Live data from Hacker News

Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

aeon.co

21–30 of 90 posts

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#21

Incredibly talented people complain when technology lets talentless people make some of the beautiful things that they imagine but never had the talent to make real. It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images. Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able…

the tech would not exist if not for the talented people you are screwing

Mine workers extract iron ore.

Iron ore is made into iron which is made into machines which shovel iron ore.

"Tell it like it is

Till there's no misunderstanding

When you strip it right back

Man feed machine

Machine feed man" to quote a (human) poet

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#22

Incredibly talented people complain when technology lets talentless people make some of the beautiful things that they imagine but never had the talent to make real. It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images. Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able…

the tech would not exist if not for the talented people you are screwing

Do you think so? I can see the AI being trained with crowdsourced input like "does picture A look more like a Mondrian than picture B".

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#23

Incredibly talented people complain when technology lets talentless people make some of the beautiful things that they imagine but never had the talent to make real. It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images. Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able…

Artists complain because they are being hit with the fact that most people don't care about art.

Why is AI taking over corporate designs? Because, my dear artist, the stuff corporations commissioned you wasn't art, they were formulaic cogs into a soulless machine.

Why is AI taking over porn? Because, my dear artists, almost all of your NSFW commissions wasn't art, its single purpose was making someone cum.

Before automation people were forced to hire artists. Do you think the Church in the middle ages would have hired so many painters to decorate the walls of the myriad of minor churches in their possession? No, they would have saved them for the big meaningful projects and let AI do the job elsewhere.

The people really paying you for your art are a minority and won't go away. Deal with this fact however you like. Perhaps if you're such a good artist then use AI to round up your weaker skills such as marketing or story writing.

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#24

Incredibly talented people complain when technology lets talentless people make some of the beautiful things that they imagine but never had the talent to make real. It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images. Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able…

That's not what Nick Cave says though, is it? He's not complaining about the tech enabling people to create. He says the whole song results suck and only have surface level similarity to someone. The closest he gets is actually just accepting: "ChatGPT may be able to write a speech or an essay or a sermon or an obituary". He's not even saying anything about using LLM as a tool to help you express what you actually want to create, ("here's the beginning, now I need a line about X, but [constraint Y]") but rather criticises the complete "song in style of ..." result.

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#25

Nick Cave is expressing a personal loss, and I believe that he truly feels that loss. But to me, this letter reads roughly like: "if I were the server or the bouncer instead of the performer or the writer, all of humanity would cease to have meaning". Which is perhaps true, for Nick Cave. But it also betrays something grotesque and profoundly wrong about his view on the relationship between paid labor and the human s…

I might assert, with false nostalgia because I wasn't there, that we had a much better connection with what it meant to be human when we were tilling dirt and making clay pots and weaving cloth for each other, and now having been estranged from the physcial meaning-making all we have left is our image making, our personas we create for each other and these arguments we have online, and now we're automating that away too.

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#26

Nick Cave is expressing a personal loss, and I believe that he truly feels that loss. But to me, this letter reads roughly like: "if I were the server or the bouncer instead of the performer or the writer, all of humanity would cease to have meaning". Which is perhaps true, for Nick Cave. But it also betrays something grotesque and profoundly wrong about his view on the relationship between paid labor and the human s…

Well said.

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#27
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the tech would not exist if not for the talented people you are screwing

Do you think so? I can see the AI being trained with crowdsourced input like "does picture A look more like a Mondrian than picture B".

You're still screwing Mondrian in this case and the training system would not exist without Mondrian.

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#28

Incredibly talented people complain when technology lets talentless people make some of the beautiful things that they imagine but never had the talent to make real. It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images. Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able…

"Supermodels complain about plastic surgery letting ugly people look better" type headlines abound in AI

Plastic surgery only gets you so far. Likewise for AI generated content.

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the tech would not exist if not for the talented people you are screwing

How are they being screwed?

They are being outcompeted by a megacorp selling bootleg derivatives of their work

Not being screwed looks like royalties for content that the machine derives its value from

Re: Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]

#30

Incredibly talented people complain when technology lets talentless people make some of the beautiful things that they imagine but never had the talent to make real. It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images. Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able…

Moreover, calling upon bible's genesis as an analogy for creation makes for a very weak, backward argument.
Post reply on HN