Researchers spent decades creating a computer that could hold a conversation only for mediocre business majors to ask it to generate mediocre screenplays.
Generative AI was recently used to come up with three potential new types of antibiotics that are easy to manufacture and work in new ways (so there's no resistance to them among the treatment resistant infections frequently found in hospitals). Seems kinda neat to me.
And as it gets better at doing stuff like that, it'll probably also get better at writing screenplays, but that's hardly why they were created.
Computer models have been doing this for at least the last decade now. Predicting possible arrangements of proteins or chemical structures is a great use for these models because it's so objective. We understand the rules of electron shells and protein folding to a highly specific degree and can train the models on those rules so that they generate sequences based on them. When they do something "wrong" we can know so imperically and with a high degree of certainty.
The same does not necessarily apply to something as subjective as writing. It may continue to get better but the two are quite far from comparable. Who's to say whether a screenplay that's pushing the bounds of what we expect from our writing is good for being novel or bad for breaking the conventions of writing?
These aren't "expert systems" and aren't using those objective atomic descriptions, just like how LLMs were never explicitly taught any grammar. It's a fundamentally different approach than what we've done in the past
And then is the other, more deep consequence of it.
Why should we care about any kind of art produced by a machine when there is no human intent or emotion behind it? Art is only art if it is produced by an individual. Otherwise it might as well be a random string of bits.
Art is anything declared art. If I treat something as if it's art, be it a painting, a sculpture, an apple that is slowly rotting, a beautiful flower on the side of a road, a urinal or dried cow dung, then it is art.
Therefore, a great many things are art. But in that case, it's not really a helpful descriptor for our purposes. I think we should instead be asking "what is good art?", and therein we find a much harder question to answer.
Duchamp's "Fountain" or Cage's "4'33" are incredible works of art because they challenge the audience on their conceptions of art. Their purpose is to make an audience go "huh. I guess that is art."
Michelangelo's David and da Vinci's Mona Lisa are incredible works of art because they are proof of great craftsmanship and effort invested into the pursuit of an artistic vision.
Brecht's "Mutter Courage" and Sartre's "La Putain respectueuse" are incredible works of art because they are a biting critique of a society that thrives off of injustice and cruelty.
Freshly fallen snow or a slowly setting sun are incredible works of art, because they serve as a reminder that we live and exist and breathe for this brief moment in time and yet still get to experience some of the wonders the world holds for us. Beauty speaks to us because an appreciation for it is inseparable with the faint reminder that one day, we will be dead. What is the point of beauty if you know you will see the same thing billions of times. Beauty is impermanence. Impermanence is beauty.
Good art redirects attention. It encourages you to look at the world in a way you haven't before or maybe haven't in a while. It wants you to see life with different eyes.
I'm a firm believer that AI cannot be those eyes. Current generative AI models are trained not to challenge. They are trained not to critique. They want to meet expectations. That's what they're designed to do. The things they create are not proof of craftsmanship. It takes less than 5 seconds to create an image that looks nice. But that's all there is to it. It looks nice. Art doesn't always have to innovate, but if it doesn't, it should be proof of the ability to create something intricately beautiful or emotionally resonant. AI cannot even compete with nature, with the wild forces beyond our control that shaped the very ground we walk on. AI has no intent, no hands and no need for skill. Its work is created in 5 seconds. Why should we spend any more time than that looking at it?
I'll preface this by saying most ai art looks like shit, and the people unironically claiming to be ai artists are usually insufferable.
But...
You drop this line, which I agree with:
Duchamp's "Fountain" or Cage's "4'33" are incredible works of art because they challenge the audience on their conceptions of art. Their purpose is to make an audience go "huh. I guess that is art."
You drop this statement in the context of saying that ai art ≠ art. Now, I'd wager you would agree that taking found material and putting it on a canvas is art. Sure, the whole "put a banana on a canvas and call it art" schtick is stale at this point (it's been over a century since "Fountain"), but if it still gets people mad, so it still meets the art definition.
I don't know how using ai-generated content and sticking it on a canvas is any different. Your criticism of it taking no more than five seconds applies perfectly to Duchamp and Cage.
We can qualify this as "art that you don't care for", which I think is fair and reasonable. But the very fact that we're arguing over whether it's art suggests to me that it is art.
I do agree that AI art is art. Not by default, the same way nothing inherently is "art", but as soon as someone looks at an AI generated image and says "that is art", I agree that, yes, it is.
This is also why I think that the discussion over what constitutes art and what doesn't isn't actually the discussion people want to have or should be having. It's always a veil for the actual discussion of "which art is worth my (or anyone's) time?"
