5 ms·
Genuine question: what positive use cases are sufficient to accept the harm from image generators? One that i can think of: - replacing photography of people
by kibibu 6mo ago
Genuine question: what positive use cases are sufficient to accept the harm from image generators?
One that i can think of:
- replacing photography of people who may be unable to consent or for whom it may be traumatic to revisit photographs and suitable models may not be available, e.g. dementia patients, babies, examples of medical conditions.
Most other vaguely positive use cases boil down to "look what image generators can do", with very little "here's how image generators are necessary for society.
On the flip side, there are hundreds of ways that these tools cause genuine harm, not just to individuals but to entire systems.
- chromacity 6mo agoHow else do you expect me to illustrate my LLM-generated blog posts about AI?
- 2ndorderthought 6mo agoOh my. You still make those? Ever since model chupacobra 2.46 we have AI agents making those for us. At one point I was on the fence about totally outsourcing it to agents but it's way more efficient. Now I have 50 posts a day under different names.
- infecto 6mo agoCould the same argument not be applied to practically everything and have drastically different perspectives from people?
- spijdar 6mo agoThe same question could be poised of art in general. I know that response would (and probably should) ruffle peoples' figurative feathers, but I think it's worth considering. A lot of art isn't "necessary for society". The question still stands, "are the benefits worth the cost to society", but it bears remembering we do a lot of things for fun which aren't "necessary for society".
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- TomGarden 6mo agoI used to think like what you describe, but I've fallen on the side of "art is just more emotionally resonant human communication". And most of the time human communication with more effort and thought behind it. AI art falls short on both being human and, on average, having more effort or thought behind it than your general interaction at the supermarket. I will say, it can be emotionally resonant though - but it's a borrowed property from the perception of human communication and effort that made the art the models were trained on.
- tills13 6mo agoThe difference between "art in general" and this is scale and speed. Sure, I'll grant you that people are going to engage in deception with or without this but the barrier to entry with this is literally on the floor. Do you have a $5 prepaid VISA? You can generate whatever narrative you want in 30 seconds. Replace the $5 Prepaid VISA with the pocketbook of a three letter agency and it starts getting crazy.
- Barbing 6mo ago>starts getting crazy Got pretty wild w/the Iranian propaganda that reportedly _resonated with Americans_ (didn't verify that claim) Slopaganda - https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-team-behind-a-pro-iran-lego-themed-viral-video-campaign https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-team-b...
- nothinkjustai 6mo agoArt is for the producer, and if they feel it’s necessary for them to produce it than it’s necessary for them, and what is necessary for the individual extends to the society they’re in.
- Jtarii 6mo agoIf you want to say the complete destruction of truth is worth it because some people are having "fun" then idk.
- ndriscoll 6mo agoNot much beyond food, water, and shelter is "necessary" for society, but it's nice to have nice things. I'm teaching my 4 year old to read. She likes PAW Patrol, but we've kind of exhausted the simple readers, and she likes novelty. So yesterday I had an LLM create a simple reader at her level with her favorite characters, and then turned each text block into a coloring page for her. We printed it off, she and her younger sister colored it, and we stapled it into her own book. I could come up with 10 3 word sentences myself of course, but I'm not really able to draw well enough to make a coloring book out of it (in fact she's nearly as good as me), and it also helps me think about a grander idea to turn this into something a little more powerful that can track progress (e.g. which phonemes or sight words are mastered and which to introduce/focus on) and automatically generate things in a more principled way, add my kids into the stories with illustrations that look like them, etc. Models will obviously become the foundation of personalized education in the future, and in that context, of course pictures (and video) will be necessary!
- drivebyhooting 6mo agoRepetition rather than novelty is good for learning.
- ndriscoll 6mo agoSure, and she gets that, but at some point she completely memorizes the stories. She also asks if we can get new books at the store, but they don't make 'em that fast.
- s4i 6mo agoIsn’t that also a valuable life lesson that some topics/resources are scarce and at some point you need to do something else?
- ndriscoll 6mo agoSure, and she already got that lesson when there literally weren't more. Then she got another lesson: we can just make our own. In fact that may be one of the most important lessons to learn: you have agency, and you can use the tools you have as accelerants to better yourself, further increasing your agency.
- stackedinserter 6mo agoI have plenty for you: - package design - pictures for manuals and guides - navigation and signs - booklets, tickets and flyers - logos of all sorts - websites - illustrations for books And many. many others. Not every image is art and very few illustrators are artists.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- pesus 6mo agoHow do these justify the costs to society?
