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I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it b
by jkingsman 1y ago
I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it.
One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote:
A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE ART.
Hate is an emotional word, and I suspect many people (myself included) may leap to take logical issue with an emotional position. But emotions are real, and human, and people absolutely have them about AI, and I think that's important to talk about and respect that fact.
† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.
- andybak 1y ago> replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness. Please don't. That offends me much more than a very mild word ever could.
- stronglikedan 1y agoI think it's obvious virtue signaling, but I would never let something so insignificant actually offend me. Life's too short.
- randcraw 1y agoPicasso's Guernica was born of hate, his hate of war, of dehumanization for petty political ends. No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. It must forever parrot.
- petralithic 1y agoA human might generate a piece of media using AI (either via a slot machine spin or with more advanced workflows like ComfyUI) and once they deem it looks good enough for their purpose, they might display it to represent what they want it to represent. If Guernica was AI generated but still displayed by Picasso as a statement about war, it would still be art. Tools do not dictate what art is and isn't, it is about the intent of the human using those tools. Image generators are not autonomously generating images, it is the human who is asking them for specific concepts and ideas. This is no different than performance art like a banana taped to a wall which requires no tools at all.
- aspaviento 1y agoAnd let's not forget that people call "art" to more things than the popular masterpieces. A guy sold an invisible sculpture¹ clamming it was art. If things like this can be called art, whatever AI makes can be called art too. 1: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-off-invisible-sculpture-18300-literally-made-nothing-1976181 https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-o...
- bonoboTP 1y ago"What is or isn't art" didn't simply become a topic because people like to philosophize about the meaning of words. Over the 20th century the art world took fascination with the subversive, transgressive, the postmodern, rejecting authority and standards of beauty that were deemed limiting and oppressive etc. One direct contributing component was photography. Skill of realistic depiction became deemphasized, with mass production, plastic etc., the focus became abstract ideas. It was also a protest against the system that brought the two world wars. It was considered "anti-art" at the time, but basically took over the elite art world itself and the overall movement had huge impact on what is considered art today, on performance art, sculptures, architecture that looks intentionally upsetting etc. It's not useful to try to think of the sides as "expansive definitionists" who consider pretty much anything art just because, and "restrictive definitionists" who only consider classic masterpieces art. The divide is much more specific and has intellectual foundation and history to it. The same motivations that led to the expansive definition in the personally transgressive, radical and subversive sense today logically and coherently oppose the pictures and texts generated in huge centralized profit-oriented companies via mechanization. Presumably if AI was more of a distributed hacker-ethos-driven thing that shows the middle finger to Disney copyrightism, they may be pro-AI.
- petralithic 1y agoBy this same logic, AI will also become accepted as art in 50 years. And by the way, no one who's serious about AI "art" uses commercial generators, they use local AI with workflow managers like ComfyUI. They are not just typing into a box like Midjourney. Therefore these are the hackers who're showing the middle finger to Disney, they dislike copyright as much as anyone.
- perching_aix 1y agoTo honor the "spirit" of OP's post: I looked up Picasso's Guernica now out of curiosity. I don't understand what's so great about this artwork. Or why it would represent any of the things you mention. It just looks like deranged pencilwork. It also comes across as aggressively pretentious. What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?
- didibus 1y agoI'm not an art historian, but I think Picasso invented an entire art style. When you use AI, you might now prompt "in the style of Picasso".
- jacquesm 1y agoThat a human made it to express their feelings.
- perching_aix 1y agoWhat do I care? Can't even tell what feelings are supposedly being expressed there.
- jacquesm 1y agoThat goes for all art. It either stirs you or it doesn't. I find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjstsWoQiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjstsWoQiw to be one of the most beautiful pieces ever recorded, others can't listen to it and think it is bland and a terrible recording. You can't argue about taste.
- perching_aix 1y agoBut then why wouldn't AI generated art be able to stir me? Why is a human being in the loop so important as to be supposedly essential?
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- jondwillis 1y agoWe must unironically give the computer pain sensors. :( don’t hurt me mr. Basilisk, I’m just parroting someone else’s idea.
- exoverito 1y agoNeedless to say, most humans are unoriginal parrots too, one need only look at the prevalence of memetic desire. Few are capable of artistic genius like Picasso. One technical definition of empathy is understanding what someone else is feeling. In war you must empathize with your enemy in order to understand their perspective and predict what they will do next. This cognitive empathy is basically theory of mind, which has been demonstrated in GPT4. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01882-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01882-z If we do not assume biological substrate is special, then it's possible that AIs will one day have qualia and be able to fully empathize and experience the feelings of another. It could be possible that new AI architectures with continuously updating weights, memory modules, evolving value functions, and self-reflection, could one day produce truly original perspectives. It's still unknown if they will truly feel anything, but it's also technically unknowable if anyone else really experiences qualia, as described in the thought experiment of p-zombies.
