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This is an amusingly ignorant article. Its initial argument, that AI tools don't produce art because they offer meaningfully fewer knobs and dials to creators t

This is an amusingly ignorant article. Its initial argument, that AI tools don't produce art because they offer meaningfully fewer knobs and dials to creators than a camera, is a classic example of mistaking the contingent for the essential. Those knobs and dials do exist. Download a copy of Stable Diffusion and see all the things you can tweak, iteratively, using the same seed, to work towards an image you desire. The same applies for text. As it happens I have been using Claude quite extensively as a drafting partner over the past few months for writing a novel. I enjoy plotting, planning and editing, but not drafting, so I let it do the zeroth draft for me. It has been quite a productive arrangement.

kubectl_h 2y ago
> Its initial argument, that AI tools don't produce art because they offer meaningfully fewer knobs and dials to creators than a camera Chiang is not saying this at all. I'm not sure how you interpreted it this way.
- doph 2y ago
  I found Chiang's argument a little incoherent, but I think he _is_ essentially saying this. "Knobs and dials" are the opportunity to make all the little decisions that Chiang's definition of art requires. He says explicitly that someone who has developed "hacks" for an image generator has engaged in the artistic process. I think he uses the term "hacks" to mean that the artist found additional, unexposed controls (aka knobs and dials) over the model.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > > Its initial argument, that AI tools don't produce art because they offer meaningfully fewer knobs and dials to creators than a camera > Chiang is not saying this at all. I'm not sure how you interpreted it this way. He says this, very explicitly, in his direct comparison with photography. I'm not sure how you managed to miss it. "When photography was first developed, I suspect it didn’t seem like an artistic medium because it wasn’t apparent that there were a lot of choices to be made; you just set up the camera and start the exposure. But over time people realized that there were a vast number of things you could do with cameras, and the artistry lies in the many choices that a photographer makes. It might not always be easy to articulate what the choices are, but when you compare an amateur’s photos to a professional’s, you can see the difference. So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no."
deleted 2y ago
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typon 2y ago
My friend is a very good painter, but not a famous painter. In the art world, its an open secret that most famous painters, especially ones that are old, don't really paint much. They hire "ghost-painters" to do the actual work for them, and they simply set the direction of the art pieces and collaborate with the hired-on-contract ghost-painters. My friend has painted for a bunch of these artists and when I ask her whether its unethical, she just shrugs her shoulders because she needs to pay for rent but also, importantly, she thinks that the painting really does belong to the artist setting the direction - that she's merely doing the grunt work. Are the thousands of choices of which brush strokes to put where actually the seed of creativity? According to some artists - not really.
- homarp 2y ago
  https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/how-did-michelangelo-paint-sistine-chapel-ceiling.html https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/how-did-michelan... "the old tale that Michelangelo painted the entire vault by himself is not quite true; he did have help from assistants, and not just to assist in menial tasks such as mixing the plaster, grinding the pigments, moving the scaffolding and aligning the cartoons. Some less important aspects of the painting were delegated too – minor angels fluttering around the fringes of the main images for example, as well as oak leaves and other ornamental details. We even know the names of four assistants that arrived from Michelangelo’s native Florence in 1508: Bastiano da Sangallo, Giuliano Bugiardini, Agnolo di Donnino and Jacopo del Tedesco. They were relatively poorly paid, however, and it seems unlikely that they were entrusted with any significant tasks in the project. "
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  It's weird that in, let's call it "static visual art", so many people defining "artistry" so narrowly, but in, say, film, we recognize -- just in regard to the visual production, not even talking about script, acting, etc. -- that the director, cinematographer, and camera operators, and others, are all artists on some level, and no one would argue that automating functions of one of those roles would negate the artistry of the others, whereas in static visual art narrowing the human involvement to a directorial role is seen as making it non-artistic.

kubectl_h 2y ago

> Its initial argument, that AI tools don't produce art because they offer meaningfully fewer knobs and dials to creators than a camera Chiang is not saying this at all. I'm not sure how you interpreted it this way.

doph 2y ago
I found Chiang's argument a little incoherent, but I think he _is_ essentially saying this. "Knobs and dials" are the opportunity to make all the little decisions that Chiang's definition of art requires. He says explicitly that someone who has developed "hacks" for an image generator has engaged in the artistic process. I think he uses the term "hacks" to mean that the artist found additional, unexposed controls (aka knobs and dials) over the model.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> > Its initial argument, that AI tools don't produce art because they offer meaningfully fewer knobs and dials to creators than a camera > Chiang is not saying this at all. I'm not sure how you interpreted it this way. He says this, very explicitly, in his direct comparison with photography. I'm not sure how you managed to miss it. "When photography was first developed, I suspect it didn’t seem like an artistic medium because it wasn’t apparent that there were a lot of choices to be made; you just set up the camera and start the exposure. But over time people realized that there were a vast number of things you could do with cameras, and the artistry lies in the many choices that a photographer makes. It might not always be easy to articulate what the choices are, but when you compare an amateur’s photos to a professional’s, you can see the difference. So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no."

deleted 2y ago

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typon 2y ago

My friend is a very good painter, but not a famous painter. In the art world, its an open secret that most famous painters, especially ones that are old, don't really paint much. They hire "ghost-painters" to do the actual work for them, and they simply set the direction of the art pieces and collaborate with the hired-on-contract ghost-painters. My friend has painted for a bunch of these artists and when I ask her whether its unethical, she just shrugs her shoulders because she needs to pay for rent but also, importantly, she thinks that the painting really does belong to the artist setting the direction - that she's merely doing the grunt work. Are the thousands of choices of which brush strokes to put where actually the seed of creativity? According to some artists - not really.

homarp 2y ago
https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/how-did-michelangelo-paint-sistine-chapel-ceiling.html https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/how-did-michelan... "the old tale that Michelangelo painted the entire vault by himself is not quite true; he did have help from assistants, and not just to assist in menial tasks such as mixing the plaster, grinding the pigments, moving the scaffolding and aligning the cartoons. Some less important aspects of the painting were delegated too – minor angels fluttering around the fringes of the main images for example, as well as oak leaves and other ornamental details. We even know the names of four assistants that arrived from Michelangelo’s native Florence in 1508: Bastiano da Sangallo, Giuliano Bugiardini, Agnolo di Donnino and Jacopo del Tedesco. They were relatively poorly paid, however, and it seems unlikely that they were entrusted with any significant tasks in the project. "
dragonwriter 2y ago
It's weird that in, let's call it "static visual art", so many people defining "artistry" so narrowly, but in, say, film, we recognize -- just in regard to the visual production, not even talking about script, acting, etc. -- that the director, cinematographer, and camera operators, and others, are all artists on some level, and no one would argue that automating functions of one of those roles would negate the artistry of the others, whereas in static visual art narrowing the human involvement to a directorial role is seen as making it non-artistic.