General AI thread

[Sphinx]

18 hours ago, LaGoosh said:

You can't strategise good art because it's an expression of humanity. Sometimes there's no clear reason why a piece of art works - it just does. It's chaotic, original and unpredictable which is something AI can never be because it can only 'create' using things that have already been done. Everything it does will always be shallow and empty and disposable by its very nature. And that's not because there's no history/backstory to the artist or whatever you're going on about.

I find your entire mindset around this absolutely depressing beyond words. 

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think it does have the potential to be unpredictable, like in the Go game. It also depends what you mean by original. It could be argued no human creative output is truly unique - it has many influences, much like an AI creative output would have. It's also an expression formed of lived experienced and emotions which AI can't replicate.

I'm also not sure that it can only be empty and shallow. To use the club example again, if a DJ played ten tracks and one of them was a track produced by AI to a high level of sophistication (likely when AI output improves over the years), it was mixed in at a good point in the set, and it was my cup of tea musically, I don't think I'd stop in my tracks when the AI one's played and say how empty it was. A) I doubt I'd recognise it was produced by AI, B) if I felt emotion through it and it contributed to a positive memory, then I'd say it has value.

[LaGoosh]

42 minutes ago, Sphinx said:

We'll have to agree to disagree

No, we won't. You are wrong. I can't stress it enough.

Edited April 25, 2025 by LaGoosh

[The Gaffer]

1 hour ago, Sphinx said:

I'm also not sure that it can only be empty and shallow. To use the club example again, if a DJ played ten tracks and one of them was a track produced by AI to a high level of sophistication (likely when AI output improves over the years), it was mixed in at a good point in the set, and it was my cup of tea musically, I don't think I'd stop in my tracks when the AI one's played and say how empty it was. A) I doubt I'd recognise it was produced by AI, B) if I felt emotion through it and it contributed to a positive memory, then I'd say it has value.

You're not talking about art, though. I think that's the key. You're talking about things having an effect on your brain, and one does not imply the other. 

Drugs can effect your brain and make you dance, but taking drugs isn't an art form, despite that the majority of my twenties would have you believe. 

Every human creative output is unique. If I pick up the guitar in the corner of my room and play Blackbird on it, I'm doing it as me. Nobody else can do that. Is that pithy sentimentalism? Sure, but it counts. 

Is there an argument - if I make a living doing that - that I'm a derivative hack? You betcha. But that discussion counts. 

People might like Coldplay and have voted for the Nazis, Jeremy, but it's interesting to talk about why. An AI slops out a Nick Cave album and it's just a Partridge shoulder shrug .gif from here to eternity. 

Edited April 25, 2025 by The Gaffer

[Sphinx]

That's an important point, what our definition of art is. For me, if it were to produce a novel, for example, that I enjoyed and I can appreciate in the same ways I could a novel created by a human (again, let's say I don't know anything about the author to take any bias out) then I'd consider that art. If AI was used in collaboration with a human user tweaking, bouncing ideas off it, using it as a tool, then I'd also say that's art. In fact, AI is in collaboration with humans in a way throughout as it's gathering data from humans and can be in tune with where we're at as a society.

If your definition of art is that it must be linked to human intent, human struggle, human lived experience and identity etc then it's not art.

If your definition of art is linked to the output, whether it made you feel emotions, challenged your mindset, was an accomplished piece by your standards, and doesn't need to fulfil the above criteria, then I'd say it is. 

[tiger_rick]

1 hour ago, Sphinx said:

It could be argued no human creative output is truly unique

I mean, love AI if you want but don't make such a bad faith argument when literally all art is unique. Ideologically, everything probably comes from somewhere but the entire benefit of creativity is that every person is different and it's nigh on impossible for the same hand to do two things exactly the same anyway, let alone different people. 

[Chili]

AI art and music is for bad meffs. Even it could create a song that sounded good it's not an achievement in any form in the slightest.

