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Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

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Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#11

Post by eightysixfour »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #7
hellothere1337 wrote: post #4

Seems to me there's a confusion of ideas here. If you want to create "true" art no one is stopping you. If you're upset people can make more money by "undermining" the creative process by using tools then you're not really interested in creating "true" art with the "creative process", you're interested in money.

The problem is, society is set up now so that the ONLY thing people CAN do is go after money. It was pushed hard in that direction by tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook because they wanted to maximize pure short-term profit by sucking life out of people. There was a time in history where you COULD create real art and make a decent living out of it. Now, AI has set up the ultimate PRISONER'S DILEMMA (…

> There was a time in history where you COULD create real art and make a decent living out of it.

Source? The “starving artist” trope has existed a lot longer than the tech conglomerates.

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#12

Post by [deleted] »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #8
hellothere1337 wrote: post #4

Seems to me there's a confusion of ideas here. If you want to create "true" art no one is stopping you. If you're upset people can make more money by "undermining" the creative process by using tools then you're not really interested in creating "true" art with the "creative process", you're interested in money.

Are you saying people who make "true art" should not be doing it for reward, or should not be as interested in money as non-artists? This is enormously reductive and is quite a modern idea. Most artists in history have made art for gain. It is a bold strategy to suggest that Nick Cave is confused by ideas of income and art. I don't care who you are: on this topic, Cave is almost 100% certainly better informed than yo…

[deleted]

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#13

Post by pphysch »

poopbutt7 wrote: post #10
vouaobrasil wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, society is set up now so that the ONLY thing people CAN do is go after money. It was pushed hard in that direction by tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook because they wanted to maximize pure short-term profit by sucking life out of people. There was a time in history where you COULD create real art and make a decent living out of it. Now, AI has set up the ultimate PRISONER'S DILEMMA (…

> There was a time in history where you COULD create real art and make a decent living out of it. Honest question, is that actually true? Historically, professional art always struck me as the domain of the rich, the starving artist, or the person taking commissions for the rich.

Sorta. Being a small time musician was a sizeable industry before the invention of the playback device.

But still, it was commodity "art". The restauranteur wanted you to play the classics, not your creative original "nonsense".

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#14

Post by luminen »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #5

From the article: > ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put…

As with most things, I think the true value of LLMs will come from use in moderation. In theory, having AI write an annoyingly polite email to a frustrated customer saves emotional and artistic capital that a knowledge worker can spend later on their own pursuits.

It makes me think of something Brandon Sanderson wrote that has been bouncing around in my head a lot lately:

"Physical labor is great for the mind, as it leaves all kinds of time to consider the world. Other work, like accounting or scribing, demands little of the body—but siphons energy from the mind.

If you wish to become a storyteller, here is a hint: sell your labor, but not your mind. Give me ten hours a day scrubbing a deck, and oh the stories I could imagine. Give me ten hours adding sums, and all you’ll have me imagining at the end is a warm bed and a thought-free evening.”

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#16

Post by lll-o-lll »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #5

From the article: > ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put…

Not an artist, but many people refer to the creative part of making software as an “art”, so here’s a take. ChatGPT allows for rapid iteration of ideas. I have an idea, I get ChatGPT to flesh it out, I iterate. The value ChatGPT is providing is not to be the source of creativity, it’s in speeding up the process from idea to concrete implementation. It’s a tool. In software development and engineering more generally, we are used to using all kinds of tools to accelerate the process of idea -> reality. Is a song writer not allowed tools to help do the same?

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#17

Post by hellothere1337 »

bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #8
hellothere1337 wrote: post #4

Seems to me there's a confusion of ideas here. If you want to create "true" art no one is stopping you. If you're upset people can make more money by "undermining" the creative process by using tools then you're not really interested in creating "true" art with the "creative process", you're interested in money.

Are you saying people who make "true art" should not be doing it for reward, or should not be as interested in money as non-artists? This is enormously reductive and is quite a modern idea. Most artists in history have made art for gain. It is a bold strategy to suggest that Nick Cave is confused by ideas of income and art. I don't care who you are: on this topic, Cave is almost 100% certainly better informed than yo…

Maybe Nick Cave should stop using computers too since they simplify the "true creation process". Or just disregard tools altogether and return to his destiny as denoted by nominative determinism.

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#18

Post by jnovek »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #5

From the article: > ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put…

In my head, I keep making this comparison to photography.

I like to take pictures. Usually, I take many, many -- hundreds -- of pictures for a project and I'll find one or two that I like most in that bunch. I think this is a pretty common practice in photography, euphemistically referred to as portfolio editing.

I see a strong analogy between portfolio editing and operation of AI like ChatGPT. The camera and the AI are both machines being operated by humans who have developed enough expertise with their respective machine to get the output that they want. If the camera can produce art, why can't the AI?

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#19

Post by crancher »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #5

From the article: > ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put…

The encoding of information isn't specific to humans or "human spirit" is it?

Encoding happens.

We seem to be the first local observers of encoding, but we didn't initiate encoding.

In fact, we're entirely the result of (and dependent upon) an information encoding process we had no role in creating.

"AI" is simply another encoder within an encoder within an encoder... etc.

The value of discovering and propagating valuable/useful/potent encodings is the underlying pressure producing all encoding systems. Look there for "spirit"?

Re: Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process

#20

Post by fullshark »

poopbutt7 wrote: post #9

Creating biblical-grade art with soul is probably a poor use-case for ChatGPT.

Seems inevitable an AI will create art you consider great at some point. One possibility I guess is people only consider art "great" if they understand just how difficult it is for a human to create art in that particular form.
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