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Why are people mixing everything up? Since when code has a soul? AI can be just a tool. You use it the same way you use a keyboard, a computer, a pencil, etc.
by xeyownt 20d ago
Why are people mixing everything up? Since when code has a soul?
AI can be just a tool. You use it the same way you use a keyboard, a computer, a pencil, etc. I'm pretty sure you can build art with it, much like using any tool. People are making art with ascii. You can do art with anything.
But AI can also be much more than a tool, and why can't it have a soul? What's a soul anyway, except something that humans are making up to convince themselves that they are more than flesh and bones? Mythos will not do the same "art" as Fable or Astra would do. AI in 20 years will very likely produce art indistinguishable and as profound as human art. Obviously, humans at that time will always invent new criteria to say why this "art" is not good enough.
- spankibalt 20d ago> AI can be just a tool. [...] But AI can also be much more than a tool, [...]. Contradictio. Going back to Seven... > AI can be just a tool. Nothing, ever, is just a tool.
- brabel 20d agoWhere’s the contradiction?? X can be just Y, and X can be much more than Y. No contradiction, just an observation that you can use it one way or another.
- spankibalt 20d agoNothing ever is just a tool. Saying that X "can just be a tool" is a fundamental violation of that statement; saying then "X can be much more than just a tool" is a violation in form of a contradiction. It's very easy to parse...
- stein1946 20d ago> Nothing, ever, is just a tool. Are you going to expand on this or should we stand in awe?
- camblomquist 20d agoIt didn't receive much attention on HN but someone recently wrote a blogpost that elaborates on the idea. https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/no-such-thing-as-just-a-tool https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/no-such-thing-as-just-a-tool
- spankibalt 20d agoNo need to go to Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, once required reading in many a school where I'm from; the logical conclusion and application of polysemy [1], amongst other things, should get the ball rolling just as well. 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy]
- IanCal 20d agoA banana and duct tape can be just a snack and a tool for fixing a leak.
- greenbit 20d agoOr .. art. https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/features/banana-duct-tape-artwork-maurizio-cattelan-artist-banksy-shredded-painting-a9244311.html https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/art/featu...
- TheOtherHobbes 20d agoThe banana isn't the art. The art is placing the banana in a gallery and art market context to make a funny and ironic comment about the gallery and art market context. Programming is a craft. It's not an art, because creating code doesn't comment on, criticise, challenge, distill, or otherwise have anything to do with any human experience outside of programming.
- noduerme 18d ago[dead]
- IanCal 20d agoYes that was the point of the comment.
- noduerme 20d agoIf you don't know what a soul is, and you think it's something people just make up, then you are missing out on the experience of being human and you have a bigger problem than not being able to understand what art is.
- red75prime 20d agoIs it this fuzzy blob of ineffable experiences, aesthetics, qualia, self-reference, dualism, spirituality and other things? I don't need to reject all this to notice that its fuzziness makes it impossible to operationalize.
- deleted 20d ago[deleted]
- TheOtherHobbes 20d agoIt's supposed to be experienced, not 'operationalized.'
- red75prime 20d agoYou need to operationalize it to decide whether non-human systems can have it.
- red75prime 19d agoAt least, to discuss it, rather than having other people wisely nodding along: "I feel that too."
- qlm 20d agoI think your response demonstrates rather than refutes their point.
- noduerme 18d agoNo... again a misunderstanding of the word, and a major one! A soul - and I mean this in the most atheistic, nonreligious sense you can imagine - is what you operationalize every single day when you're faced with hardship or any situation where you'd prefer not to be. It's also the dynamic that makes you feel joy in doing something beyond simple pleasure or happiness. You know SQL? Think of "soul" as a view of the tables describing your intellectual and physical properties, left joined with your actions, which filters those actions that would otherwise not be simply mechanical or deterministic. Does that help?
- trashb 20d ago> Since when code has a soul? Since always, it is often just not recognized. Perhaps the same way how a newspaper article has soul and a fingerprint of the author, though you may not recognize it while reading. > You can do art with anything. Sure and anything you do can be art.
- IanCal 20d ago> But AI can also be much more than a tool, and why can't it have a soul? What's a soul anyway, except something that humans are making up to convince themselves that they are more than flesh and bones? I’m finding this fascinating personally. The lines people are drawing to try and keep themselves inside some definition they can mark as special.
- LtWorf 20d ago> Since when code has a soul? Before AI I could look at a function and tell you who had written it from inside the (somewhat small) company I worked at.
- canelonesdeverd 20d ago>AI in 20 years will very likely produce art indistinguishable and as profound as human art. If you see art only as more "content" to be mindlessly consumed, maybe.
- noduerme 18d agoContent is already dead. Long live writing.
- cmoski 20d agoIsn't one of the main attractions to art the skill required to create it? If anyone can create some dodgy AI picture, it ceases to have the same, if any, value.
- satnhak 20d agoWhat I find ironic are the "creatives" who declare resolutely that AI cannot create art,... now here is this cool vibe-coded software I've made. It's like saying a chisel cannot create a sculpture. Yeah, OK, but without the chisel the sculpture wouldn't have been made. Who cares. It's a tool. What you do with it is up to you.
- noduerme 18d agoThis is silly. You can't tell a chisel to go make a sculpture for you.