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Merged Artificial Intelligence

Beelzebuddy said:
There's something messed up about that. I value art* when the art speaks to me. The people making it don't need to suffer for the privilege of my appreciation. The opposite, actually - if you found out the percussion in one of your favorite songs was actually done by the drummer slamming his hand in a drawer, would that make the song better for you or would you be, like, dude, buy a bongo, it'll be fine?

Lowering barriers to entry in creative endeavors has been a net benefit, historically speaking. If AI helps people make songs that wouldn't exist otherwise, I can't object much.

*Including you, art. I value our little talks.
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AI generated slop isn't art. At its very best it's the thievery of other people's art. More typically it's the adulteration of stolen art with nonsense.
 
Roger Ramjets said:
Just saying it doesn't make it true.
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Yes. Sometimes Iike to start by stating my conclusion, and then going on to explain how I got there. That's what I've done in this post.


Roger Ramjets said:
I do. I have a nice collection of WWI and WWII military models which I admire for the 'art'. Without those wars of aggression I wouldn't have that. I have to keep reminding myself of the purpose of that tech and the enormous suffering it caused, yet that doesn't diminish its beauty in my eye. Millions of military modellers around the world face the same dilemma.
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Which is to say, you value it fort reasons other than the effort to steal land and murder thousands.

Roger Ramjets said:
Another bare assertion.
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What's wrong with stating what you believe, and then explaining why you believe it?

Roger Ramjets said:
So when people spend good money to see a live concert, only to find the performers lip-syncing to prerecorded music and the instruments not plugged in, you think they don't care?
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They didn't care as long as they didn't know. When they found out, they cared about the inauthenticity, not the lack of effort. In fact the effort is about the same, it's just not authentic.

I think you've brought us a little closer to understanding what actually makes art valuable to us.

Roger Ramjets said:
Anyone who has tried to play eg. a guitar or paint in oils knows the amount of effort required to get good results. The appreciation isn't just about the art itself, but the efforts of the people who created it. We praise them not just for the end result, but for bringing us joy and contributing to society, which encourages them to do more. This is a large part of what makes us successful as individuals and as a species.
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This is another way of saying it isn't just about the effort. There's something more to art, that gives it value.

Roger Ramjets said:
You may say that AI can produce the same result so what's the difference, but it can't. The AI isn't actually creating art, it's stealing from the people who did. And because AI is a machine, not a human, it doesn't add anything human to it. All it does is ape human style with no intelligence, no emotion and no meaning. There is no mind behind it to identify with.

So what's the problem, you say, if people still enjoy it? The problem is that it displaces art made by humans and lowers the perceived value of art in general, making it harder for artists to live. AI doesn't innovate, so we don't get anything truly new or interesting. Instead of only 90% of it being 'crap', 99.9% is, drowning out the 0.1% of art still made by humans. This will eventually lead to a breakdown of society as we become mere consumers of meaningless dross.
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I mostly agree with all of this, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with why people like art, or why it's not just about effort.

Roger Ramjets said:
The exception proves the rule. If nobody ever valued effort you wouldn't have to come up with an example where they don't.
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Of course people value effort. Effort has value, especially when it produces valuable results.

But I don't think that's why people like art, even when they appreciate the effort that went into it.

And I think the exceptions are far too many for them to be considered the exceptions. Effort is a lot more commonplace than valuable results.
 
I think fixating on AI is simplistic. But I do think it's plausible that ill-considered over-reliance on AI could contribute to a civilizational incident pit that leads to civilizational collapse, a dark age, and hundreds of millions of humans dead. But it won't be any one thing. Part of what makes a civilization is the resilience of its systems. A civilization can handle one global crisis. It can even handle two. It might even be able to handle a third. But pile on too many crises too fast, and civilization can't keep up.

I can totally see AI being the source or the aggravator of one or more such crises.
 
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The convergence of different modes of self destruction totally seems to be happening. AI is in early stage .. but it's already affecting world markets and society. The war losses are on the rise several years in row, and not just in Ukraine. The weather is stepping up the game this year as well. The worst idiots are in charge everywhere. I wouldn't want to be young these days ..

Btw. I'm just installing opencode to test it on my work project, got it as an assignment .. so far I only used free gemini to discuss issues, and it's great at that.
 
theprestige said:
You tell me. You said we appreciate art because of the effort involved. But I know that's not true for me, and I'm pretty sure it's not true for anyone else, including you.

There's something that distinguishes art from war, for you, that makes art valuable to you but not war. And it isn't the effort.
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If you can't tell the difference, I'm not sure I can help you.
 
theprestige said:
You tell me. You said we appreciate art because of the effort involved. But I know that's not true for me, and I'm pretty sure it's not true for anyone else, including you.

