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Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

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Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#51

Post by chaps »

skarz wrote: post #29
spaceywilly wrote: post #26

“ Being a Guitar Hero player did not — and does not! — equal being a guitar player.” Has anyone ever claimed otherwise?

All of my childhood friends who bragged about being good at GH/RB only ever bragged about being good at the _games_. Never ran in to someone trying to pass it off as being able to play the guitar.

Anecdata, friend. Two old friends became extraordinarily good at guitar hero and even won competitions. They're also some of the best guitar players I know. One of them is an extremely good drummer and can do improv piano like a beast. They'd both agree that guitar hero helped them play better.

What are your thoughts on games like Keyboard Hero?

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#52

Post by aenvoker »

greggoB wrote: post #35
Art9681 wrote: post #31

These folks are completely unaware that they have witnessed creative and high quality generative AI content without realizing what it was. Because that's the thing. Good generative AI is invisible per se. And it is a lot more ubiquitous than people think by now.

> creative and high quality generative AI content So high quality I can certainly acknowledge because indeed the output from these models can be indistinguishable from human generated content. However, I am curious to know what you mean by creative here, in two senses: 1) Do you have an example of AI generated content being particularly novel or different, and not just a (admittedly highly consistent) rehash of what…

I find the test of “show me AI art that isn’t a rehash” to be a bit pernicious because I have a hard time coming up with any recent examples of non-AI art that I could lie about and claim was AI generated and you’d respond “OK, that AI art is not a rehash.” If everything is a rehash, what are we arguing about?

Instead, my goto examples of high quality creative works that are clearly grounded on AI tools is https://andreaciulu.com/projects/ and https://youtu.be/fyZhC2TXgcs

“model that doesn't possess any agency” implies a model acting on its own. Like a paint brush flying around the room painting the walls with no people around. Or a computer spontaneously turning on and publishing images to an online gallery with no on operating it. The creative process of using AI tools is one of exploration, pipelining and editing.

Commentators strawman image generators as magic paintbrush machine guns. But, the process of using them intentionally is more like nature/street photography. You can’t walk into the forest and declare “I will photograph an owl fighting a fox over a mouse today.” But, you can develop a sense for where to go to find good shots. Now imagine instead of walking in a forest, you can pop anywhere in the multiverse. You don’t know exactly what to expect each time. And, the space is infinite in many dimensions. But, you can still learn to navigate.

And, that’s just the process of direct prompting. One step past that gets you configuring pipelines of highly varied generative editing tools like https://www.runcomfy.com/comfyui-workflows/comfyui-product-r...

From there you get into integrations with 2D painting/3D modeling tools and video editors. Generating references which are used to generate style sheets, then characters, sets, blockings, dialog, motion, base renders, upscales, edits.

“Make me a pretty picture. Masterpiece, best quality” is easy to make fun of. And, it’s common because so easy many people are playing around with it. But, it’s tiresome to find all of the discussion assumes that’s all there can ever be.

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#53

Post by scarecrowbob »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45
latexr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that scenario is covered in the post, in the seventh paragraph. Nowhere in it is Scalzi saying Guitar Hero can’t give you an interest to pick up the Guitar, quite the opposite . The point being made is that when you do pick up the Guitar, you’re starting to learn from scratch, your years of playing Guitar Hero don’t really give you a head-start.

You've had years of listening to music and practicing a very rudimentary form of sight reading. I'm not aware of any studies proving or disproving that this gives beginners a head start, but it would be an interesting thing to investigate. A categorical "Nice try, but you've just been wasting your time" seems overconfident.

As a person who plays several instruments (including drums) in professional situations, and as a person who enjoyed Guitar Hero, I always find it strange when folks are able to take the "experience" of Rock Band / Songstar /etc as a proxy for the experience of practicing music.

I actually do sight read for a couple of instruments- nothing in any of those games has literally anything to do with that.

Hell, my (very good) reading for clarinet and double bass has nothing to do with my (very poor) ability to sight read on piano.

Whatever gets folks interested in stuff is great, but to me it's like saying "I watched 10K hours of MTV in the 80s and that was very helpful in my career playing jazz"...

The same thing is true with writing and other skills replacements- much of my ability and desire to write comes from the experience of using it as an adjunct to thinking.

Having to figure out how I should connect ideas and state them in a way others will understand clarifies my own thoughts, so the idea that I am somehow gaining idunnowhat by adding a bunch of verbal noise to my writing misses a lot of the reasons why I like to write.

I'm happy to use LLMs to draft things like the contracts I need for the mechanical royalty payments I make when I record other folks material, but that's only because I am not trying to learn how to think legalistically.

And further, creating documents via might spark an interest in legal language and how it get used, but it's not going to help me understand the underlying reasons for what's going on any more than watching a whole lot of porn is going to help me be a better lover...

