Hacker News Reader

Comment by karahime | Hacker News Reader

This kind of snobbery sucks. You give the same reason for art created by humans without interacting with AI being unreachable as you do for AI created art being bad. Human made art is "not separate from culture" while AI made art is "amalgamation of already bland cultural works".

Overall, the perspective espoused here is bad for art. Art isn't hidden inside effort, you don't find it by saying "don't be lazy", and if it's inseparable from where it came from (which I think is pretty debatable, art travels through time and the world and can find interest), this is as true for what humans make as what AI makes.

I think the last bit gives the game away. This perspective is an otherwise content free way of saying "some art is interesting to me, and some isn't".

View on HN

Arguing that the artist's own hardwork, and through that their personality and soul, is integral to art is not snobbery: snobbery is stating that "ordinary" art is beneath you.

You didn't make that argument at all. You said our lives are flooded with soulless creations night and day--the product of lazy minds. You called people you dont like lazy.

You insult people and then lie about what you said.

This kind of philistinism sucks.

Under that premise we would consider a photography by my 6-year old a greater achievement than a detailed realistic painting, which we still marvel at.

I think that, as with photography and painting, there will be a place for all types of art, also machine generated, but under different umbrellas.

To think that they compete in the same category is a mistake.

If I read an interesting story, it might lead to some sort of moral or dramatic tension or experience that sticks with me. It could be years later when I live some particular experience and the author's intent becomes clear, or I get some insight into why they had a certain character act in a certain way, or maybe that I missed the point entirely and I am seeing the subtly now.

All of which are impossible with AI. It has no intent, it fulfulls the ask from the prompt. If the prompt is so detailed to imbue the work with deeper meanings, then the author is the person that wrote the prompt, not the LLM which becomes something of a translater.

If LLMs get so good at architecting stories that they can whip up some conceptual layer of understand that feels like communication then we will have achieved a higher form of literary remixing. LLMs are still a series of weights,they still operate in a stateless way and have no initiative besides our prompt. Unless we change that, the value of what an LLM can produce remains limited.

To think otherwise is like a tribesman finding a radio and thinking they are hearing the voice of God. Because you aren't following where the words come from you invent a persona for something that is fundamentally a vehicle of transport.

All of this line of reasoning in the second half is predicated on the idea that there's nothing besides the prompt, but that's an architectural decision that labs optimize for, not something inherent to the field or methods. It's actually fairly trivial to allow for unprompted or accumulated work, except that many people then get mad at it because "I didn't ask for it to do XYZ!"

Your insight years later is still something you constructed, it's a new story that you've told yourself, presumably without any new input from the writer, all of which you can do with any given piece of media. You can do that without the intent having been there on the writer's part at all, even, something which is fairly common to do.

So you think art is overwhelmingly for interpretation. I'm trying to put your comments together and get a handle on this viewpoint. You said elsewhere that artists aren't in it to communicate to the audience. So the artist uses communication media and tropes to do something cryptic and personal, which everybody then misunderstands but enjoys using as a vehicle for their own, how did put it, "story that you've told yourself" about an imagined artist. With the result that a completely phony artificial* artist will suffice. Right?

* Once a synonym for "artistic", but that's a distracting coincidence

...

Well you're not replying, so I'll respond to my own "story" about what you meant, as if I guessed right. I think art can be lots of things, and this (interpretation of cryptic output) is indeed one of the things it can be. The aesthetic movement in the 19th century opposed didactic art, such as deliberate allegories, hence they coined "art for art's sake". But this shows that art as deliberate communication evidently existed too, since they rejected it. Then, looking somewhere much more modern, pop music artists frequently surf atop of fictional images of the star that are largely invented by the audience. Mystique is quite enjoyable. But wanting to be fooled, wanting to misunderstand, is perverse. Milli Vanilli's fraud pissed people off, and rightly so.

There was probably some pomo shit about completely interpretable art, but I doubt anybody really liked that.

So I think the popular preference is for art that is inexplicit, somewhat mysterious, certainly not a plain communication, but art that is an effective inexplicit communication and has a genuine artist's mind invested in it.

I could add that this is somewhat preserved in art even after it's been digested by AI, but that's hardly ideal.

The point is that human-created work has more meaning, because it's the product of a real life. Writing is a reflection of the writer.

Computer code can replicate rhetoric and prose. It can even create meaning the user didn't anticipate. This is as much a reflection of the 'author' as any hallucination.