- freehorse 1y ago> it's possible that AIs will one day have qualia As the article says, then we can discuss about it that day. "One day AI will have qualia" is no argument in discussing about AI nowadays.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago> No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war My computer does. What evidence would change your mind?
- saint_yossarian 1y agoWhat evidence convinced you?
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI performed an "Affective Turing Test" with null results.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. Neither will a paintbrush. The tool does need to, though.
- andybak 1y agoThe same Picasso that was notorious for churning them out towards the end of his career? I'm being slightly flippant but I do think this is a motte and bailey argument. Not even painting is a Guernica nor does it need to be. And not every aesthetically pleasing object is art. (And finally - art doesn't even have to be aesthetically pleasing. And actually finally "art" has a multitude of contradictory meanings)
- racl101 1y agoMonkey's paw closes. Now, just like you can with Studio Ghibli art, you can generate new images in the style of Guernica.
- oasisaimlessly 1y agoWhat was the original word?
- jclulow 1y ago"horny"
- justsid 1y agoThank god it was censored, someone’s kid might be browsing Hacker News and would now be traumatized /s
- anal_reactor 1y agoNo horny allowed, you're going to the horny jail.
- petralithic 1y agoI've talked to people like this and when you dig deep enough, it's a fear of the economic effects of it, not actually any strongly held belief of AI inherently not being intelligent or emotional. Similarly, and I'm speaking generally here, ask artists about coding AI and they won't care, and ask programmers about media generation AI and they also won't care. That's because AI outside their domain does not (ostensibly) threaten their livelihood.
- hofrogs 1y agoI am not an artist, yet I care about media generation "AI", as in I resent it deeply.
- petralithic 1y agoLike I said, I'm speaking generally. There are a few like you who do, for whatever reason, but most artists hate it because they, at the most basal level, see it as a threat, especially when it came out. You should've seen what engineers on HN said about GitHub Copilot said when that first came out too.
- Palomides 1y agothis is a claim shockingly contrary to what every artist I know, and I myself as an amateur, believe
- petralithic 1y agoWhich artists care about coding AI like Copilot? All the ones I talked to simply do not care. Regarding economic means, I asked them whether they'd care if they lived in a post scarcity society where they could make art all day and not have to worry about their material needs being met, ie they're rich, and it turns out if that were the case, they didn't care about what people did with AI, be it image generation or code generation.
- deleted 1y ago
- fridder 1y agoI do wonder if a significant portion of the hate is from the AI push coming from the executive level.
- sam_lowry_ 1y agoI had to search and found the word "horny".
- lo_zamoyski 1y agoI'm not terribly interested in emotional reactions. This is too common of a problem: we think emoting is a substitute for reasoning. Many if not most people believe that if they feel something, then it must be true; the disagreeing party just doesn't "get it". We must learn to reason and make arguments. I am interested in the intelligible content of the thing. Also, AI does not reason. Human beings do.
- petralithic 1y agoHow can we be sure humans reason?
- didibus 1y agoHate can be emotional, but it can also have underlying rational causes. For example, someone can feel like they already have to compete with people, and that's nature, but now they have to compete with machines too, and that's a societal choice.
- _Algernon_ 1y ago>† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness. 1. You're on the internet. Nobody will get mad if you say "horny". 2. Bastardizing a quote is a worse outcome than you missing an opportunity to virtue signal your puritan values. Just say the original quote.
- raxxorraxor 1y agoI love to employ AI but completely understand the criticism. It does increase my productivity as a software dev. I also think the 10 hours of random electro swing or other genres of generated music is of extremely high quality. It isn't bland music, on the contrary it is playful and varied. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmUSK1IjoQg&list=RDLmUSK1IjoQg&start_radio=1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmUSK1IjoQg&list=RDLmUSK1Ijo... It is entertaining and a viewing experience. And yet, I still doesn't feel the same if you know it is just generated by some carefully selected prompts. Sure, that itself is a creative endeavor, but I would have preferred for AI to clean my room for me instead of slowly replacing every creative venue from writing to art to music. I continue to play music myself, but I will never reach a level AI is able to achieve in a few minutes. Sure, this example certainly took a while to create and the result is awesome. So what do we do with all the superfluous artists now?
- lucyjojo 1y agodid you link the right video? it was extremely bland... dry as an oat in a flash freezer...
- Ferret7446 1y ago> A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR ... Can other humans (aka NPCs)? They seem like they do so I treat them as such, but as far as I know other humans and a sufficiently emoting AI both act equally like they feel emotions.