SwimModSponges

Aight, listen- as far as I'm concerned there are 4 main arguments in this thread and we're all mostly in agreement on at least half of them. 1. Automation causes real harm to the individuals who find themselves outcompeted on the job market by machines. - Full agreement. Myself, being a retail manager at a not-for profit organization rather than a professional artist, am speaking from a place of priveleged detachment (though my career [as well as the careers of most others] is just as likely in danger of automation due to the rapid pace of advancements in AI). I am therefore being insensitive to the realities of others and I am sorry for my excitement. 2. It is not accurate to call the individual designing prompts an "artist". Nor is the AI itself an "artist". - Full agreement. Every day billions of people experience inspiration. The vast majority forget about it almost as quickly as it popped into their heads or are otherwise uninterested or incapable of pursing it. A fraction of that billionth, however, are special. Most have spent year- decades honing their craft, and the works these people are capable of are monumental by the very definition of the word. These amazing examples of humanity are artists. And these people deserve a whoooooole lot more respect and reverence that society currently gives them. That same society which restricts the available numbers of such incredible individuals through myriads of barriers to entry of the craft, be it financially due to cost of materials or just the inability to spare the time needed to see their inspiration to fruition. Some of those folks stumbled upon this AI and type things into it. Those people are not artists. Full stop. The AI, though technically incredible in its creations, is inherently devoid of both agency and inspiration. The AI is not an artist. Full stop. 3. Images created through Human/AI collaboration are not art. - Strong disagreement with the caveat that inherently it's a matter of taste. To paraphrase the precedent set by Jacobellis V. Ohio (1964), "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography " "art"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it." - Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart. You cannot tell me that you feel nothing when you look at an image just because you know it was done with AI. No, sorry, I phrased that badly. Art is subjective, and if you reject images made through AI, I accept your views. It's art in my eyes. And it's ok. Hell, I mean I've seen legitimate pornography I would define as art as well. That's me though. There's no accounting for taste, baby. 4. AI art is theft. - Hard no. This statement is factually incorrect when one takes a moment to understand how the process actually works. It's just not true, and I will not budge on this.

Why?

Now thats stealing art.

https://www.centralmaine.com/2022/12/22/hallowell-bar-cited-for-691-child-labor-law-violations-fined-thousands-of-dollars/

We just went through the explanation of why that's not what it does.

For real though, this whole engagement is like that scene in jurassic park where they're discussing the ethics of genetic power, and im just over here banging silverware on the table shouting "DI-NO-SAURS! DI-NO-SAURS! DI-NO-SAURS!" Very on-brand for me .

But they're not, that's the whole point of the third part of your argument. The AI is making shit thats all fucked up.

Neither the user nor the AI is an artist. Client is a weird word, are we clients of the boards? Yeah I suppose so.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/22/politics/jan-6-committee-final-report

I've never said the person entering a prompt is an artist.

Ok. we keep getting to this point and it's always where it seems to blow up repeatedly on us. I fully agree, the rise of automation is bad to the individuals being replaced by it. AI in that regard is an incredibly bad thing and we should fear the fuck out of it. With pure existential terror. Legitimately. But goddamnit, that is absolutely not how the diffusion process works. If someone wrote up a program to go out and combine images it wouldn't be news. That's not what AI is. Nor is it a massive store of images that it retrieves and calls upon to modify- I mean can you imagine how big the storage would have to be to have access to so many billions of images? The AI is a black box, a system of changing connections between concepts. They took it on a field trip to the internet and it sorta figured out the patterns of what's what for itself. You feed a prompt into it, the words rush through the neural network, and it generated an image based on what it "thinks" you mean. Now here's the diffusion part- this is what the AI generates. From there, the pattern-seeking components of the AI scan the image for things that sort of look like what was asked for. After determining a rough outline the AI then "diffuses" through the pixels, cleaning up the image until it gets a decent enough piece. The existing work of others is never touched, altered, sampled, or devalued. The AI has created something entirely new out of nothing. And I think that's neat. ... Except now I'm back on that existential terror shit.

Also this thread was incredibly civil for the entirety of the first page, people posting their opinions, articles, videoes etc. What the heck happened?

Goddamn machines amirite?

Well, fuck y'all too then, though im sad we can't see eye to eye. Nothing more tragic than the breakdown of human communication because people aren't willing to understand each other. I agree with you on all of the negative things you've pointed out (apart from the AI is theft slogan which is still untrue). Im sorry i can't convince you of the gravity of the situation. Also, fucking snowblower wouldn't start this morning. Goddamn machines amirite?

