This is well written. Of course, we still hoe our garden by hand, though we have an automatic tiller (not worth it for raised beds.) Art sits in a weird place; some necessities are amenable to being mass produced with little loss, but others, not. Art is in a way a necessity, but one that sits pretty far on the end of lossiness in any mass production. However, what sometimes happens, as has happened with *some* food production and a fair amount of clothing production, is that the method becomes so ubiquitous that the results get imagined in terms of what the method can produce alone. This is not a sinister process as some might suggest, when you have a set of tools, you learn them well so you know what they can or can't do. Many do not understand this, though, and are sold all sorts of fantasies about what they can make with this or that tool (or framework) -- when in reality what would matter is knowing what it *can* do and using that as a frame when imagining what you'll produce.
In musical terms, there is a subtle degradation between the person who knows how to play a variety of instruments using software emulations and one who does not. There becomes a sense of freedom to create, without really knowing the true limitations you've taken on with an emulation. A generation that has never played a string instrument would be surprised at the sounds you can make them produce. Perhaps they might so boldly say that if those things mattered they'd emulate them!
My main chief concern is that "democratization" of "high art" styles just mass produces kitsch. If I had the ability to produce wine on command, I would not be putting out anything above a 20 dollar bottle -- honestly, I had great Sicilian wines for 3-6 bucks. I recognize that my taste in the matter doesn't adequately represent the richness of wine, and only jokingly share my preferences, knowing that they are sort of philistine. But if the average wine enjoyer determined the wines that would flood the market, there would be quite a dilemma; one that the general quality and variety of wine would absolutely drop to bare satisfaction, and two that it would be an impossible problem to solve since I can't really tell the difference between a six and thousand dollar bottle of wine. Even if we set aside mere cost, since European wines are often not as expensive as hoity toity American ones, I could not tell the difference between a great wine and an acceptable one. I do enjoy Port!
What happens here though is a game-theoretical defection process, something like how oligarchy ruins a nation; yes AI "art" is bad in a number of ways, but at least positionally, a lot of people could stand to benefit _personally_ from it. They might not benefit in the long term, but benefitting now while it still matters might make sense. Naturally (and such is often the naive attitude of computer science folks) this is misunderstood under the starry-eyed guise of democratization. Sam Altman has been known to push dangerous nonsense in a very optimistic fashion; so it goes.
There is very little to convince me to listen to anyone's AI-generated "music." There is too much real music by real musicians I haven't listened to yet.
This is the dilemma that confronts fans of the arts in the 21st century; we are confronted with surfeit. I am not sure I want gatekeeping, exactly, but such as it is, it's not working. Just an endless wall of undifferentiable schlock.
20 or 30 years ago, we all knew That Dude who buttonholed you with his crazy eyes. "Hey man, you gotta listen to my band's new record! CD is only $5!" Now he wants you to listen to his AI music. We really have come to live in Geocities.
I enjoyed this piece. If you wrote this, thank you for the thought-provoking read. If you are reading this on my feed via a restack--and if you like discussions of AI--you may enjoy it too.
Either way, here are two extremely appropriate, tongue-in-cheek, and witty quotations that came to mind. Have a nice day:
“It's art. Everything is everything.”
— Ron Swanson (“Parks and Rec” episode)
“Our music is sampled, totally fake. It's done by machines 'cause they don't make mistakes!”
Btw that KFMDM song is, somewhat ironically given the title, one of their best if you are a fellow industrial music fan. Still slaps, a gym playlist mainstay.
I like Depeche Mode, but I always loved the idea that KMFDM stood for "Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode.". There are a ton of other good urban legends explanations too, like "Kill Madonna For Drug Money" haha
But sadly, no, that is not real. Though the actual meaning is pretty fun too. Basically it is an initialism of pseduo-sensical, serendipitous German word salad roughly coming out "No Majority for the Pity" or shoehorned into "No Pity for the Majority." Sascha Konietzko (band leader) explains it in a fun story at the end of this interview: https://web.archive.org/web/20070826191155/http://www.mk-magazine.com/interviews/archives/000123.php
The tendency in this society is to expect technology to solve problems, which is an odd stance regarding the AI invasion of art.
Why?
Doesn't art, the actual discipline, revolve around problems?
Isn't art in a very real sense a celebration of how to address problems?
What actual problems can AI solve?
