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

Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

dynamicland.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#61

Post by inquisitorG »

em-bee wrote: post #58
tempodox wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think real creativity is creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing). Not a remix of what exited before, but something fundamentally new. Trained machines will only ever be able to remix their training data.

i strongly disagree that real creativity is created from nothing. i agree that pure remixing is not very creative, but there is more between remixing and creating from nothing. in fact creating from nothing is almost impossible. every creative act is built on something. denying that is rejecting almost every creative work out there. for the majority of works you will be able to find a previous work that it is built u…

I would even question how creative a person is who thinks that way.

All artist are indebted to their influences. It is interesting to me growing up how music artists would gush over their influences. There was almost pride in a diverse and wide influence set.

Led Zeppelin literally stole parts from old blues songs for some of their most popular songs.

Anyone who has learned an instrument started out playing other people's music.

No one considers themselves an "artist" because they can play chopsticks on the piano. AI lets anyone play chopsticks. It means absolutely nothing. The "art" is then in taking it way past that.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#62

Post by hks0 »

soneca wrote: post #36
hks0 wrote: post #32

> Do generative interfaces -- replacing creating with searching -- bring a person closer or further from feeling like they have touched the limits of their creative potential and created something truly from their heart? ... > Why is a machine "discovering" cubism a good thing? Maybe because creativity in this space was exclusive to a few, but now I get to at least imitate it. A machine doing the creativity part coul…

I don’t think the machine will find new ways for you to express yourself, it will only find ways you can impress others. As I see it, it is a prosthetic leg for you ego, not your creativity.

That's a lot of assumption about how one uses the end result, and doesn't say anything about the creation itself.

What if I guide the machine to create something new that I personally could never have on my own, yet never share it with anyone?

It's a prosthetic leg for my brain, whose expected function is both ego and creativity.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#63

Post by throaway921 »

darby_nine wrote: post #6
atemerev wrote: post #2

Humans are not special. Intelligence is. If we create something more intelligent than us, this is the way it should be. Maybe they will build their civilization better than we did — and we did many things that weren’t smart and beautiful, to say the least.

You'd think if intelligence were that interesting we'd be able to agree on, like, any attribute of it. The best we can do is IQ and let me assure you there's enough high iq morons that intelligence not a difficult myth to dispel. Now stupidity—that's something that really sets us apart from animals.

[dead]

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#64

Post by throaway921 »

valval wrote: post #9
atemerev wrote: post #2

Humans are not special. Intelligence is. If we create something more intelligent than us, this is the way it should be. Maybe they will build their civilization better than we did — and we did many things that weren’t smart and beautiful, to say the least.

Humans are all there is. We’re God’s plan, and our successes and failures are all meant to be.

[dead]

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#65

Post by soneca »

hks0 wrote: post #62
soneca wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the machine will find new ways for you to express yourself, it will only find ways you can impress others. As I see it, it is a prosthetic leg for you ego, not your creativity.

That's a lot of assumption about how one uses the end result, and doesn't say anything about the creation itself. What if I guide the machine to create something new that I personally could never have on my own, yet never share it with anyone? It's a prosthetic leg for my brain, whose expected function is both ego and creativity.

Yes, that’s a lot of assumptions. That’s why I tried to punctuate that is my opinion, and my view, while speculating how you would use it. Or, more accurately, how “one” would use it, since I know nothing about you and just using the impression that I got from your comment to express my generalization of the issue and my judgemental stance on it.

That said, I am still fully on the side that this use of AI is not IA, agreeing with the author of the post. A “prosthetic leg” is a metaphor for IA, so I don’t think it is that. Neither for creativity, nor for ego actually. It is a subterfuge for, maybe, aiding one into self acceptance of what they can produce artistically.

My advice would be to not use AI and, instead, make an effort into understanding what one can produce without AI, even if it is not aesthetically similar to what others produce. Dig deeper into what one can produce, regardless of any accepted technique for the craft, and that will be art. A more significant art and more humanly creative (by definition) of what the output of an AI would ever be. And a more significant art for any observer/reader, even if it contains what is perceived as rookie vices or mistakes.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#66

Post by fragmede »

ben_w wrote: post #49
fragmede wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curing addiction with ultrasound, non-invasive brain surgery. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/11/02/addiction...

Ultrasound is as exogenous as the drugs, regardless of if that works or is as much a misunderstanding of the research as the cancer cures I've been seeing reported since I started paying attention aged 10.

How long ago is that? Cancer covers a huge amount of ground, and if you don't think surviability rates have improved in the few decades, you're not paying attention.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#67

Post by ben_w »

fragmede wrote: post #66
ben_w wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultrasound is as exogenous as the drugs, regardless of if that works or is as much a misunderstanding of the research as the cancer cures I've been seeing reported since I started paying attention aged 10.

How long ago is that? Cancer covers a huge amount of ground, and if you don't think surviability rates have improved in the few decades, you're not paying attention.

I'm not saying that, I'm saying newspapers often treat every breakthrough as though it's the last one we need, irregardless of the quality of the study, the magnitude of the effect, if it was only in mice (or worse, in a cell culture), if it already existed, if it was reproducible, if it has side effects, etc. — sometimes you can even turn a few pages in the same edition and find the same paper saying some common item both causes and cures cancer.

But to answer your question, when I was 10 it was 1993/4 and the news was "particle beams to target tumours without surgery" or similar, even though Therac-25 predates my birth.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#68

Post by Simon_ORourke »

kpmcc wrote: post #17
Simon_ORourke wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're God's plan, she mustn't have put too much thought into it.

How many of your complex projects have gone according to plan?

A few, but in my defence I never claim to be all-knowing or otherwise omnipotent.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#69

Post by einpoklum »

huem0n wrote: post #59

> The most important question for an IA tool is: does it grow the person? Or does it create a dependency which ultimately weakens them? While this is easy to agree with, there is a counterpoint (and a counter-counterpoint to that): EVEN a bicycle could weaken a person (assuming they're going the same distance). And LLM's can act as amplifiers (skilled devs can learn even faster). The counterpoint can be found in fail…

> The author mentioned dependency, but its important to point out that if a bike breaks, 99 times out of 100 times it's still possible to walk.

Not really. You can always start walking of course, but like with the car, that won't help you much. If you were using your bike to get to the other side of the city (which in many non-US cities is quite possible and common) - walking there will take you the whole day instead of a half-hour.

Re: Is this the civilization we want? (2017)

#70

Post by satisfice »

atemerev wrote: post #52
satisfice wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an absurd statement. You are using a premise (the concept of "should") that emerges from and has meaning only within human society (because it's a human should-- the only kind you have any competence to imagine or assert) to argue for the domination of humans by some other class of moral creature. Your argument has no force. Just as you can't pass a law that says there is no such thing as a law, you can't reason…

There is nothing special about being human. Homo sapiens is accidental, a product of trial and error, like any other species on Earth, and the only significant difference between us and other animals is intelligence. There were even other species of similar intelligence back then on Earth, before we wiped them out. And while we humans are “special” because we are intelligent, our intelligence is accidental, fragile,…

You're simply ignoring the argument.

YOU are human. That's what makes humans special. If we were frogs or ducks, we would consider frogs or ducks to be special, respectively.

If you are making a comment about physics, that's fine, except then there is no SHOULD, but only IS. Should is a construct that exists within a society. Since we are humans, our shoulds only hold within human society.

Post reply on HN