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Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
111–120 of 151 posts
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we have yet to see any AI systems capable of exhibiting intelligence beyond stylistic mimicry or forming generalized knowledge about concepts from large data sets. I've said this long before useful LLMs, but I don't think we've observed this in humans, either. Human creativity can be put into two very similar categories: 1) Metaphor; the arbitrary application of the dynamics of one thing to another. "What if inform…
Human beings are currently capable of productively searching through the space of possible knowledge and experience in ways no current AI systems are. This is not to say AI will never do this, but I think it's fair to say there are things human beings are capable of doing today that AI is not, and it remains very much unclear whether AI will ever be able to achieve important milestones like being conscious in the sen…
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Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#113For an essay that hinges on the notion that “art requires making choices,” I wish the author had chosen to delve a bit more into the question of what choosing is. Do humans really make choices? If so, how free are those choices? Is there something about human choice that will never be convincingly imitated by computer? If so, what is it, and how do you know it cannot be imitated?
> For an essay that hinges on the notion that “art requires making choices,” I wish the author had chosen to delve a bit more into the question of what choosing is.
For an essay that hinges on the notion that "art requires making choices", and attempt to apply this to AI image generation, and even specifically tries to draw a contrast between that and photography, I wish the author demonstrated even a superficial knowledge of what choices go into AI art and how it compares with photography, much less delving into the kind of deep philosophical examination of the underlying premise that you propose. But it looks like exploring the subject beyond the shallowest text-box-only UIs presented by a few big firms is too much to ask before the author does exactly what he says was naively done early on about photography.
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can believe whatever you want but your question is irrelevant. Art is made by people, there’s no ambiguity.
"Your questions disprove my point so they are irrelevant" damn ahaha
I don’t know who you’re quoting. Art is made by people, it’s literally in the definition of the word art. Google it. You haven’t disproven it by observing gravity. Idk what to tell you.
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Art is an act of human expression.
Humans are not metaphysically special entities, any more than the Earth is a special planet.
We're the type specimen for a category that has no other known members. Possibly at some point we'll need to extend the category of "person" beyond "human" but for now using them interchangeably seems fine.
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Your questions disprove my point so they are irrelevant" damn ahaha
I don’t know who you’re quoting. Art is made by people, it’s literally in the definition of the word art. Google it. You haven’t disproven it by observing gravity. Idk what to tell you.
If there is no ambiguity: is a man pushing a button on a camera art? A man pushing a button on an image generator? Yes or no answer because it's very simple as you say, no whining or word soup ahah
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern art is considered art because it's a form of human expression, regardless of whether you "get it" or not - it matters that a human being made it, as opposed to a machine.
If a machine makes something that elicits genuine emotional response it is not art? Art must necessarily be made by a human to be considered art? The definition gets less useful by the second.
The definition i'm using is a commonly held one. Art is subjective, and obviously people disagree about what is and isn't art, but most people agree that some degree of human intent and expression is required, at a baseline, for something to be considered art.
But your definition seems to be that anything which elicits an emotional response is art, which seems far less useful.
I suppose it could be argued that because AI requires models and prompts, the end result could be considered art. Also that it's art simply due to the controversy it provokes. Then again, I have a difficult time considering something art if it can be exactly duplicated with the correct inputs. To that end, the human being doesn't really matter. To me, if the human being doesn't matter, it isn't art. I'd also dismiss most "generative" art for the same reason - even if fractals are pretty I wouldn't consider them art.
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think this is mostly just Sturgeon's law (ninety percent of everything is crap) opposed to anything unique to ML tools. I think the unique point to ML tools is the sheer volume that, IMHO, vastly outpaces 90%. And I think that's partially down to the fact that image generators are themselves, by their existence, low-effort easy-to-use tools to create images. It's not as though there wasn't already a vast and comp…
> And I think that's partially down to the fact that image generators are themselves, by their existence, low-effort easy-to-use tools to create images Is the same not true of point-and-shoot photography? Or crayons? There's a near-endless supply of low-effort content due to tools designed to be easy-to-use. Anecdotally I still see more "crappy photographs" (many of which my own) than "crappy AI art". With both you c…
> Is the same not true of point-and-shoot photography? Or crayons?
