a thing i don’t get is what is new. i mean, computers have long been much, much “smarter” than humans in, for example, their ability to perform arithmetic, or to remember things. recent AI tools are interesting for sure, but what superior competence of their makes these new systems so threatening, compared to older superior competences?
@interfluidity It's because they're starting to bridge the gap between logic and art/emotion. We expect machines to excel at logic but fail at art (without serious help from humans). But now, whether they're truly creating/feeling or just assembling/simulating, the end result is a product that defies our expectations of what machines are capable of.
@LouisIngenthron the emotion question is interesting. so far, the LLM producers have really tried to limit apparent expression of emotion. (ChatGPT has become very neutral over the months, obviously Microsoft’s “Sidney” was clipped post NYT interview.) but even when they are restricted to HR-speak, we are somewhat awestruck. and it will be interesting to see how we’ll react to apps? bots? services? that aren’t tied back from reproducing (producing?) emotion.
@interfluidity The text-based AIs are held back in that way, yes, but consider the image and music generating AIs.
@LouisIngenthron i guess i feel like we attribute a capacity to experience and therefore experience emotion more to the LLMs than the art-bots. the image generators produce emotionally evocative things for sure, but i don’t find myself anthropomorphizing them, it’s easier to imagine a surprising but mere statistical blender to whose outputs i attribute emotion than it is when i am actually “talking” to the blender.
@interfluidity I'd bet good money there were analogous movements along with every "job-stealing" technology.
@LouisIngenthron @interfluidity
Computers helped Artists make Art.
Now Artists help Computers make Art.
@blabberlicious @LouisIngenthron maybe we should just call it a collaboration. (or maybe we decide only humans can be authors, so like the director is the *autor* of a film no matter how many hundreds participate in its creation, we may choose always attribute the creation to the humans.)
@interfluidity @LouisIngenthron
More likely:
Computers Will be Helping Computers make art. Artists will be dog walking, or other gig like drone activity.
The problems with auteur example is that so much of the material has been harvested from other auteurs. Which one can claim provenance?
I know that creative appropriating of ideas isn’t exactly new, but this *relies* on whole-scale theft.
@blabberlicious @interfluidity Sure, but that's been true at least as long as Pixar and the video game industry have existed.
@LouisIngenthron @interfluidity No, I'm an animator, and the love and humanity that goes their work is strictly Computers Helping Artists.
@blabberlicious @interfluidity Yes, I'm a game developer myself. And, I agree, your character models and animation are examples of computers assisting humans.
But the final product? The rendered image with all of the algorithms working in perfect harmony in response to the user's input? That's a little less clear about who has the true agency in making that art. The entire concept of "emergent gameplay" really drives that home.
@LouisIngenthron @interfluidity
There are1000s of terribly animated CGI films - all using simiar software. Great Animation like Pixar is more than just feeding instructions into a computers, it is the1000's of choices made, based on a fundamental understanding of: space, time, form, emotion and storytelling.
Their humanity is what what then great.
@blabberlicious @interfluidity Is bad art not art?
Also, those choices you listed... most are decided based on established standards for the goal (mood) that's being targeted. Cinematic lighting is especially formulaic. Is that not just pattern matching at its core? Even the great examples that buck these patterns do so in knowing defiance of the patterns, rather than ignorance of them.
@LouisIngenthron @interfluidity
So Rogers Deakins is just following some sort of artistic algorithm? I don’t think so. He has an original eye. Of course people defy conventions. But computers crave them. They are auto complete. They don’t understand why/what is left out. They just put things in that look/sound plausible.
I’m off to cook some pasta.
@LouisIngenthron @interfluidity emergent gameplay is and interesting off-shoot, I’d agree. I’ve been involved in plenty of site specific theatre installations that have been doing that for deacaded. Some of it was brilliant, some terrible. It all came down to the direction and how the concept was propagated.
So, humans and choices again.
@LouisIngenthron they certain have astonished us! during the industrial revolution, though, i wonder whether there weren’t analogous moments of just awe that machines could do these things that previously only humans — and it took so many humans! — could do.