• echo64@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Would be good if openai could focus on things that are useful to humanity rather than trying to just do what we can do already, but with less jobs.

    • maniacal_gaff@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      We already knew how to farm before John Deere; should we have focused away from agricultural industrialization in order to preserve jobs?

      • echo64@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        looks at the immense harm that agricultural industrialization has had on the climate, the environment and society

        Apparently yes.

    • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Working less is a great ideal for humanity.

      Americans have this thing that their job defines them but we worked less than we did before, let’s keep going.

      • lorty@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Except the gains technology and automation bring are rarely evenly distributed in society. Just compare how productive a worker is today and how much we make compared to 50 years ago.

        • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          We make a lot more. Improvements are good.

          You think people should be taxed more, vote for politicians trying to tax rich people more.

      • echo64@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        1 Generally people want to work, people don’t want to be exploited by capitolists for a capitolist society where they barely make rent humans are generally workers. 2. This isn’t working less, this isn’t productivity improvement. This is less humanity in art and all just so employers don’t need to spend money on workers.

        • Wanderer@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Nothing is stopping anyone working for works sake. Personal I think that’s a waste of time but people are free to do what they want.

          Yes it is. It’s the same as the printing press, or the electric switchboard, computers, cars, containerisation, 3d rendering verse drawing. Work used to be done by humans now the labour had been replaced to make something better quality, for a lower price with less workers.

        • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yes and no.

          Currently you could say that ai is just efficiently guessing what we would want to see from pixel to pixel.

          An artist may tune their style to be more similar to the art that they sold before in hopes of repeat buyers.

          An AI looks at countless images and seeks out patterns which it refines. It mimics things and duplicates patterns.

          An artists spends countless hours absorbed in the art of others to learn styles. Frequently they may mimic other works and iterate off of existing ideas.

          Fan art, tracing, compositing - these are all things understood in the art community. If someone makes fan art of someone else’s character does that invalidate their work as art?

          AI invokes a reaction because it’s getting “close.” AI is receiving a lot of the same criticism that digital artists got for not using traditional mediums back in that technology’s infancy.

          Art is in the eye of the beholder. What defines art? Everything is relative. At present? AI is a tool. A bit unpolished and raw but so was CGI in the movie industry. Look how quickly that evolved.

          • BluesF@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            AI could well be a tool for creating art in the future but as of yet it is not a tool I have ever seen to create anything I would consider art. Well, certainly not good art. Admittedly, every time I’ve been aware that it’s been used at all it’s because there are obvious AI errors present which make things look shit.

            • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Without question. Early tablets and digital art couldn’t hold a candle to traditional mediums. Even if the same artist created content for both. The tools are certainly rough… but considering how young the technology is, and how far it has already come, I think we may soon arrive at a point where people may have issues distinguishing between the two.

              Either way it’s a fun topic to discuss. It’s deeply interesting to see the variety of responses to it.

          • echo64@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            If nature carves a stone to look pretty, that’s not art.

            If a human carves a stone to look pretty, that’s art. It has care and detail, it has something about humanity in it as it has a human behind it and everything that shaped them, shaped that stone.

            It’s that simple. Ai can not make art no more than the wind can.

            • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              I understand where you are coming from but to be fair the wind isn’t using art as a reference. This is why I suggested it was a complex issue… and provided the examples that I did. There are quite a few similarities between ai models producing art and artists. Surely there are differences - but objectively speaking they do have quite a few similarities.

              Art is specific to the beholder. Does what is before you evoke an emotional response? Was it produced for that purpose? If you provided paint and paper to an ape - would it be considered art? What about a child who has no concept of art?

              From a non image perspective: music is art. Is a mashup music? What about other sample heavy music? Some people might argue that x genre isn’t really music.

              Back to prompt driven ai generated art: what if someone spent 70 hours tuning and modifying a prompt until the art fit their vision? 200 hours? What if they lacked the ability to draw or paint?

              I genuinely don’t believe this is a black and white issue. I do understand the implications of what ai tools have to the workforce - but that is a separate topic.

              • echo64@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                If the wind blows, cut up pieces of art magazines around and then land in a pile. That isn’t art. It’s just cut-up pieces of someone else’s art.

                If a person cuts up a magazine and pieces the parts together with intention and meaning. That can be art.

                Art is not “I like this visially”, art is not “you did this well.” Art is human expression.

                • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  If the wind blows, cut up pieces of art magazines around and then land in a pile. That isn’t art. It’s just cut-up pieces of someone else’s art.

                  I can’t really agree with this example. I think you’re suggesting the AI is completely independent of human expression and is completely random in its application of its training data (the cut up pieces I suppose?)

                  Generative AI is driven by a human prompt (description) and refined by further prompts which pushes the result in the direction of the prompters vision.

                  If a person cuts up a magazine and pieces the parts together with intention and meaning. That can be art.

                  This is in essence what is occuring above. I view this process as someone being provided a chisel and a block of stone:

                  The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.

                  -Michelangelo

                  As I suggested above AI is a tool that makes accessing art and expression available to anyone. The Ai is the chisel. They cut the stone with words… It isn’t just random clipart being thrown around either: The ‘stone’ is the culmination of all of the art the model has ‘seen.’ It has taken that data and found the patterns that different styles contain. You might describe this as the distillation of human expression into something new.

                  The source is art - human expression The prompt gives it form - human expression Further prompts drive the form to fit the users vision - human expression

                  There is intent and meaning.

                  Is it art in the traditional sense? Perhaps not in the same vein as ink and canvas but … I believe, while it is certainly rough and unrefined, it can still be considered a tool to create art.

                  • echo64@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    If you want, you can say that “prompt engineering” is an art. The act of engineering that prompts to get a picture, maybe that has a skill we might call art.

                    But no, the jpeg isn’t art. It’s a million cut-up images formed to make our monkey brains go “I enjoy”.

                    Do you do this prompt engineering? The last time I had this conversation it turned out I was talking to someone that called themselves an artist because they put words into an ai.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Good luck keeping up that attitude as AI is advancing at this pace. You already can’t tell them apart from human created images and and it’ll just keep getting better. Stop kidding yourself.

          • echo64@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Art is not about how believable it is. It’s not a gauge of believability that an ai made this or not. There is no Turing test for art.

    • fidodo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      If the natural state of technology is that there aren’t enough jobs to sustain an economy, then our economic system is broken, and trying to preserve obsolete jobs is just preserving the broken status quo that primarily benefits the rich. Over time I’m thinking more and more that instead of trying to prop up an outdated economic system we should just let it fail, and then we have no choice but to rethink it.

      • echo64@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Oh yes yes I’m sure that we will totally rethink our economic systems that’s absolutely what will happen and it will totally result in the utopia you’re dreaming of. I’m sure that will happen I’m sure it’s not just the ultra wealthy noting how they can make even more profit whilst everyone else suffers can’t be that I’m sure the government will do something we all have faith in that we know it’s obvious that will happen

        • fidodo@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          You think pushing the status quo is going to result in change? The sweet spot for the rich is to have everyone struggle while they enrich themselves, but not struggle so hard that it leads to an upheaval. We’ve tried patching up a broken system and it doesn’t fix anything, it just slows the decline. I think an upheaval is the only answer, dunno when we’ll hit the breaking point, but it will happen, it’s inevitable. For the economy to fundamentally change it will require it becoming completely impossible to survive in the existing economy, otherwise nobody would want to risk a fundamental rethink of how things work.