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Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

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Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#101

Post by scelerat »

voidfunc wrote: post #7
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

Most artists, like most programmers are working in a commercial capacity. I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Do art for the sake of art on your own time. But expecting companies to not embrace AI to do their jobs is foolish just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future.

Curious what you think of intellectual property law in general. Trade dress, trade marks, written words, lyrics, distinctive visual styles, processes, melodies etc are all protected under various IP laws.

The laws did not anticipate AI models hoovering up all known IP without any permission from or compensation to its creators, but that does not mean that we cannot correct that and it does not mean those creators cannot or should not be able to assert rights and be compensated for violations.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#102

Post by qingcharles »

woah wrote: post #8
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

Limited edition source code print on archival quality acid free parchment, signed by the developer

Do you offer framing services?

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#103

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #62
throwawaysleep wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this viewpoint is the only reason a shirt doesn't cost a month's wages. Weavers once had similar arguments, decrying machinery that made cloth. Imagine how many more video games and movies can be made when we don't need anywhere near as many artists as before. How many more diagrams in textbooks. How many extra illustrations for Wikipedia. There are tremendous benefits to making art something anyone can get for d…

> No, this viewpoint is the only reason a shirt doesn't cost a month's wages. But that shirt would last you decades with good maintenance, because it was a quality product that was made to be repaired by other craftspeople throughout it's service life (or even just yourself!). Now we have can have hundreds of shirts for that same money but all of them suck, are made cheaply, fall apart after a couple of years if we'r…

Patagonia made a film for that: Shithropocene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TsndZxysts

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#105

Post by throwaway55533 »

> Social Media platforms cannot grow without engaging and original content, made by people. This is the basis for any user to join. Creators have – in large part – not been privy to the rewards that these platforms have generated over the years even though they are the reason for platform growth.

Disagree. People use social media for plenty of other reasons than to consume artists' content. Sharing news with family and friends, arguing with strangers on the Internet -- HN itself is the obvious counterexample.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#106

Post by observationist »

n4r9 wrote: post #56
bronco21016 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the missing piece is the generative AI being tied to a physical embodiment. My point is, we need the physical machine but we also need to work on this generative AI aspect to manipulate the machine. Unfortunately, making pictures and writing text seems to be the lowest hanging fruit of the Transformer AI era since we have significant datasets already available. Several companies are working on creating datase…

You see generative AI as a stepping stone towards chores like dishes and laundry?

Unironically, yes. Detailed, nuanced, human level modeling of the world provides an interface with automation that allows for complex tasks and workflows to be built and trusted. "Go clean up the kitchen" might involve something where the question of "is this trash, or is this an adorable drawing made by a child that should be saved" or other such collisions between seemingly clear instructions and the vast context baked into the world requiring interpretation at a more-or-less human level. The system could even frame the above decision as "get clarification, or risk being thrown in the trash."

One of the huge advances in the last 5 years has been categorization of images, alongside segmentation, in conjunction with reasoning about categories. LLM chatbots and generative images and audios are the simplest and least nuanced uses of transformers, with the least friction between training and deployment of a product. Generative models tend to allow perception as detailed, varied, and nuanced as their output produces, and integration of these software capabilities will happen in new and surprising ways for many years to come.

TLDR; what they can create, they can see - advanced image models enable advanced computer vision.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#107

Post by stared »

esafak wrote: post #27
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

The mantra is "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes". - Joanna Maciejewska ( https://x.com/AuthorJMac/status/1773679197631701238 )

I think that this quotation captures the essence of the problem.

It is nice to have the boring things automated - be it proofreading, generating mundane pieces of code, and stuff. The sad part

In programming (at least, for now), I feel that it is a net positive for my happiness - less stuff spent hunting simple omissions, checking StackOverflow, or checking (not always so complete) documentation of changes between version 0.4 and 0.5 of some library.

Yet, in other fields, it may be different. I am not a translator, but I did something for fun a few times (e.g. https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2019/10/the-statues-by-jacek-kaczma...). Now, with proper prompting, one can get very far (e.g. https://p.migdal.pl/blog/2023/05/genesis-az-by-gpt). For the first time, it gets me some existential chills, as it is taking away the joy of a linguistic puzzle of matching content, mood, atmosphere, and rhymes. It used to be an intellectual challenge only a real human being could do.

At some points, event sparks of genius in breakthrough scientific discoveries will be more like solving a crossword rather than something WE can add to the culture.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#108

Post by [deleted] »

voidfunc wrote: post #7
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

Most artists, like most programmers are working in a commercial capacity. I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Do art for the sake of art on your own time. But expecting companies to not embrace AI to do their jobs is foolish just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future.

[deleted]

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#110

Post by mbg721 »

esafak wrote: post #27
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

The mantra is "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes". - Joanna Maciejewska ( https://x.com/AuthorJMac/status/1773679197631701238 )

Laundry and dishes don't pay well. Art does, but only once in a great while, and AI gives you a ton of attempts for little cost. Since rapid iteration is the biggest strength of advanced computing, people just invented cultural pollution machines in the hope of striking it rich.
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