Those have a skill floor though, even if it is quite, quite low. If you can't manage to get the object you're trying to take a photo of in-frame, or manage to draw the thing you're trying to draw, there's no amount the tool can do to compensate for that.
> There's a near-endless supply of low-effort content due to tools designed to be easy-to-use. Anecdotally I still see more "crappy photographs" (many of which my own) than "crappy AI art".
I mean it depends how you define crappy photographs. My phone camera is a tool, and I use that tool to document things for all manner of purposes. I wouldn't call those photos artistic in any way at all. It feels like you're deliberately saying "all photos are art, and most of them are bad" when I think the vast, vast, vast majority of those, including by the people who took them, would not be referred to as art.
> There are reasons why working-class people are vastly under-represented in arts. I think limited ability to dedicate a huge chunk of time to a creative pursuit is a largely overlooked reason, not just lack of interest.
Agreed wholeheartedly. But, a working class person who has things they want to express artistically is going hit various walls with generative models very quickly, in much the same way I did. Like, if you feel a creative verve at all, I just can't fathom you looking at the wide assortment of all manner of tooling, and choosing the one where you're playing telephone with a toddler that paints over-smoothed, nonsensical photo-realistic pictures.
And again we go back to the notion that "the process is the point" and as a creative, I completely agree. There are certainly times I feel frustration at my tools and wish they would just make what the hell I'm trying to make, but if that was the entire process, I would get nothing from it. Figuring out what prompt will get you what kind of output is interesting, but it's not fulfilling.
> I think it's also fine to want to, say, design a game without hand-painting all the normal maps - instead generating them with ML tools based on your textures.
To be totally real I've never heard of someone drawing normal maps. I thought the traditional way you went about making those was having a high-detail model inside a low-detail one, and generating them that way.
> Someone not specializing to have fine-level technical skills in all relevant areas doesn't imply lack of creativity/interest at a broader scale.
It's not a matter of high or low skills, it's a matter of wanting skills and wanting easily made repetitive crap. If you're the kind of person who finds it fulfilling to slam text into one of these things and get your teddy bear smoking weed pictures, and that's all you want and are fulfilled, more power to you. I wouldn't personally call that art, nor would I find it nourishing to my creative spirit, I would say that's just instant gratification and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Now if you take that stuff and then go try to sell it... I mean that's your prerogative, I'm definitely not buying and I would encourage anyone else to just type a similar prompt into a generator and get it that way.
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps you just feel that way because it's made by a machine. Would need some double blind experiment really, preferably with people who don't know the 'style' of these models.
I think we've already had those experiments, really, when that generated piece won an art competition ('Theatre D'opera Spatial')
It won a Colorado State Fair contest.
Re: Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art
#120„AI“ (a stupid term to begin with) is just a tool like any other - you can use it to make art. Of course it’s not going to be creative on its own - it obviously is not intelligent. But for me comfyui is an incredibly cool tool to be creative. Such a boring topic after all - all the noise it attracts won’t amount to much once people understand this technology
does the tooling augment a human, or is the tooling sold to replace a human?
> does the tooling augment a human, or is the tooling sold to replace a human?
It's bizarre on HN of all places, given its connection to the tech industry and the history of tools sold by that industry, that someone would imagine these are mutually exclusive options.
As is often the case with tech industry tools, the tool in fact augments a human, and is (often) sold to replace a human. That's barely even a superficial contradiction -- enhancing the productivity of each human doing a task, from the perspective of consumer of the kind of human labor involved that is making short-term decisions around a fixed amount of needed output -- replaces some share of those humans rather directly. (On a broader analysis, this is often not true, because it also expands the market for the kind of work it augments by reducing the price per unit output to the point where more marginal uses become viable, but the individual existing purchaser of output often isn't concerned with that.)