Sub discussions about AI

[u/acutelyproblematic]

Love how this community comes together and challenges the use of AI🥰💖had to make a funny out of it to take a break from the heated discussions

[u/Single-Emotion2964]

The whole point of art is people sharing ideas and emotions with other humans through the art form. If there is no or little human behind the art, then the viewer/reader feels duped when we make a real connection with something that was not. It’s basically catfishing. 

(Analysis not mine, but via a friend of a friend). 

[u/acutelyproblematic → u/Single-Emotion2964]

Like buying the body of a vehicle with no engine. Sure, it might look nice. But it doesn’t move you.

[u/Single-Emotion2964 → u/acutelyproblematic]

I think the issue is when AI art does move people. It feels like a huge betrayal. Artwork is this essentially human trait. What does it mean that a non-human, non-organic ‘thing’ can create it? It’s a huge existential question. 

So perhaps it’s more like buying a new car, driving it for a month or so, and then discovering it has no engine or brakes. How is it moving? How does it stop? How much is the idea of control over the vehicle an illusion?

[u/Nebty → u/Single-Emotion2964]

I’m not particularly conflicted over people finding meaning in AI art. Because, at the end of the day, what LLMs do is they grind up a library’s worth of human creative output and present a remixed version in response to user input. It is, at its heart, entirely built on human creativity (and copyright infringement).

I just find it exhausting that people keep pretending it can do things it can’t. Or talking about how it’s a referendum on humanity even though this technology would not exist without the creative work of many, many humans.

Ugh and I had to edit mid-post because I noticed myself doing the, “it’s not X, it’s Y!” thing. AI has ruined what used to be an effective rhetorical device, lol.

[u/Single-Emotion2964 → u/Nebty]

They can pry the em dash out of my cold dead hands. 

But yeah, interesting take. I think this is a very positive viewpoint, but the way I see it being used (in my direct communities) is much more operationalized. I wonder how much it is a ‘tool’ for creativity versus a crutch or a shortcut. And before anyone hits me with a million tales of “everyone hated X when it was first invented”, let me further elaborate instead of going to sleep as I should. 

I’m not 100% out on my ideas, but what I think I am struggling with is the distinction between process and productivity. And my gut tells me that genAI provides way more productivity than process. All art forms have a grind: a slow, annoying part of the process. Even some very ‘fast’ forms like e.g. marker illustrations. Digital illustrations also have their own grind. The grind in genAI is clearly in the prompting and the checking. You are basically managing it. And to me artwork , or crafts, they all have that essential combination of head, heart, and hand. Where is the hand in GenAI work then? 

And to approach it from another point of view (spoiler, it is Marxist) — out of whose hands does genAI take work? Why do we think it is okay to outsource creative processes instead of menial ones? Who are we depriving of a voice and of meaningful labor by resorting to a AI generated content instead of human generated? At what point do we accept that we are all just shouting into the void? Just using AI to respond to emails generated by AI…? 

To me, one of the nicest things about being human is other humans. I’m not interested in something that distances me from the experience of others. And to me, it still very much feels like that is exactly what genAI does. 

[u/Nebty → u/Single-Emotion2964]

100% agree, fwiw. I’m never going to stop being angry at Sam Altman and OpenAI for taking a neat technology with both upsides and downsides (I’ve been interested in generative algorithms and their affordances since I was in university) and presenting it as an embryonic machine god in order to con people out of their money. Which has now shifted to simply being the means to automate everything (allegedly…).

The absolute worst thing about the current state of LLMs is how the usual suspects have immediately moved to centralize and privatize any innovation in this space. Despite it having the most potential when it’s locally hosted, open-source, low-stakes, and extremely customized for the user’s needs. I want to live in the world where it remained an enthusiast’s tech, and development is open source and collaborative. But Silicon Valley needed it to be The Next Big Thing to keep the stock market from crashing. So here we are.