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AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

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Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#121

Post by saberience »

vidarh wrote: post #119
saberience wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I can make an AI agent which talks to you just like your husband/wife/girlfriend etc, I can just send you messages without identifying myself as an AI? I mean, if you can't tell the difference it doesn't matter right?

This is a ludicrous comparison, because in your scenario there is deception. If you choose to read a story, then unless it's purported to be by an author you know to be human, or explicitly claims to be written by a human, there is no deception.

It’s not a ludicrous comparison because people are saying that AI books should not label that they are by AI.

My point is that books (fiction or non fiction) should label that they are by an AI or by a human.

Someone said to me, if you can’t tell which did it, then it doesn’t matter. Well my assertion is that even if you can’t tell the difference, the provenance DOES matter.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#122

Post by piltdownman »

soulofmischief wrote: post #106
saberience wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the people generating AI-assisted writing are all the people that never had enough passion or talent to do it before. If you weren't inclined to write fiction or poetry etc before AI was here to do it for you, you probably shouldn't be doing it now.

Awful take. Transformers have greatly increased the potential number of cool things I can do in my lifetime. I've written poetry, short stories, I draw, and am an experienced professional software engineer, and thanks to transformers I've been able to augment my creative workflow. People were similarly dismissive about computers in general. And calculators, and the printing press, and Photoshop, and cameras, and ever…

You ARE, however, allowed to decide what constitutes Art - and the determining factor for many comes down to conception and intent.

With the advent of creation by prompting, the conception and intent is abstracted away to a patron/artist interaction as opposed to the tool/artist synergy you contend. Providing only instruction and infrastructure as input means the appropriate analogy is something more akin to Medici/Michelangelo than Mass-Production-Silkscreening/Warhol.

You may not get to decide what someone else's creative journey looks like, but you are more than entitled to critique the extent of its creativity and artistic veracity.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#123

Post by vidarh »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #76
deadbabe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. I think you’ve failed to articulate any kind of real problem with AI art replacing human art, you just don’t like it personally so you want to see it gone.

> If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. Deploying fortune-cookie wisdom to defend against allegations of astounding ignorance of the real world is... a choice. Which "true masters" didn't do do art commercially? According to your theory, not only should this list be of non-zero length, but it should include every master. So please tell me which ones.

An obvious example would be Van Gogh, who famously during his lifetime only sold a single painting.

I don't fully agree with the statement you quoted, as I think it overstates things a bit - there certainly are famous artists who not just lived of their work but sometimes were on permanent contracts. E.g. Haydn spent much of his career as music director for the Esterhazy family. Haydn also credited his relative isolation from other composers due to his position as part of the reason for his originality.

But at the same time, we see the vast majority of artists of all kinds not making much money. In the UK, the average full time author would do better as a fry cook at McDonalds if it was money they were after, for example.

A lot of these fields skew very heavily toward a very tiny sliver of the top, and while some of them are undoubtedly great artists, the correlation between the highest earners and most critically celebrated is rarely straightforward.

Furthermore, often the wealth comes after many of their great works, with the odds so long that very few people have a rational basis for going into it chasing the odds of a large payout. Chasing the hope of eeking out an existence, maybe.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#124

Post by sorcerer-mar »

vidarh wrote: post #123
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. Deploying fortune-cookie wisdom to defend against allegations of astounding ignorance of the real world is... a choice. Which "true masters" didn't do do art commercially? According to your theory, not only should this list be of non-zero length, but it should include every master. So please tell me which ones.

An obvious example would be Van Gogh, who famously during his lifetime only sold a single painting. I don't fully agree with the statement you quoted, as I think it overstates things a bit - there certainly are famous artists who not just lived of their work but sometimes were on permanent contracts. E.g. Haydn spent much of his career as music director for the Esterhazy family. Haydn also credited his relative isola…

Van Gogh spent his life failing to sell his artwork. I.e. he was commercially motivated, just failed.

None of your other points are relevant.

People get good at art when they dedicate absolutely obscene amounts of time to it. If you take away all commercial incentive to do so, people won't spend as much time doing that craft.

This is called basic incentives and it applies to artists too.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#125

Post by vidarh »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #124
vidarh wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An obvious example would be Van Gogh, who famously during his lifetime only sold a single painting. I don't fully agree with the statement you quoted, as I think it overstates things a bit - there certainly are famous artists who not just lived of their work but sometimes were on permanent contracts. E.g. Haydn spent much of his career as music director for the Esterhazy family. Haydn also credited his relative isola…

Van Gogh spent his life failing to sell his artwork . I.e. he was commercially motivated, just failed. None of your other points are relevant. People get good at art when they dedicate absolutely obscene amounts of time to it. If you take away all commercial incentive to do so, people won't spend as much time doing that craft. This is called basic incentives and it applies to artists too.

After a few of those failures, it stopped being rational to think he'd make money from his art, yet he persisted with his art.

Your argument is entirely backwards.

Artists who dedicate a lot of their time to art sometimes want to sell for whatever reason, sometimes commercial, often ego, but also a lot of the time are forced to spend some of their time trying to sell because they want to eat and would rather not take another job.

