6 ms·

The chat is full of modern “art talk,” which is a highly specific way that modern (post 2000ish) artists blather on about their ideas and process. It started e

The chat is full of modern “art talk,” which is a highly specific way that modern (post 2000ish) artists blather on about their ideas and process. It started earlier but in 1980 there was more hippie talk and po-mo deconstruction lingo. Point being, to someone outside the art world this might sound like how an artist thinks. But to me ear this a bot imitating modern trendy speech from that world.

josephg 8mo ago
> But to me ear this a bot imitating modern trendy speech from that world. Unless they've had some reinforcement learning, I'm pretty sure thats all LLMs ever really do.
- fao_ 8mo ago
  Even with reinforcement learning, you can still find phrases and patterns that are repeated in the smaller models. It's likely true with the larger ones, too, except the corpus is so large that you'll have fat luck to pick out which specific bits.
  - RugnirViking 8mo ago
    what? what do you mean? are you claiming its hard to recognize the features of speech of large models? its really not. There are famous wikipedia articles about it. Heck an em dash, a single character is often a pretty good clue
    - fao_ 8mo ago
      That is not what I was saying at all :P
sheiyei 8mo ago
It's also imitating the speaker (critic, artist or most likely a gallerist) unwaveringly praising everything about the "choices" it made, even though it clearly made a worse thing in the end.
- ehnto 8mo ago
  Indeed, I have a really dry and information dense way of speaking when working and it very quickly copies that. I can come across as abrupt and rude in text, which is pretty funny to have mirrored to you. This Claude guy is an asshole! (I am very friendly and personable in real life, but work text has different requirements)
  - sheiyei 8mo ago
    I barely read the conversation in the article, only some comments the chatbot made about its work. By "the speaker" I clumsily referred to a generic art-speaker outside of this specific conversation. But yeah, as it fundamentally doesn't separate your input from its output, it will take on the style you use.
rhubarbtree 8mo ago
I think you mean “post-modern” or “contemporary” - modern art is a period of art that came to an end around the 1970s
- jerojero 8mo ago
  I see this mistake all the time. I think people who have the opportunity should visit the MoMA to see the wide variety of art there. I'm sure a lot would consider van gogh or Klimt to be "traditional" art when they're very much modern artists.
  - kjs3 8mo ago
    The OP is using 'modern art' as a derogatory term; I doubt very much they care about accuracy. I doubt a trip to MoMA would be enlightening. It's just a hand wave across 'all those things about art I don't understand are bad'.
    - shermantanktop 8mo ago
      This is a very confused comment chain. Anyway, my use of "modern" was not relative to art history periods, but in the naive, common-sense form: it's happening currently and in the very recent past. And I've seen plenty of contemporary art, read my share of ARTNews articles, and read plenty of artist's statements. I'm enlightened enough - there's great and terrible art being made now, just like there was in 1750. But the frisson of "art talk" happening currently is what I was referring to, and I'd separate that from the merits of the art itself. That said, I will now channel the curmudgeon you describe and observe that some contemporary artists seem to put a great deal of effort into the art talk side of presenting their work, as though the art talk is in fact part of the piece. And I get it, it kind of is, and nothing exists outside of a context. But as a viewer I just don't want someone talking in my ear telling me what to think.
- wongarsu 8mo ago
  Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/3089/ https://xkcd.com/3089/
dyauspitr 8mo ago
Very Ongo Gablogian

josephg 8mo ago

> But to me ear this a bot imitating modern trendy speech from that world. Unless they've had some reinforcement learning, I'm pretty sure thats all LLMs ever really do.

fao_ 8mo ago
Even with reinforcement learning, you can still find phrases and patterns that are repeated in the smaller models. It's likely true with the larger ones, too, except the corpus is so large that you'll have fat luck to pick out which specific bits.
- RugnirViking 8mo ago
  what? what do you mean? are you claiming its hard to recognize the features of speech of large models? its really not. There are famous wikipedia articles about it. Heck an em dash, a single character is often a pretty good clue
  - fao_ 8mo ago
    That is not what I was saying at all :P

sheiyei 8mo ago

It's also imitating the speaker (critic, artist or most likely a gallerist) unwaveringly praising everything about the "choices" it made, even though it clearly made a worse thing in the end.

ehnto 8mo ago
Indeed, I have a really dry and information dense way of speaking when working and it very quickly copies that. I can come across as abrupt and rude in text, which is pretty funny to have mirrored to you. This Claude guy is an asshole! (I am very friendly and personable in real life, but work text has different requirements)
- sheiyei 8mo ago
  I barely read the conversation in the article, only some comments the chatbot made about its work. By "the speaker" I clumsily referred to a generic art-speaker outside of this specific conversation. But yeah, as it fundamentally doesn't separate your input from its output, it will take on the style you use.

rhubarbtree 8mo ago

I think you mean “post-modern” or “contemporary” - modern art is a period of art that came to an end around the 1970s

jerojero 8mo ago
I see this mistake all the time. I think people who have the opportunity should visit the MoMA to see the wide variety of art there. I'm sure a lot would consider van gogh or Klimt to be "traditional" art when they're very much modern artists.
- kjs3 8mo ago
  The OP is using 'modern art' as a derogatory term; I doubt very much they care about accuracy. I doubt a trip to MoMA would be enlightening. It's just a hand wave across 'all those things about art I don't understand are bad'.
  - shermantanktop 8mo ago
    This is a very confused comment chain. Anyway, my use of "modern" was not relative to art history periods, but in the naive, common-sense form: it's happening currently and in the very recent past. And I've seen plenty of contemporary art, read my share of ARTNews articles, and read plenty of artist's statements. I'm enlightened enough - there's great and terrible art being made now, just like there was in 1750. But the frisson of "art talk" happening currently is what I was referring to, and I'd separate that from the merits of the art itself. That said, I will now channel the curmudgeon you describe and observe that some contemporary artists seem to put a great deal of effort into the art talk side of presenting their work, as though the art talk is in fact part of the piece. And I get it, it kind of is, and nothing exists outside of a context. But as a viewer I just don't want someone talking in my ear telling me what to think.
wongarsu 8mo ago
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/3089/ https://xkcd.com/3089/

dyauspitr 8mo ago

Very Ongo Gablogian