this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024

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1226

this one goes out to the arts & humanities (mander.xyz)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] braxy29 42 points 7 months ago (1 children)

i think you're missing the point, which i took as this - what arts and humanities folks do is valuable (as evidenced by efforts to recreate it) despite common narratives to the contrary.

[+] Gabu -10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Of course it's valuable. So is, e.g., soldering components on a circuit board, but we have robots for doing that at scale now.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Do you think robots will ever become better than humans at creating art, in the same way they've become better than us at soldering?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

feel free to audit my comments to confirm my distinct lack of gpt enthusiasm but that question is unanswerable.

What is "creating art"? A distinctly human thing? then trivially no. Idk how many people go with this interpretation though. Although I think many artists and art appreciators do at least some of the time.

Is it drawing pretty pictures? Probably too reductive for even the most hardline tech enthusiasts but computers are already very good at this. If I want to say get my face in something that looks like an old timey oil painting computers are way faster than humans.

Is it making things that make us feel something? They can probably get pretty good at this. Although it's unclear how novel the results will be most people aren't exposed to most art so you could probably produce novel feelings on an individual level pretty well.

Art is so fuzzy and used with such a range of definitions it's not really clear what this is asking.

Even if they're better the future might still suck. Machines are technically better at all the components of carpentry than humans but I'd rather furniture wasn't souless minimalist MDF landfill garbage and carpenters could still earn a living. Even if that means my chairs were a bit uneven.

[–] xkforce 3 points 7 months ago

Yep.

[–] Gabu 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Quite easily, yes. Unlike humans, with their limited lifespans and slow minds, Artificial Inteligence could create hundreds of different paintings in the time it'd take me to finish one.

[–] poplargrove 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Being able to put out lots of works isn't the same as being able to come up with good, meaningful art?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That depends on things we don't know yet. If it can be brute forced (throw loads of computation power, gazillions of try & error, petabytes of data including human opinions), then yes, "lots of work" can be an equivalent.

If it does not, we have a mystery to solve. Where does this magic come from? It cannot be broken down into data and algorithms, but still emerges in the material world? How? And what is it, if not dependent on knowledge stored in matter?

On the other hand, how do humans come up with good, meaningful art? ~~Talent~~ Practice. Isn't that just another equivalent of "lots of work"? This magic depends on many learned data points and acquired algorithms, executed by human brains.

There also is survivor bias. Millions of people practice art, but only a tiny fraction is recognized as artists (if you ask the magazines and wallets). Would we apply the same measure to computer generated art, or would we expect them to shine in every instance?

As "good, meaningful art" still lacks a good, meaningful definition, I can see humans moving the goalpost as technology progresses, so that it always remains a human domain. We just like to feel special and have a hard time accepting humiliations like being pushed out of the center of the solar system, or placed on one random planet among billion others, or being just one of many animal species.

Or maybe we are unique in this case. We'll probably be wiser in a few decades.

[–] poplargrove 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What does it even mean to bruteforce creating art? Trying all the possible prompts to some image model?

The approach people take to learning or applying a skill like painting is not bruteforcing, there is actual structure and method to it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

What does it even mean to bruteforce creating art? Trying all the possible prompts to some image model?

Doesn't have to be that random, but can be. Here, I wrote: "throw loads of computation power, gazillions of try & error, petabytes of data including human opinions".

The approach people take to learning or applying a skill like painting is not bruteforcing, there is actual structure and method to it.

Ok, but isn't that rather an argument that it can eventually be mastered by a machine? They excel at applying structure and method, with far more accuracy (or the precise amount of desired randomness) and speed than we can.

The idea of brute forcing art comes down to philosophical questions. Do we have some immaterial genie in us, which cannot be seen and described by science, which cannot be recreated by engineers? Engeniers, lol. Is art something which depends on who created it, or does it depend on who views it?

Either way what I meant is that it is thinkable that more computation power and better algorithms bring machines closer to being art creators, although some humans surely will reject that solely based on them being machines. Time will tell.