The kind of essentialism people hold between the object and the meaning of the object is effectively inseparable, and it's pointless to argue that it's not or shouldn't be. I write in the golf space. There have been many, many replica golf courses built, and they have been largely unsuccessful, except one that is barely open to the public. The have been mostly unsuccessful not because they don't replicate the originals well, but that the vast majority of folks don't want a facsimile, even if it's fine.

I don't live like that, you don't live like that, but most people do, and they have ever right to. Humans aren't analytical engines. Evolutionary biology has pushed us strongly towards caring deeply about meaning, identity, and respect. This is normal and has to be unlearned. Good luck with that. Other people don't have to like and respect art for you to.

Except AI art is not a exact copy of existing art, it may sometimes occur, but most AI art is people who are not artists expressing themselves. Its a specific personal vision of a golf course only for themselves in most cases. Its irrelevant who else likes it. Previously even the lowest tier of contract artists on websites like DeviantArt would ask 20-40 dollars for such a thing, and that's after you first searched around for an artist who does your specific idea/genre/subject. Then there's the back and forth, waiting in a queue, and potentially taking money and ghosting and so on. And finally how few people have 30 dollars spare cash to blow on a throwaway idea?

Why is it "bad for art" if someone dislikes AI art then?

I don't know, ask the people who think AI art is bad art or not art.

That wasn't my question. The poster above said that snobbery towards AI art is "bad for art" and since you supported their general pro-AI arguments, I assumed you were the same poster. Sorry, I didn't look closer.

So do you think AI is OK for throwaway stuff but not OK for "production" so to speak?

Its okay for anything. I don't care if the pixels and vectors for a character or landscape in Skyrim was made by humans completely, by humans in heavy collaboration with AI or almost completely autonomous AI. For some art eg live music I would prefer a disclosure, but that's not because I hate the use of AI rather it is false marketing.

So why is it "irrelevant who else likes it"? If it's made for the public and the public doesn't like it, then it's pretty relevant. What if people do care how the Skyrim character models were made? What if they do hate once they learn it's AI?

People can have any reasons they want no matter how insane. By revealed preferences, the split has already occurred between those who hate AI and those who don't mind AI art.

That's not the answer to my question but fine, why is the split important in any way? Some people hate jazz, some people love jazz, and it follows that... what?

People are generally emotionally weak and hate to think in ways they are in fact simple physical systems and not special. Humans have been knocked down a peg several times over the history by natural sciences. Nothing new.

There is also the generational factor. Digital art, printing press etc all of it had a generational factor to it before gaining acceptance. So who knows what the future holds.

I see. What do you think people seek in art? Why do they engage with it?

For most art they just like the picture, caring about the artist is inasmuch as one was required to make it. Already before AI, if I selected a random photo from a given genre in DeviantArt or ArtStation it would be hard to make deep philosophical queries about the artist like the original starter of this thread tree was thinking is necessary for art. Most of it was surfaced when people searched for xyz wallpaper, they click Save and set it on their phone or desktop.

Even for pure picture lovers, I will say beyond philosophizing about the creator, the content of the picture itself is subject of thought and analysis as far or as little as one wishes.

People care a bit more about the creator in music, because musicians have built up a lot of image and fake mystique. But then again, for some genres, its much less relevant to people especially those that got grew natively or thrived on the internet eg noise rock, hardcore electronic.

Some of course want deeper analysis, seeing the artists blog/thoughts etc.

Ultimately the actual revealed preference is that most people just want "pretty pictures" and couldn't care much about anything else.

Interesting. I am one of the people who adores visuals. Instagram and Tumblr used to be my favorite places, I had my own pretty pictures curation blogs, my way of relaxing was creating Pinterest boards. Now, I also like "serious" art but I wouldn't scroll museum galleries when I just needed to feel a little whimsy, I went to Pinterest and often didn't care about the author behind them in many cases because the pictures were derivative enough to not feel "special" (but sometimes I would and then I would discover new artists).

I don't engage with this hobby anymore since the platforms got flooded with AI-generated content. Now, I do like some early and cheeky AI-generated images (mostly pre-ChatGPT), but not after -- and not because of corporate and social politics -- I'm honestly largely out of the news cycle and don't know what terrible or amazing thing some AI company did this week. And yet my hobby completely died and it was strangely disorienting because I struggled to find something else that could replace it, I don't have social media and didn't have feeds except for on those three platforms (I deleted them all now).

