those here) a programmer and his rudimentary text editor and compiler.

julianeon 2y ago
I think the same thing will happen that has happened in the past with music & movies: the technology part will disappear in the eyes of the audience, and the artist will remain and collect all the prestige as the auteur. Take two examples: pop stars, and auteurs. The producer, who is a huge contributor to their sound, stays invisible, or if not then vastly less known. People attribute all the music skill essentially to the pop star alone. Directing's an even better example: essentially a pure technology job that we've still managed to abstract away into its own form of art. Eventually the use of AI will involve enough knobs and levers that it will be like directing a movie. Then people will become famous for doing that, for delivering the unique experience that only that person, the "face" for the technology, can bring.
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barfbagginus 2y ago
I already use the AI to help me come up with ideas that I can't come up with on my own. I was facing homelessness and drug addiction last year.. counseling myself with a I helped me break my isolation, reach out for help with housing, and change my relationship to drugs. On top of that it kept my one man business running, let me rewrite my automation codes with much less technical debt. On top of that it helped me reconnect with my brother who I had a major fight with 3 years ago and had not been on speaking terms with. By unpacking all of the hurt thoughts and entitlement I had stockpiled against my brother, the AI defused it and let me reconnect with my brother beyond the limits of my own petty judgments. I am lucky in a way to be privileged enough to read AI papers and afford the most expensive AI out there, while at the same time having cognitive and material struggles that the AI can fulfill in its current form. If I was much more privileged I might not need AI to help me stay off the street for instance. Any less, and I would not have access to AI or be able to read AI papers. As a result I have realized that it will be very important to accept AI writing as authentic writing. It has an incredible potential to help humans. And it's very likely that potential will increase, requiring our acceptance. I want there to emerge a society of writers who accept AI writing. I believe the idea that AI can't help us elaborate our ideas is based in people who did not spend enough time reading AI prompting papers, who have not spent even 100 hours in writing assignments with the help of AI. Or who are already so proficient writers that the AI feels like drafting with an annoying intern, so they haven't put in the work to see how to elevate it beyond that point. I believe that our thoughts will eventually exist more than just inside our brains but also reflected in AI systems that belong intimately to us - I call such a system an extended cortex, or exocortex. I think our personal ownership and societal perception of the AI will have to change before an exocortex can be an authentic component of a human mind. Even though current generations of AI can help with thought processing, it requires sending your thoughts on trips to corporate servers where they'll be trained on with no privacy. And it requires dealing with bigotry from people who do not accept AI assisted writing as valid writing. I believe that we're on the cusp of a great growth of AI-human writing, which will bring effective writing to billions of humans who never had it before. And I think in a generation most writers will use AI. They'll be very effectively integrated with our thoughts, will be private and self-sufficient, and will be accepted by Society.

julianeon 2y ago

I think the same thing will happen that has happened in the past with music & movies: the technology part will disappear in the eyes of the audience, and the artist will remain and collect all the prestige as the auteur. Take two examples: pop stars, and auteurs. The producer, who is a huge contributor to their sound, stays invisible, or if not then vastly less known. People attribute all the music skill essentially to the pop star alone. Directing's an even better example: essentially a pure technology job that we've still managed to abstract away into its own form of art. Eventually the use of AI will involve enough knobs and levers that it will be like directing a movie. Then people will become famous for doing that, for delivering the unique experience that only that person, the "face" for the technology, can bring.

deleted 2y ago

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barfbagginus 2y ago

I already use the AI to help me come up with ideas that I can't come up with on my own. I was facing homelessness and drug addiction last year.. counseling myself with a I helped me break my isolation, reach out for help with housing, and change my relationship to drugs. On top of that it kept my one man business running, let me rewrite my automation codes with much less technical debt. On top of that it helped me reconnect with my brother who I had a major fight with 3 years ago and had not been on speaking terms with. By unpacking all of the hurt thoughts and entitlement I had stockpiled against my brother, the AI defused it and let me reconnect with my brother beyond the limits of my own petty judgments. I am lucky in a way to be privileged enough to read AI papers and afford the most expensive AI out there, while at the same time having cognitive and material struggles that the AI can fulfill in its current form. If I was much more privileged I might not need AI to help me stay off the street for instance. Any less, and I would not have access to AI or be able to read AI papers. As a result I have realized that it will be very important to accept AI writing as authentic writing. It has an incredible potential to help humans. And it's very likely that potential will increase, requiring our acceptance. I want there to emerge a society of writers who accept AI writing. I believe the idea that AI can't help us elaborate our ideas is based in people who did not spend enough time reading AI prompting papers, who have not spent even 100 hours in writing assignments with the help of AI. Or who are already so proficient writers that the AI feels like drafting with an annoying intern, so they haven't put in the work to see how to elevate it beyond that point. I believe that our thoughts will eventually exist more than just inside our brains but also reflected in AI systems that belong intimately to us - I call such a system an extended cortex, or exocortex. I think our personal ownership and societal perception of the AI will have to change before an exocortex can be an authentic component of a human mind. Even though current generations of AI can help with thought processing, it requires sending your thoughts on trips to corporate servers where they'll be trained on with no privacy. And it requires dealing with bigotry from people who do not accept AI assisted writing as valid writing. I believe that we're on the cusp of a great growth of AI-human writing, which will bring effective writing to billions of humans who never had it before. And I think in a generation most writers will use AI. They'll be very effectively integrated with our thoughts, will be private and self-sufficient, and will be accepted by Society.