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#54

Post by glimshe »

ryandvm wrote: post #40
glimshe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use AI to code review my personal projects. There's no downside - I ignore what I don't like and take the suggestions that make sense. Most of the suggestions are good and it found a ton of little bugs over time. I think that someone who's radically opposed to any use of AI is simply a poor developer.

There's no downside for you . You said it yourself - you have the knowledge and ability to know what to ignore and keep what makes sense, but that's because you spent years actually writing and understanding code. The magic wand of AI is absolutely wreaking havoc with juniors engineers' ability to understand complex code bases and software engineering fundamentals. How will the engineers of tomorrow know what to keep…

What you said is different from being radically opposed to AI in all situations. You're saying that junior engineers should keep learning the fundamentals of software development instead of fully relying on AI. I agree with that. Inexperienced people shouldn't be left alone with dangerous tools, so to speak, but it doesn't mean that we should abandon these tools.

I think that junior engineers can learn from AI, but the corporate setting isn't the best place for self-learning from AI. There's a lot to be learned from the average advice from the better AIs, as long as they are trying to understand the feedback. Please note that for these engineers, AI is replacing the old copy-and-paste from Stack Overflow. At least with AI they can dig deeper and ask questions.

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#55

Post by scarecrowbob »

spaceywilly wrote: post #26

“ Being a Guitar Hero player did not — and does not! — equal being a guitar player.” Has anyone ever claimed otherwise?

Maybe not, but folks keep telling me that I'm ignorant for not agreeing that being able to "engineer" a prompt is the same exact thing as being a poet or painter.

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#56

Post by chaps »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #53
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've had years of listening to music and practicing a very rudimentary form of sight reading. I'm not aware of any studies proving or disproving that this gives beginners a head start, but it would be an interesting thing to investigate. A categorical "Nice try, but you've just been wasting your time" seems overconfident.

As a person who plays several instruments (including drums) in professional situations, and as a person who enjoyed Guitar Hero, I always find it strange when folks are able to take the "experience" of Rock Band / Songstar /etc as a proxy for the experience of practicing music. I actually do sight read for a couple of instruments- nothing in any of those games has literally anything to do with that. Hell, my (very go…

No true musician got their start in Guitar Hero, eh?

I got my start in drumming from playing on Rockband. When I mentioned it to the folk that I bought my first e-kit, they rolled their eyes. Fine, whatever, I expect musicians to be pretentious.

But yanno what? I still learned a lot. The controller itself was midi-capable so I was able to hook it up to my kit and play the game while practicing my form and timing. Was it perfect? Fuck no; it sucked. But it guided me into recognizing that I wasn't as good as I wanted to be, which led to lessons and many many hours of practicing.

I owe a lot to rock band because it opened a world of play beyond the game itself.

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#57

Post by hackable_sand »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #45
latexr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that scenario is covered in the post, in the seventh paragraph. Nowhere in it is Scalzi saying Guitar Hero can’t give you an interest to pick up the Guitar, quite the opposite . The point being made is that when you do pick up the Guitar, you’re starting to learn from scratch, your years of playing Guitar Hero don’t really give you a head-start.

You've had years of listening to music and practicing a very rudimentary form of sight reading. I'm not aware of any studies proving or disproving that this gives beginners a head start, but it would be an interesting thing to investigate. A categorical "Nice try, but you've just been wasting your time" seems overconfident.

There are people here who have been using LLMs for years.

What is that?

Arrested development?

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#58

Post by mapontosevenths »

Fricken wrote: post #50
mapontosevenths wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that any reasonable person is actually counting on that. It's a new, and potentially very lucrative, technology. Given time the cost will go down, not up. The way that will happen is increased efficiency. Do I know HOW that will happen? No, but I know that it will. It always has, and there are huge motivations for making it happen.

The most reasonable and sober-minded people are counting on that: https://www.dpg-physik.de/veroeffentlichungen/publikationen/...

I don't speak German, so I had to machine translate it... but I don't see anything about anyone counting on AI to magically solve climate change in that reference.

I've seen a few dim-bulbs or sales-types on social media say things of that sort, but never a serious adult.

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#59

Post by trescenzi »

chaps wrote: post #47
trescenzi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being made isn't that it cannot inspire someone to then go on to learn but that mastery of the game alone does not convey creative skill. Of course someone can be inspired to go out and learn the skill being modeled but use of the model doesn't teach the skill even if it might make someone really excited to go learn.

Is anyone actually arguing that it conveys creative skill though?

Don’t know. Just pointing out that the comment I’m replying to didn’t actually understand the argument being made.

Re: Generative "AI": The Guitar Hero of Creativity

#60

Post by beej71 »

chaps wrote: post #47
trescenzi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being made isn't that it cannot inspire someone to then go on to learn but that mastery of the game alone does not convey creative skill. Of course someone can be inspired to go out and learn the skill being modeled but use of the model doesn't teach the skill even if it might make someone really excited to go learn.

Is anyone actually arguing that it conveys creative skill though?

It seems to me TFA is arguing that it does not.
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