- Legend2440 6mo agoThe 'costs to society' are massively overblown, and some of them (automating jobs) are actually benefits to society.
- Jtarii 6mo agoThe girls that have to deal with their classmates generating nudes of them for the rest of time are glad to hear that their concerns are "overblown".
- tantalor 6mo agoPrototyping. Suppose you have a hard time expressing your vision in words or executing it visually. 1. Generate 100s or 1000s of low-fidelity candidates, find something that matches your vision, iterate. 2. Hand that generated image off to a human and say, "This is what I'm thinking of, now how do we make it real?" Important: do not skip the last step.
- apsurd 6mo agoYou audit thousands of genAI prototype candidates?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- atleastoptimal 6mo agoThe problem is I'd prefer access to near-photorealistic image gen to be commodified vs something that is restricted, as then only those willing to skirt the law or can leverage criminal networks have access to it.
- LZ_Khan 6mo agoSaving money for businesses trying to promote their products?
- ticulatedspline 6mo agoIs the argument any different replacing the word "image generators" with "photoshop" ?
- Uncorrelated 6mo agoScale matters. Using Photoshop took vastly more time and skill to pull off realistic images, limiting how many could be made. With image generation there's no practical limit. Some of it will be used for relatively innocuous purposes like making joke images for friends or menus for restaurants. But the floodgates are open for more socially negative uses. If you're the only one in the world with an internal combustion engine, the environmental impact doesn't matter at all. When they're as common as they are now, we should start thinking about large-scale effects.
- davebren 6mo agoIt turns out that effort matters
- _pdp_ 6mo agoThere are many use-cases outside of spam and slop. For example, take a picture of your garden. Ask chatgpt to give you ideas how to improve it and a step by visual guide. Anything that can be expressed visually is effectively target for this technology - this covers pretty much everything.
- kibibu 6mo agoAre those sufficiently valuable that the death of photographic evidence is worth it?
- never_inline 6mo agoThat's a multimodal model with text output, I think GP is asking about image generators.
- lanthissa 6mo agopeople pay them to use it, they find that positive
- bulletsvshumans 6mo agoDemocratizing visual communication is arguably useful, for instance helping people to create diagrams that illustrate a concept they wish to convey. This is contingent on the tech working sufficiently well that the visuals are more effective at communication than the text that went into producing them though.
- galleywest200 6mo agoCan these people not just create a diagram with their own hands? Literally a pencil and paper. I am at the point where I would prefer a poorly human drawn diagram with terrible handwriting over AI slop.
- rafael-lua 6mo agoIt is not the making of the diagram that is the problem, but often the fact I have no idea how to put it visually. AI is awesome at this. Now, does that justify the harm? Not for me, but this issue is way out of my league.
- davebren 6mo agoThe point of a diagram is that you have something in your head to turn into the diagram. There's no point if you can't do it yourself and the image generator is coming up with it for you.
- rafael-lua 6mo agoI disagree. Diagrams are a type of visual communication, and not everyone is good at translating things to visual. I open an excalidraw with clear concepts in my head, but nothing comes out of it. I try C4 or flow diagrams, and I spend an excessive amount of time refactoring them to end up mediocre anyway. Not just me, I know MANY developers that are amazing at explaining things but are mind-blocked when drawing simple circles and arrows. Helping us navigate things we aren't good at has been one of the main selling points of AI.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> Genuine question: what positive use cases are sufficient to accept the harm from image generators? Diagrams and maps. So much text-based communication begs for a diagram or a map.
- NathanielK 6mo agoOk, but the models only know what to draw because we fed them images of dementia patients and babies. Maybe image generators can be a loophole for consent legally, but it seems even grosser morally.
- JimsonYang 6mo agoI a 5’5” male can make myself look taller on dating apps Short kings on tinder no more! /s
- primax 6mo agoEvery technological advance in this space has caused harm to someone. The advent of digital systems harmed artists with developed manual artistic skills. The availability of cheap paper harmed paper mills hand-crafting paper. The creation of paper harmed papyrus craftsmen. The invention of papyrus really probably pissed off those who scraped the hair off thin leather to create vellum. My point is that in line with Jevon's paradox there is always a wave of destruction that occurs with technological transformation, but we almost always end up with more jobs created by the technology in the middle and long term.
- Barbing 6mo ago[dead]