Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

aeon.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 90 posts

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

#51

Post by jazzyjackson »

spacecadet wrote: post #48
jazzyjackson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an interesting analogy, thanks, I'll trade you some lines I heard from Johnny Cash: Well John Henry hammered in the mountain, he'd give a grunt and he'd give groan with every swing, the women folks for miles around, heard him and come down, to watch him make the cold steel ring, Lord what a swinger, just listen to that cold steel ring But the bad boss come up laughing at John Henry, said you full of vinegar now, but…

Classic. When I worked in industrial automation, I use to refer to the moment when testing said automation would fail, as the "john henry test".

i liked the part where the machine breaks down while the man pushes past his breaking point

but ofc the machine is repairable, the late john henry less so.

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

#52

Post by jazzyjackson »

skerit wrote: post #47
viraptor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a bad example anyway since Mondriaan has been dead since 1944 and all copyright on his works have expired.

hehehe

speaking of, IMO there would be a lot less hullabaloo around OpenAI being derived from unlicensed works if we reverted copyright to 14 years like the constitution says (well, copyright act of 1790)

Everyone could ingest whatever they want up through 2010 and if they want it to know what the New York Times said after that they can pay for it. The midjourney ceo basically said they couldnt be bothered to reach out to individual artists cuz there's too dang many of them, and for that I can sympathize - too much work remains off limits

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

#53

Post by thrwayaistartup »

viraptor wrote: post #24
leashless wrote: post #12

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 wa…

No. His critique is one of process, not of output quality.

He is asserting the existence of an "unconscious human spirit", asserting that ChatGPT "is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination", and that we should fight against AI as we would fight against genocide: "just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world."

Incidentally, I agree with the importance of struggle and soul-work. I agree with the general valence of the lament, but come away with a very different call to action. In particular: I just don't think I have the right to impose luddism on the rest of the world for my particular niche while benefiting lavishly from the rest of the world's alienation form their much more essential labor.

To me, it's the ravings of an angry, arrogant, and entitled elitist who fears being dethroned from his comfortable luxury and refined status. And a hilariously hyperbolic one at that. Of all the actual evils I would write something like this about, AI Art probably isn't even in the top 1,000,000. Can you imagine looking at the world today and writing that last paragraph? My god.

---

Quotes:

> ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.

> 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 it politely, should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.

> This impulse – the creative dance – that is now being so cynically undermined, must be defended at all costs, and just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.

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

#54

Post by dorkwood »

leashless wrote: post #12

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…

> 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 complain.

> Screw 'em. This is what tools are for. The strong should not tell the weak they cannot use props.

Really? This famously maligned group of people, who have endured a lifetime of jokes about their useless art school degrees and student loans they'll never repay, we're now calling "the strong"?

Artists aren't upset because a few developers made a machine that can generate pictures. They're upset because the machine couldn't have existed without their work, which they did not consent to being used, and it's now on the way to destroying their livelihoods all across the globe.

Can't you see the tragedy in their story?

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

#56

Post by lukko »

putpls wrote: post #45

For a while now I've wondered which topic would force me to create a HN account and it turns out it is AI art. My position is that AI "art" is absolutely a loss and not a gain for humanity. It is unfortunate that so many HN users are output focused on this and believe that AI tool -> output is the equivalent to human creativity -> output. Art is not the same as making a basket or glass. There are aspects to those pro…

I feel very strongly about this too. True art is a struggle to bring it into reality - you have to almost expand the space of possibility. It's easy to make derivative work, all the arguments about artists just interpolating other people's work are very weak - some artists do that, but good ones are truly original, even if they steal. It sounds a bit grandiose, but art can cut through the human experience to reveal some kind of truth. AI cannot do that because it does not understand the world or what it is to be human.

I think AI art is a complete misnomer and there is no net benefit of being able to generate images so easily, it just means there is more noise in the world.

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

#59

Post by unraveller »

dorkwood wrote: post #54
leashless wrote: post #12

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…

> 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 complain. > Screw 'em. This is what tools are for. The strong should not tell the weak they cannot use props. Really? This famously maligned group of people, who have endured a lifetime of jokes about their useless art school degrees and student loans they'll never repay, we're now calling "the strong"? Artists aren't…

No machine could have been invented without taking from the human work that came before it. Those people provided the inventor with a task to be done.

As they tell inventors, you can't patent an aim, only a method, and only for a time. Indeed, the aim is everything they mean to promote by patents... better, faster, cheaper ways of operating in the world.

I thank the artists for their aim. That some don't want what they were aiming at to fall into lesser hands tells me they never did art for the right reasons. The accolades becoming diluted is no tragedy.

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

#60

Post by abathur »

thrwayaistartup wrote: post #49
nonbirithm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that doesn't mean that there is any remotely moral case for undoing the green revolution and allowing billions to starve. A question is, is it possible to advance technology to fulfill the green revolution without changing the value of human creativity due to the creation/advancement of genAI? Or past a certain point, the results of discovering improved health and ecological outcomes will become inextricably li…

> A question is, is it possible to advance technology to fulfill the green revolution without changing the value of human creativity due to the creation/advancement of genAI? I have to admit not quite sure what you mean, and I do admit full guilt in starting us down the path of "mixed analogies" :). I'll try my best, though. > Or past a certain point, the results of discovering improved health and ecological outcomes…

> Where I struggle is coming up with an affirmative argument that an artist should benefit from automation of medicine or farming, but that an alienated lab tech or food factory worker should not benefit from automated art.

> Another way to look at this is: the less you pay for art-as-entertainment, the more resources you have to buy free time to produce your soul-work (whatever that may mean to you).

Ah, yes. The alienated workers of the world will warm their weary souls at the hearth of derivative algorithmic creativity units. The reduced price and efficient delivery of each drone's creativity units will obviously give them more free time.

Perhaps we can even come up with a pill that'll let the drones feel entertained without any content at all. If the side effects are well-tolerated, they can take it before work.

Post reply on HN