 

[LaGoosh]

Something interesting from 1984 (a brilliant novel written by a human) is that one of the ways the authoritative fascist state pacifies the proletariat is by inundating them with trashy novels and fake music that are written by a machine called the versificator. The purpose of it is to stop the people from engaging in any unique creative thought of their own. I reckon @Sphinx would be first in line to hear the latest club banger from the versificator.

Edited April 25, 2025 by LaGoosh

[Chili]

The Prisoner also has a brilliant episode based on a super computer that can feed entire history texts to your brain through the TV in like seconds. All lovely sci-fi 60's bollocks. Anyway the computer is destroyed when No. 6 puts a statement into the computer just saying 'Why?'

[Guest]

4 hours ago, The Gaffer said:

Every human creative output is unique. If I pick up the guitar in the corner of my room and play Blackbird on it, I'm doing it as me. Nobody else can do that. Is that pithy sentimentalism? Sure, but it counts. 

I can. I asked ChatGPT to develop a training pattern I can do exactly that in 6 months. You're all arguing about "what is art" on a wrestling forum whilst I use AI to make me a wizard. 

 

Incidentally, I asked ChatGPT if it could create art. It said no. Case Closed.

[Sphinx]

I already have The Very Best of ChatGPT record on pre-order.

[johnnyboy]

Now That's What I Call MusAIc

[Sphinx]

You Can Call Me AI: The Greatest Hits

[BomberPat]

I suppose the other question of AI is  - assuming it could create art indistinguishable from art created by a human, why would you want it to? 

I understand corporate use cases. I don't agree with them, but I can see why a company would want to save some money by having generative AI create a bunch of marketing bunf for them at less expense than actually hiring a graphic designer or copywriter to do it.

But why would you want to look at art or listen to music or watch a film that hasn't had a single original thought go into it, that does nothing to express anything of the person or people who created it? It strikes me as completely missing the point. Similarly, I don't know why a creative person would want the option to make any of those things without the act of actually creating it. It strikes me as people who are jealous of people who can make art, but don't want to put the effort in to learn how to do it themselves, and have convinced themselves that there's a magic button that artists are gatekeeping from them, that with one neat trick they too can have all the perceived plaudits and respect of having written a book, created an artwork, or written a song. But so much of any piece of art isn't just having an idea and then directly translating that idea into reality, it's all the different ways that it changes during the creative process - that's what I was talking about in films with Jaws being a better film for the mechanical shark not working, but similarly there are songs where something happens by mistake or as a joke that ends up transforming it into something else entirely and improving it in the process (I wish I could think of a better example off the top of my head than "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive, and the stuttering vocal being intended as a joke), and you always hear of authors having a plan in mind but their characters growing as if independently of them and shaping the narrative in unexpected ways. In AI you are taking away the possibility of adaptation, happy accidents, outside influence, all the things that completely shape and define the creative process, and reducing it to "here's an idea, do it". 

[LaGoosh]

43 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

It strikes me as people who are jealous of people who can make art, but don't want to put the effort in to learn how to do it themselves, and have convinced themselves that there's a magic button that artists are gatekeeping from them, that with one neat trick they too can have all the perceived plaudits and respect of having written a book, created an artwork, or written a song.

This is very accurate. I've seen AI art being referred to as "democratizing art". Usually "democratizing art" refers to giving people who wouldn't otherwise have the means to see art and make art themselves (training and education for example) the opportunity to do so. 

But with the tech bros "democratizing art" means basically "you are no longer held back by your lack of talent or lack of interest and willingness to learn how to do something or produce something yourself - now you can just have a computer do it for you". It's fucking revolting.

It's also why AI art is so shite and only liked by the worst people imaginable. Genuinely talent people don't need to use it. They will just give you the real thing.

Edited April 25, 2025 by LaGoosh

[Gus Mears]

Every person I know who has posted one of those Muppet photos of themselves is the sort of person I would be happy to see fall bollock first on a railing.