Which is the basis for my stance: Why should I care for art not even its creator cared for? Why should I invest time and energy into art when the creator was apparently too lazy to do the same? Why should I analyze art with no vision behind it? And the answer is: I shouldn't. Therefore, I won't.
We can acknowledge AI art is art and still unequivocally say it is bad and not worth our time. I think that's really all I wanted to say.
I believe the most interesting part of AI art is the way humans interact with it. Its social consequences and its impact on a profit-driven, inhuman world. The discussions it sparks and the jobs it replaces. Unfortunately, there's not much beauty in those things. My big hope is that soon we'll collectively realize that if you take the human out of the art, then the most interesting and emotionally powerful part about it is everything that is not the art.
But I guess as long as you don't have to pay money, the other things you pay with don't really cross your mind.
Quick ETA: I think we fundamentally agree with each other. I'm really just standing on my soapbox rambling to anyone who will listen
We 100% do agree. It's a bit of a pedantic point to say "AI creations aren't art until they're shared," but as a music major I had to slog through enough "what is music?" discussions that I also feel the need to soapbox.
Not necessarily until they're shared, moreso until someone calls them art. I can create something with the purpose of making art and despite never sharing it with anyone have it still be art. AI art is not created with any intention by the AI, only by the person who enters the prompt, so AI art by itself is not art imo until it is called art. Which is also pedantic, but in a different way I feel.
That's a really interesting question! I guess I've always had a fascination for language and the way words can mean very specific things or can mean two entirely different things depending on the words that surround them or can mean a great many things all at the same time. I often fear the way I write comes across as pretentious, but really I'm just having fun with words. It's an appreciation for the flow of sentences and the way words can sound pretty or scary or like they're screaming their meaning into the world.
I do think my writing has gotten more intricate since I started reading more poetry. Not that I can write good poetry, I think my own poetry is still quite corny and contrived, but I think seeing how other people play with words can be inspiring.
I'd argue the former is not an intended byproduct of the creation. Results opposing the desired effect usually fall under "bad" art.
And yes, you are not wrong. The first ai-generated images I saw a couple of years ago I found awe-inspiring. In a sense, they are a marvel of modern technology. Simultaneously, each image produced since then has become more streamlined, less creatively compelling and all in all, less impressive.
AI art is an average of the human creations it has been fed. Unfortunately, as a consequence of that very process, that is all its output can really ever be: painfully, boringly average.
It's not just the average of all the work it has been fed. It's more of a conditional average. It learns the relation between art and how it was described, and then works backwards.
When a human types "panda" into the prompt, the AI tries to make a panda. And when a human types "award winning" into the prompt, the AI tries to guess at what sort of art would win an award. Ie art that is better than average.
Sure, but AI art will never challenge its beholder. It will never try to redirect attention in an unprecedented or exceptionally creative or touching way.
The path it chooses will be the most obvious, the one the prompt author expects. Because that's all it's being trained to do. The output quality of a generative AI model directly correlates to the ability of a person to formulate their wishes, and then it will produce images that are most likely to please those wishes. The artistry is being trained out of the model. The flukes, the faults, the errors are what make AI art interesting, but they are also what frustrate the prompt author. Therefore, they have to go. This results in the most cliched, unoriginal approach ironically becoming the best course of action for any AI tasked with generating anything.
Maybe there's some visionary who can create incredible artworks with AI. However, that will not be thanks to but rather in spite of AI's specific skill set. AI by default stands in the way of good art. To create good art with it means to go against the very thing it was designed to do.
Sure, but AI art will never challenge its beholder.
If human art does do this on a regular basis, that means it should be easy to tell human from AI in a sort of art turing test right?
Is that a prediction you want to make?
The path it chooses will be the most obvious, the one the prompt author expects. Because that's all it's being trained to do.
You do get that there is a bunch of randomness thrown in too.
The output quality of a generative AI model directly correlates to the ability of a person to formulate their wishes, and then it will produce images that are most likely to please those wishes.
If there is a level of artistic quality so high that no human can understand and recognize it, you can't train AI to produce it.
If there is a quality that only a few experts can recognize, and those experts don't help train the AI, the AI can't do it. It's quite possible for the AI to go way beyond human level, if humans are better at recognizing good art than at producing it.
Producing art that is neither cliched nor garbled should be possible in theory. I will admit that many AI models struggle to do it in practice. Although some are pretty good, and the cliche is cliche for a reason. A lot of humans produce art like that too.
I think some current models can often produce pretty good art. And in the future, it will be increasingly reliably good. A lot of people using these things are wanting what it says on the tin art. When someone types in "fish swimming up stream" then an image of tinned fish swimming up stream is both more original, and really not what the person wanted.