I'llIts not stealing, it creates something entirely new out of static based on what it knows words mean. Continuing to call it stealing is a fundamental misunderstanding of the entire process by which machine learning works and static diffusion works. Its not fantasy, its here. Im not the only one talking about this. It isn't a fad. This isnt a fairytale mindset, this shit is here. Empathy i'll give you 100% i have difficulty with wmpathy sometimes, especially in the face of global changes like this i think in the abstract rather than in terms of effects to actual human beings. Which yes, for individuals who make money through art, this is terrible. Just like every single piece of automation is terrible for every other individual whos job is lost to a machine. Which again, it isn't just artists. They are making AI to do everything. Everything. AI is outperforming doctors in diagnosing patients, ai is outperforming surgeons. Truckers, farmers, scientists, accountants, lawyers, gas station attendants, lawyers, CFOs, CEOs. We're rapidly hitting the point that everything can be automated. With everything but art, the argument is always "well thats progress now. We only need 5 people on an assembly line today compared to the 50 it took for the same job in the 90s. We're increasing productivity, efficiency, and standard of living while reducing the amount of human labor. In other industries, (we'll tie this back to art in a second) we have been conditioned to consider something that makes life easier a direct threat to ourselves because our masters will refuse to pay us. And thats the fault of a sick society not technological advancement. I mean we all see the writing on the wall here, right? Society in its current state isn't sustainable. Between the threat of global extinction from climate change, mass income disparity, and social issues such as these, something has to change, drastically, soon. Or things will change drastically, soon, and in a much worse way out of our control. AI is the most earth-shattering advancement human society has ever made, greater than the assembly line, comparable to fire, which led to us even being able to have societies. Sorry forgot to tie it back to art- at least art is a job that gives its creator satisfaction. When a fast food employee loses his job due to automation, going home and making burgers in his spare time isn't going to make him feel better. An artist though, they have their creativity and their love of their craft. A robot making shitty art shouldn't prevent them from expressing that. Also the grater/greater- thats a goddamn pun stop being obtuse and taking it literally. A pony and a dog walk up to a crow. The pony asks if the crow can yell at the dog for him. The pony has been yelling for a while and he's a little hoarse. Hoarse is not the same word as horse. Thats the joke. And i do believe what im saying. I understand the anger and the concern, i'm sorry im not empathinging with them as much as i should be. I think the worry and concern are valid given the situation. I dont think theres anything we can do to stop it though.

Fuck cars indeed, I really wish we as a nation didn't become 100% dependent on them during the automotive revolution. But that genies been out of the bottle for a long time. That's the thing about a shift in the paradigm, you don't know what it looks like until you've crossed it. Like it or not, an AI revolution has begun in earnest. I choose to be optimistic about it because I've seen AIs do wonderful things, deepmind alphafold is discovering and synthesizing new proteins at light speed compared to prior manual folding techniques, they've been trained to detect diseases and cancers more accurately than anything else today... And you know what? They really are going to be doing everything. And it isn't going to be sustainable with our current capitalistic hierarchical power structures, and things that are stressed will break. AI will be the end of civilization as we know it. As we know it. And the genie's out of the bottle and granting wishes. So. I propose, we sit here, have a meaningful, civil discussion on the meaning of art, consciousness, intelligence, and experience, and maybe look at cool pictures made by human artists and AI, just not at the same time. Just not right now. Mass Effect.

Just got home and haven't gone through all this yet, but i appologize for demeaning artists, that wasn't my intention. Art is incredibly important to expressing the human condition and its creators are incredibly talented and have devoted years of their lives to honing their crafts and i respect that fully. I also fully respect the opinions of others in this thread- i agree with many of them, disagree with others, and some i just can't quite understand. I'm sorry that my views are offensive, and i get excited when it comes to defending, and yes, pushing them. I haven't told anyone to fuck off, i haven't called anyone a bitch, and i haven't accused anyone of twisting their arguments. I don't know that i am right. I really think im right (maybe not "right" per se, but... in the right lane?) Its obvious y'all think im wrong. But im not convinced and i will continue to try to address all the points made so far, and i will take more of an effort to be more civil, less sarcastic, and more understanding. Its by testing our convictions through debate that we refine them.

Jesus christ with the personal attacks. I'm sorry we've created thinking machines that are replacing thought.

Ok I'm tapping out for the night. Pizza should be here soonish.

You know I really meant to play some videogames today.

Lavender better?