While we're at it, AI isn't. Its just another bullshit computer program. AI isn't capable of ordering relevance. It can't offer insight on ephemeral realities. It is merely the sum of its parts, nothing more.
Oh I get it, God is dead, and now people are God and they can invent this awesome shit...except they haven't, and it sure looks like they can't.
AI isn't an artist. AI is a hack job of sensibilities and motifs spliced together that in a hopelessly electrified world seems like something else besides another techne advance into sloth.
Just another complexity that further removes the living person from their world.
Its hard enough to get paid for art. Fucking people spend tons on electric cars that spontaneously ignite, they trade dumbass digital images to the tune of thousands, but the same fuckers whine about a fraction of that price going into real art.
So, maybe the great thing about AI invading art is that it will offer trite images and hackneyed songs that some vaxhole will smile vacantly at just before their fifth heart attack. And that way, as a once valid endeavor gets turned to shit by zombie cognitive scientists and meth head digijocks consumed by stupid cyberpunk fantasies, we will be looking at one more wrong turn for a society lacking meaning.
Tech never stays stable, and with enough development, the Machine might very well figure this out. But I see your point. Thanks for linking you article, I liked that, too.
LLM and similar nested heuristic programs will never receive the patronage of a Muse. It can only be iterative based on the programmers ideas of iteration. Using movies as an example again, it can probably make Star Trek Wrath of Khan 348 but it would never spit out Galaxy Quest ex nihilo.
I won't go into what is or isn't art, but to the extent of what is, it requires choice. Letting an LLM generate the text or an image indeed puts you in the seat of the producer or patron. you may pick and choose among the results to get a result closer to that which is desired, but choosing among the results is not actually consiously choosing to _do._
Art has soul because it demands choice, towards an intended goal. Because a person can keep a coherent goal, whether it's a pose or a plot.
This is well written. Of course, we still hoe our garden by hand, though we have an automatic tiller (not worth it for raised beds.) Art sits in a weird place; some necessities are amenable to being mass produced with little loss, but others, not. Art is in a way a necessity, but one that sits pretty far on the end of lossiness in any mass production. However, what sometimes happens, as has happened with *some* food production and a fair amount of clothing production, is that the method becomes so ubiquitous that the results get imagined in terms of what the method can produce alone. This is not a sinister process as some might suggest, when you have a set of tools, you learn them well so you know what they can or can't do. Many do not understand this, though, and are sold all sorts of fantasies about what they can make with this or that tool (or framework) -- when in reality what would matter is knowing what it *can* do and using that as a frame when imagining what you'll produce.
In musical terms, there is a subtle degradation between the person who knows how to play a variety of instruments using software emulations and one who does not. There becomes a sense of freedom to create, without really knowing the true limitations you've taken on with an emulation. A generation that has never played a string instrument would be surprised at the sounds you can make them produce. Perhaps they might so boldly say that if those things mattered they'd emulate them!
My main chief concern is that "democratization" of "high art" styles just mass produces kitsch. If I had the ability to produce wine on command, I would not be putting out anything above a 20 dollar bottle -- honestly, I had great Sicilian wines for 3-6 bucks. I recognize that my taste in the matter doesn't adequately represent the richness of wine, and only jokingly share my preferences, knowing that they are sort of philistine. But if the average wine enjoyer determined the wines that would flood the market, there would be quite a dilemma; one that the general quality and variety of wine would absolutely drop to bare satisfaction, and two that it would be an impossible problem to solve since I can't really tell the difference between a six and thousand dollar bottle of wine. Even if we set aside mere cost, since European wines are often not as expensive as hoity toity American ones, I could not tell the difference between a great wine and an acceptable one. I do enjoy Port!
What happens here though is a game-theoretical defection process, something like how oligarchy ruins a nation; yes AI "art" is bad in a number of ways, but at least positionally, a lot of people could stand to benefit _personally_ from it. They might not benefit in the long term, but benefitting now while it still matters might make sense. Naturally (and such is often the naive attitude of computer science folks) this is misunderstood under the starry-eyed guise of democratization. Sam Altman has been known to push dangerous nonsense in a very optimistic fashion; so it goes.
Fantastic comment. This is the kind of thinking about this we need to have.
There is very little to convince me to listen to anyone's AI-generated "music." There is too much real music by real musicians I haven't listened to yet.