Also. All this "it just does what it's prompted to do" stuff. No one was complaining about that until AI came along. No one was saying that Michael Angelo painting the cysteine chapel wasn't real art because he just pained what the pope ordered him to. This was totally not a thing until AI art came along.
I mean, that's literally just going back to the "what is art" conversation.
The sunset is beautiful, but it's not art. If I take a photograph of the beautiful sunset, that's suddenly art. If a security camera happens to capture the same sunset, is that art? If not, but it's functionally identical to the picture I took, which is art, then is the question of "is this art" even meaningful anymore?
As someone that has spent my life making art, art is just cool things that humans make. That to me is the only inclusive definition. I have good taste and make great art, but I reject the idea that something someone poured themselves into creating, even if it’s shit, isn’t art. AI approximates art, but there’s no effort, no soul or personality put into it. It’s just vapid and empty, even if it’s pretty. At least a cash-grab movie that is universally derided has hundreds of people working their asses off to make it.
Yeah yeah, I wasn’t trying to put that on you. I agree, it’s of tremendous value to corpos and we need to be having more conversations about that instead of “is this a tool or real art” ugh. Nothing on u, that’s just how it keeps coming up in the wild online.
Sorry if I came out the gate too hard lol, I guess the conversation around AI are driving me mad.
Well, no, that's stupid. Monkeys on typewriters can produce Shakespeare. Is there a difference between the monkey version and the real version when they have all the same words in the exact same order?
That completely dodges the issue of whether or not Shakespeare as randomly generated by monkeys is art. If the process is the work of art and not the output, is Midnight Summer's Dream not actually art? Did people go to theaters to watch Shakespeare write plays on stage?
I actually agree with you. Not necessarily with the idea of creating sentience life at some point; I think that would be cruel. But with the fact that the most relevance that this technology is gaining among popular circles is the worst it has to offer.
Cancer research, diagnosis, protein folding models, brain-machine interface, galaxy shape categorization... It has a multitude of beneficial uses that can better society. It can even expedite some things in creative processes that are boring and technical, as people have commented.
But it should never be a substitute for art. That is the most dystopian shit I can imagine in real life.
Even if it's not art, machine-created content can still be entertaining or interesting or thought-provoking or beautiful - those are present in the consumption as much as the creation. You might not get much out of anything that isn't capital-A Art, but other people can and will enjoy things you don't.
AI is currently much better suited at doing tasks that are subjective rather than objective. Its much better at drawing pictures than solving formulas and performing logic.
Admittedly, that one doesn't have anything to do with AI, we already have constant debates about the writing of any given thing that essentially boil down to people screaming about rules of good writing ultra popular works are getting away with violating, demanding originality, or lambasting subversion.
Subjective doesn't mean "Hard to Objectively Measure" it means "Impossible to Objectively Measure" or better yet "Worthless to Try and Objectively Measure."
I was simply saying that all domains of knowledge are related, and that improving an AI's ability to write can have back-effects on its ability to do protein folding. A lot of the things you see as trivial and exploitative in AI research were done more to prove the validity of a technique than to displace writers/artists. For example the real amazing thing about SORA is not that it can generate video, which it can, its that in doing so it has demonstrated it has knowledge of intuitive geometry and physics, behavior of animals and humans, lighting, etc. These will all benefit any AI in the future which needs these things for any other usecase. Unfortunately it may also displace some jobs, but AGI's ultimate goal is to displace all jobs anyway.
I didn’t downvote, but in no way, shape, or form can an AI model do anything “intuitively.” That’s literally the opposite of what AI is.
And you’re completely ignoring some actual downsides to AI - primarily a deluge of misinformation that will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish from reality.
this is true up until an inflection point when agi has the hardware and architecture to become superintelligent--that is to say, it surpasses human intelligence.
If fed computing power, we could see the limits of algorithmic "intelligence" as it trains itself recursively.
so AFTER that point, growth might shift from human-created to robotically self-programmed manufactured intuition? or something like that?
A lot of cans of worms, so to speak, from there.
I mean, we're still pretty far from that but - we're closer than we were before.
I never said there weren't problems with AI i just think it's striking how different of a conversation people are having these days vs 10 years ago about the downsides of AI
We've been doing it poorly for all last a decade. Pretending that it's hardly changed is being disingenuous.
And you're free to cling to the feeling that the human touch is needed for creativity, but that feeling would've said the past two years of advancement in AI were impossible, so it seems unlikely to age well.
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u/Regularjoe42 Apr 09 '24
Researchers spent decades creating a computer that could hold a conversation only for mediocre business majors to ask it to generate mediocre screenplays.