GenAI Art Is the Least Imaginative Use of AI Imaginable

“So what," the Chelgrian asked, "is the point of me or anybody else writing a symphony, or anything else?"

The avatar raised its brows in surprise. "Well, for one thing, you do it, it's you who gets the feeling of achievement."

"Ignoring the subjective. What would be the point for those listening to it?"

"They'd know it was one of their own species, not a Mind, who created it."

"Ignoring that, too; suppose they weren't told it was by an AI, or didn't care."

"If they hadn't been told then the comparison isn't complete; information is being concealed. If they don't care, then they're unlike any group of humans I've ever encountered."

"But if you can—"

"Ziller, are you concerned that Minds—AIs, if you like—can create, or even just appear to create, original works of art?"

"Frankly, when they're the sort of original works of art that I create, yes."

"Ziller, it doesn't matter. You have to think like a mountain climber."

"Oh, do I?"

"Yes. Some people take days, sweat buckets, endure pain and cold and risk injury and—in some cases—permanent death to achieve the summit of a mountain only to discover there a party of their peers freshly arrived by aircraft and enjoying a light picnic."

"If I was one of those climbers I'd be pretty damned annoyed."

"Well, it is considered rather impolite to land an aircraft on a summit which people are at that moment struggling up to the hard way, but it can and does happen. Good manners indicate that the picnic ought to be shared and that those who arrived by aircraft express awe and respect for the accomplishment of the climbers.

"The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they'd wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages." The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. "How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr. Ziller?”

- Iain M. Banks, Look to Windward

Creation is superior to consumption in basically every value system ever constructed. That doesn't seem like a controversial axiom. Certainly it's widely believed on HN.

i'm sort of pleased to see that with DeepSeek and the o-series, the hype/energy is shifting back towards coding and mathematical tasks, and away from generating images and videos. Programmers seem to be mostly happy with LLMs, unlike artists and musicians who almost all hate them. It seems possible that the incentives will continue to be aligned well, because it's staff at AI labs automating the skills that make them valuable (rather than putting others out of a job).

It's also not so unpleasant. I don't want to see AI images any more. I certainly don't want to listen to AI music. People are right to call it "slop". I understand how the field of machine learning got to image generation as a task, and that the products can be sometimes useful and fun as a novelty. But there is just a giant externality caused by the existence of these products.

Deep dream! The eyes

I see it as a 3 tiered hierarchy of satisfaction:

* 1 - If you manage to do something interesting/beautiful after struggling, doubting yourself and working through it, you come out with a tremendous sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, even though the day to day might have been miserable (in that sense the mountaineering comparison from the article is apt).

* 2 - If you get something interesting/beautiful after little (I don't mean no, I mean little) effort, you still enjoy it somewhat.

* 3 - If you struggle through something for a while, and come out at the end with nothing to show for it that you like or are proud of, it feels pretty terrible.

So it seems in your case you used do do (3), and now can do (2), which must definitely feel nicer. But for people that can do (1), such as proficient artists, having to move to (2) feels like it's completely destroying the entire reason why they like to do this in the first place.