That doesn't mean making money was their primary or even a motivation for their art, but a reflection that money is a necessity to survive, and that if you make the art anyway there's often very little reason not to at least try to sell it.

It is not rational to assume that this mean that if the odds of finding a buyer becomes even much smaller that it will cause fewer people to make art, or even try to sell it, given that the choice to continue making art to sell it is already an emotional, irrational choice already.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#126

Post by sorcerer-mar »

vidarh wrote: post #125
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Van Gogh spent his life failing to sell his artwork . I.e. he was commercially motivated, just failed. None of your other points are relevant. People get good at art when they dedicate absolutely obscene amounts of time to it. If you take away all commercial incentive to do so, people won't spend as much time doing that craft. This is called basic incentives and it applies to artists too.

After a few of those failures, it stopped being rational to think he'd make money from his art, yet he persisted with his art. Your argument is entirely backwards. Artists who dedicate a lot of their time to art sometimes want to sell for whatever reason, sometimes commercial, often ego, but also a lot of the time are forced to spend some of their time trying to sell because they want to eat and would rather not take…

Right... and if they can't sell their art... then what do they do?

They have to get a job that feeds them... which means they spend less time developing their art...

Ergo there is less art and the art that does exist is less well-developed.

I made no claim that artists' "primary motivation" is financial.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#127

Post by vidarh »

saberience wrote: post #121
vidarh wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a ludicrous comparison, because in your scenario there is deception. If you choose to read a story, then unless it's purported to be by an author you know to be human, or explicitly claims to be written by a human, there is no deception.

It’s not a ludicrous comparison because people are saying that AI books should not label that they are by AI. My point is that books (fiction or non fiction) should label that they are by an AI or by a human. Someone said to me, if you can’t tell which did it, then it doesn’t matter. Well my assertion is that even if you can’t tell the difference, the provenance DOES matter.

It is a ludicrous comparison because one involved deception and one didn't.

That people are saying that AI books should not label that they are by AI does not alter that - absent a label people don't know the authorship process today. They don't know if the authors name is real - it often isn't. They don't know if it's been written by a ghostwriter. And now they don't know if it's written by an AI.

If that matters to people, they are free to seek out books labelled as written by humans. If people were to publish books written by AI and deceptively label them as written by humans or include a fake author photo or otherwise deceive, then your comparison would make sense. And I would agree pople shouldn't do that.

> Well my assertion is that even if you can’t tell the difference, the provenance DOES matter.

Well, it doesn't matter to the person you mention, and it doesn't matter to me. If it matters to enough people, then maybe there will be market for labelling the books. For my part I have no interest in looking for a label like that, nor do I have any interest in putting them on the novels I've published.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#128

Post by vidarh »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #126
vidarh wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a few of those failures, it stopped being rational to think he'd make money from his art, yet he persisted with his art. Your argument is entirely backwards. Artists who dedicate a lot of their time to art sometimes want to sell for whatever reason, sometimes commercial, often ego, but also a lot of the time are forced to spend some of their time trying to sell because they want to eat and would rather not take…

Right... and if they can't sell their art... then what do they do? They have to get a job that feeds them... which means they spend less time developing their art... Ergo there is less art and the art that does exist is less well-developed. I made no claim that artists' "primary motivation" is financial.

You're making the unsubstantiated assumption that the job will replace the time spent on their art rather than replace the time spent trying to sell their art.

Since most peoples art sell extremely poorly, it's entirely plausible for most artists to replace their income by replacing their sales effort with another job.

For a tiny sliver of the highest paid artists, it might have an effect. In a lot of markets this is already addressed by public funding and patronage because even for many of they highest paid it is hard to make a living from sales.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#129

Post by sorcerer-mar »

vidarh wrote: post #128
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right... and if they can't sell their art... then what do they do? They have to get a job that feeds them... which means they spend less time developing their art... Ergo there is less art and the art that does exist is less well-developed. I made no claim that artists' "primary motivation" is financial.

You're making the unsubstantiated assumption that the job will replace the time spent on their art rather than replace the time spent trying to sell their art. Since most peoples art sell extremely poorly, it's entirely plausible for most artists to replace their income by replacing their sales effort with another job. For a tiny sliver of the highest paid artists, it might have an effect. In a lot of markets this is…

And now we're back to other commenters' argument. You can substantiate it by sharing some examples of master-tier artists -- people who really pushed the craft -- who did so without any financial component to their work.

Re: AlphaWrite: AI that improves at writing by evolving its own stories

#130

Post by contagiousflow »

vidarh wrote: post #118
contagiousflow wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technological change doesn't happen independent of culture. Stop with the technological determinism.

I'd argue that technological change that is a simple enough iteration of existing technology that it can be carried out by small groups of people will happen independent of culture with a very high probability once a population is large enough. In this case, so many people are curious as to whether we can make this work and/or see financial implications that this will happen irrespective of whether wider culture reje…

Prioritizing profit above all is still a culture though. And it is the choice of a people to give a small group with large amount of money huge cultural influence.
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