I am an outlier from the general population in how I engage with visuals, and I do think that it's likely that all of the commercial visuals in the future will be AI generated, now, I don't think they will be pretty, though. I think they will be largely ugly. I think the majority of people don't actually care about "pretty pictures" at all and are content with very ugly things surrounding them all the time. And the rest can't help it.

I don't mind ai at all, its the same for me except occasionally I get to express my own idea. Prompting is still not easy for getting a very specific idea so wanting art as a proxy for someone having done the work, I don't mind finding someone's AI art for a specific composition or idea. For stuff that was made with generic prompts too, as I said before, it is like seeing the AI's vision and thought process. I don't mind either way. Again even if a full AAA game was made with AI as long as the result looks coherent and nice I don't mind.

Case in point, I guess.

I don't find it ugly. Its equal to average or better than the low end of wallpapercore. If you think AI is ugly in this specific genre then its your bias clouding your thinking. If AI art in this genre is bad then most of DeviantArt and ArtStation was also bad.

I wish time machines existed so we could do blind testing of AI generated art vs purely manual art to people around say 2019.

I don't doubt you don't. Why is my judgement clouded and not yours? DA was p bad, it was for amateurs so it was expected. Never had a chance to use AS.

If you want to have a discussion about "what art is" I think I would end up arguing that people creating AI art are artists.

My point is it doesn't matter. All art ultimately boils down to is doing something cool, and then pointing at it. The vast, vast, vast majority of "art" is not paid and never was. Even the art that is called "art" has little-to-nothing to do with effort. Duchamp's "readymades" are basically less effort that typing a prompt into AI.

That said, nobody has to like Duchamp's readymades. Nobody has to like anyone's art. The point of art is that you can like it or not. It's not objective, but the vast majority of people are going to pretend that it is, but that's fine because it's actually not.

Another point is tat I think current LLMs are arguably conscious. I am not saying they are but I am open to the possibility as human brains are physical systems that are conscious so there is no reason other conscious physical systems might not exist. In that light, or even otherwise, I think if we avoid heavy handed prompting or micromanaging, the AI itself has its own ways of thought, tics and style. So in that sense we can cite the AI itself as part composer.

There are plenty of human consciousnesses whose output people can't stand. If AI is conscious, it's perfectly in line with how human art works -- sometimes someone's creative output is offputting to a great deal of people.

It’s not snobbery. Art is just another way for humans to talk with each other, if AI does all the talking, people are largely not interested.

>saying "some art is interesting to me, and some isn't".

That applies to every single human being, including you, except maybe for art scholars.

That last part is what I just said. The original post is saying nothing aside from something that's already true of everyone, and has nothing to do with whether AI can or does make interesting things.

I'm also not sure that art is actually a way that humans talk to each other. That assumes that the point is delivering some information, but a lot of artists talk about it as a compulsion, or something they do for themselves, or as being about understanding the world. I would actually say that many would say that it's definitively not about audience reception. Simultaneously, audiences interpret things of their own accord all the time. Unlike when sending a message, art is often most fully interacted with when you're engaging with things that weren't put there explicitly.

You assume that humans exchange information only consciously. Someone can feel a compulsion to capture the beauty of something, and someone can still read it as “wow, so this is what beauty can be like”. Or they can read something else, human comms are imperfect and that’s part of it.

What do you see in AI art that you love or find interesting so much?

Also, while I disagree about your point on the audience part — if that is your belief, the article and my or anyone else’s opinion should be absolutely irrelevant for artists. They feel compulsion, the do their AI art. Why does it matter if it finds its audience or sells? Make art, put your soul into it, put your LLM’s soul into it if you believe it has it, make it for all the interesting and cool things. Show it to humans, show it to bots, don’t show it and keep it on your hard drive — the audience doesn’t matter if AI/you made something interesting and artistic. So what if someone wants a “human-made” sticker on whatever drawing, an artist’s goal is to make art, no? Not get anyone’s approval. Why does someone’s “snobbery” matter in this regard at all?

>That last part is what I just said. The original post is saying nothing aside from something that's already true of everyone, and has nothing to do with whether AI can or does make interesting things.

Well, your post, following your own logic, just says that you like AI-generated stuff. You cannot judge what's good or bad for art, you can't call someone preference "snobbery" because the only property of art is that someone likes it. Interesting things is also then completely subjective.

There are several cases of people saying they hate gays and being caught in a gay brothel, people saying they never watched porn and caught on camera with their phone open to trans porn, etc.

It works both ways. There are plenty of people who fake orgasm. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com