This is the dilemma that confronts fans of the arts in the 21st century; we are confronted with surfeit. I am not sure I want gatekeeping, exactly, but such as it is, it's not working. Just an endless wall of undifferentiable schlock.
20 or 30 years ago, we all knew That Dude who buttonholed you with his crazy eyes. "Hey man, you gotta listen to my band's new record! CD is only $5!" Now he wants you to listen to his AI music. We really have come to live in Geocities.
The argument that AI won’t surpass human-generated art lives here. Surfeit causes the eyes to glaze over. Curation becomes premium.
I enjoyed this piece. If you wrote this, thank you for the thought-provoking read. If you are reading this on my feed via a restack--and if you like discussions of AI--you may enjoy it too.
Either way, here are two extremely appropriate, tongue-in-cheek, and witty quotations that came to mind. Have a nice day:
“It's art. Everything is everything.”
— Ron Swanson (“Parks and Rec” episode)
“Our music is sampled, totally fake. It's done by machines 'cause they don't make mistakes!”
— KMFDM (“KMFDM Sucks” lyric)
Good quotes.
Btw that KFMDM song is, somewhat ironically given the title, one of their best if you are a fellow industrial music fan. Still slaps, a gym playlist mainstay.
Does KMFDM actually stand for Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode, or is that an urban legend?
I like Depeche Mode, but I always loved the idea that KMFDM stood for "Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode.". There are a ton of other good urban legends explanations too, like "Kill Madonna For Drug Money" haha
But sadly, no, that is not real. Though the actual meaning is pretty fun too. Basically it is an initialism of pseduo-sensical, serendipitous German word salad roughly coming out "No Majority for the Pity" or shoehorned into "No Pity for the Majority." Sascha Konietzko (band leader) explains it in a fun story at the end of this interview: https://web.archive.org/web/20070826191155/http://www.mk-magazine.com/interviews/archives/000123.php
I do the best I can with this obsolete, meat brain of mine :D
"bigoted Luddite gatekeeping chud"
This is in the running to be my new user name.
The tendency in this society is to expect technology to solve problems, which is an odd stance regarding the AI invasion of art.
Why?
Doesn't art, the actual discipline, revolve around problems?
Isn't art in a very real sense a celebration of how to address problems?
What actual problems can AI solve?
While we're at it, AI isn't. Its just another bullshit computer program. AI isn't capable of ordering relevance. It can't offer insight on ephemeral realities. It is merely the sum of its parts, nothing more.
Oh I get it, God is dead, and now people are God and they can invent this awesome shit...except they haven't, and it sure looks like they can't.
AI isn't an artist. AI is a hack job of sensibilities and motifs spliced together that in a hopelessly electrified world seems like something else besides another techne advance into sloth.
Just another complexity that further removes the living person from their world.
Its hard enough to get paid for art. Fucking people spend tons on electric cars that spontaneously ignite, they trade dumbass digital images to the tune of thousands, but the same fuckers whine about a fraction of that price going into real art.
So, maybe the great thing about AI invading art is that it will offer trite images and hackneyed songs that some vaxhole will smile vacantly at just before their fifth heart attack. And that way, as a once valid endeavor gets turned to shit by zombie cognitive scientists and meth head digijocks consumed by stupid cyberpunk fantasies, we will be looking at one more wrong turn for a society lacking meaning.
All I know is, I couldn't even get multiple AIs to follow a simple instruction like "blue dress," much less the right number and shape of human fingers: https://wordassociations.substack.com/p/compare-and-contrast
Tech never stays stable, and with enough development, the Machine might very well figure this out. But I see your point. Thanks for linking you article, I liked that, too.
LLM and similar nested heuristic programs will never receive the patronage of a Muse. It can only be iterative based on the programmers ideas of iteration. Using movies as an example again, it can probably make Star Trek Wrath of Khan 348 but it would never spit out Galaxy Quest ex nihilo.
I won't go into what is or isn't art, but to the extent of what is, it requires choice. Letting an LLM generate the text or an image indeed puts you in the seat of the producer or patron. you may pick and choose among the results to get a result closer to that which is desired, but choosing among the results is not actually consiously choosing to _do._
Art has soul because it demands choice, towards an intended goal. Because a person can keep a coherent goal, whether it's a pose or a plot.
The only real progress humans have actually accomplished since our beginnings is our ability to live longer. All else is air conditioning.
That isn’t art and it isn’t meant to be, it’s meant to mock art and those who pour their lives and souls into it.