There's something that distinguishes art from war, for you, that makes art valuable to you but not war. And it isn't the effort.
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Furthermore:

You are once again assuming that because I said that effort is what I value in art, that effort is the single, one and only thing that I value in art. Your entire argument is based on the obviously false premise that I value nothing in art except effort.
 
arthwollipot said:
If you can't tell the difference, I'm not sure I can help you.
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You can totally help me. You're the one that said "we" value art because of the effort involved. But it's clear you also make some distinction between art and other things that involve effort. You're the only one who can tell us what your distinction is, between art and everything else that involves effort. It's obviously not the effort involved. So what is it?
 
arthwollipot said:
Furthermore:

You are once again assuming that because I said that effort is what I value in art, that effort is the single, one and only thing that I value in art.
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It's the single one and only thing you said you value. And you didn't say it's what you value, you said it's what "we" value.

All I'm asking is, what besides effort do you value in art?

arthwollipot said:
Your entire argument is based on the obviously false premise that I value nothing in art except effort.
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It's the only thing you said "we" value. I argued against that claim, and you pushed back. I asked you what else you value, and you pushed back. So don't come crying now, about how effort isn't the only thing you had in mind.

In fact, we've reached the QED stage. You said you valued art because of the effort. I said, no, you value it for other reasons. Now you're saying yes, there are other reasons, distinct from other things that require effort, that cause you to value art.

So yeah, I was right.
 
It's certainly interesting topic. I don't really care about "what is art". I do like some things. I do hate other things. That's enough for me. Mostly.

But I like making AI music. I like making AI pictures. I hate seeing AI pictures from other people, or hearing AI music from other people though. They are just bad. But obviously it can't be all bad, the one I create can't all be good.
Is it because the ones I create are bad as well, but tuned to my liking, so I end up liking it ? I do like some lot of cheap pop music (aforementioned Spice girls for example).
Or is it the fact that I created it why I like it ? Do I identify that strongly with it ? It's weird.
 
as far as things stand today, what i've noticed is when a person uses ai as a tool and does something positive with it, which has been mostly limited to mathematics at this point, the ai is getting the credit. so i'd pump the brakes on think you created the ai art or music
 
dirtywick said:
as far as things stand today, what i've noticed is when a person uses ai as a tool and does something positive with it, which has been mostly limited to mathematics at this point, the ai is getting the credit. so i'd pump the brakes on think you created the ai art or music
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AI should get the credit when it's being used to brute force weird mathematical problems that have confounded human mathematicians.

Whether it should get (all) the credit when it's being used as a tool to realize some human artist's vision is an open question, in my opinion.
 
I would say the author is the one with the agency. If I describe the subject in detail, and let the AI do it .. I'm the author. If I tell the AI do whatever .. the AI is the author.
But it doesn't work like that with human artists. If I commission a painting, and I describe it detail .. it's still the artist who's the author.
Music industry uses fractional authorship for ages. Guess it could work with AI greatly. Few % to the prompt author, few % to the company who made the model, split the rest among the people whose work was scraped for the training set .. there are even now methods to compute how much each individual source image affected the outcome .. or at least I've seen some paper recently .. didn't read it in full extent.
 
theprestige said:
You can totally help me. You're the one that said "we" value art because of the effort involved. But it's clear you also make some distinction between art and other things that involve effort. You're the only one who can tell us what your distinction is, between art and everything else that involves effort. It's obviously not the effort involved. So what is it?
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I was talking about art. I wasn't talking about anything other than art. Oh my god.
 
theprestige said:
It's the single one and only thing you said you value. And you didn't say it's what you value, you said it's what "we" value.

All I'm asking is, what besides effort do you value in art?


It's the only thing you said "we" value. I argued against that claim, and you pushed back. I asked you what else you value, and you pushed back. So don't come crying now, about how effort isn't the only thing you had in mind.

In fact, we've reached the QED stage. You said you valued art because of the effort. I said, no, you value it for other reasons. Now you're saying yes, there are other reasons, distinct from other things that require effort, that cause you to value art.

So yeah, I was right.
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Oh. My. God.

Yes. Okay, yes. You're right. You won. You're better than I am. Well done.
 
dirtywick said:
as far as things stand today, what i've noticed is when a person uses ai as a tool and does something positive with it, which has been mostly limited to mathematics at this point, the ai is getting the credit. so i'd pump the brakes on think you created the ai art or music
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Everyone credits the AI when it serves what they want to think and the person using the AI when it doesn't. They have forgotten the Riddle of Steel.
 
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