I liked this post. Humans have constantly defined and understood themselves via the medium of the technology they create. This is what cognitive science has done to the brain and mind. Prior to that we used an understanding of a pump to understand the physiology of the circulatory system. LLM will be no different. There are some areas that overlap with human cognition, even if the mechanisms are different, however there are quite a few ways that it is different.
Something you did not touch on which I believe is important is the value of art to the creator and the public. I believe that this value is independent of the form or medium used to create the art. You touched on this with your reference to photography. I think for there to be art there has to be in part a significant valuation by at a minimum the creator and perhaps also the public as well (although not required, and will likely vary from person-to-person. And key to that valuation with be the human centeredness in the creative process. Without that it, IMHO, it is not art, regardless of how breathtaking it is. A landscape, a sunset, or some other magnificent experience of nature are beautiful but not art. AI may make beautiful images just as nature creates beautiful things all the time but this is not art.
I think this is a very interesting point, and you might think I'm splitting hairs or being pedantic (but that's kind of the fun of a discussion of the finer points on something like this right?) however, I think that the idea of value is captured in "inspiration" in the "inspiration + taste + craft."
> "I think for there to be art there has to be in part a significant valuation by at a minimum the creator and perhaps also the public as well (although not required, and will likely vary from person-to-person. And key to that valuation with be the human centeredness in the creative process."
I think inspiration captures this idea quite well, actually. Value and inspiration have a similarly nebulous and subjective quality and what inspires someone is often the intangible that others value.
Stick with me for this rather esoteric discussion: Value and inspiration are both purporting to measure something but are really only measuring the effect of what they are allegedly measuring. In economics, my first career, value is defined as what someone is willing to pay for something. You don't know how much you actually value something until you have to buy it or sell it, or incur some cost around it." On the flipside, inspiration is only measured by what someone does as a result of that inspiration.
If something inspires you, do you value it? If you value something, does it inspire you? I think the answer is yes. With a notebook and enough time, someone could tease out a theory that value and inspiration are both words trying to approximate some kind of internal measure of the worthiness of external things.
For the record, I'm agreeing with the overall thrust of your argument, that there is an inherent human-ness in art, as I sad, "but I do agree with Chiang because I don’t think an AI could ever be inspired." However I'm just saying I think I tried to capture that with the definition of art as "inspiration + taste + craft."
Is not all academic like discussion splitting hairs? What follows is a whole bunch of thinking out loud as I try to reconcile these ideas. To your point, I agree, that AI cannot be intrinsically inspired. Although I am going to push back that valuation and inspiration are the same thing. Inspiration seems to track with joy or a positive experience of being inspired to create. It is the source but it is not the product. Like I might be inspired to write by a muse, a feeling of loss, or a beautiful landscape. However, the valuation of something can be based on the end product, an intermediate step or the entire process of creating. To say that something is valued, is to convert a positive subjective experience into something else (positive praise, $$$ attention, etc). The process of valuation is independent of the product. That is why, IMHO, AI (alone) cannot in my mind produce art because if it makes things that no one values (or it does not value itself), no mater how exquisitely composed. Some art is not technically exquisite (Dada) but is/was still valued. Can AI+human direction, i.e., valuation produce art, yes, IMHO. But that would be interjecting humanness into the equation. I think there are examples of this in the way that people use prompts to create certain photo realistic images. That said, it is no easy task with prompts to move from a few words to a photo realistic image that one has in their mind. And one, really has to value the process of searching/editing to find that one image that meets their expectation.
There's no question that humans can make original, interesting, individual and authentic art using AI. I've done it. The insight you shared about photography is correct. You can do so much more with a camera than just set it up and take a still life or landscape photo.
The rest of the Ted Chiang quote you shared is a comic faceplant, "So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no."
The answer is NO?! What?! Speak for yourself, Ted. Igadz! The possibilities are nearly limitless and it's just a matter of how creative the individual is working writing the prompts. But you can do so much more than that. You can upload images and write prompts to interact with them, for one. You can animate images you create. You can compile those animations into a short film. If the definition of making art is making a lot of decisions, as an artist with an MFA, a background in drawing, painting, performance and conceptual art, never have I made so many small decisions as when I create my AI videos.
I created this video with it in mind to counter the silly ideas that anything created with AI is soulless, impersonal, and devivitive. No. The more power you have to create, the more you can manifest your own inner vision. "Rabid Soul": https://youtu.be/w9TpZJYKLsw
That video is a little old as AI is moving so fast. My latest music video shows off the AI better and also allows me a bit more control. I bet you didn't think anyone was making music videos like this with AI : "Calling All Gargoyles" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xeo8ProhTs
In the right hands, AI can be the best tool for making art. Nevertheless I get a lot of hate for using it, and people think that using a piece of charcoal and recreating a facsimile of fruit in a bowl is somehow more meaningful than me creating music videos using all sorts of images, animation, and music I generated with AI... Derp!
...can it make good art?...can it make good and interesting and enjoyable and transformational art?...i see A.I. being its own art if nothing else...the facsimiles feel like so...and just like most cover songs pale in comparison maybe a.i. covers can provide interesting others into the world...but one thing a.i. can do that nothing else can is do a.i. stuff...so to that end the more a.i. can lean into the hallucinations, and eat itself, especially in the artistic realms...the more potential i see for its originality to offer ingenius, novelty, discovery, etc. into the world...all things i enjoy in my art...but art is taste in so many ways...what is one man's pile of trash ten feet tall on a corner is west oakland is my favorite photo of the last two months...my deeper concerns with a.i. are compensation, economic displacement, and the rush to make our minds and decisions robotic consensus...the world doesn't need infinity imo...it needs to be seen right now...we build too much...
I liked this post. Humans have constantly defined and understood themselves via the medium of the technology they create. This is what cognitive science has done to the brain and mind. Prior to that we used an understanding of a pump to understand the physiology of the circulatory system. LLM will be no different. There are some areas that overlap with human cognition, even if the mechanisms are different, however there are quite a few ways that it is different.
Something you did not touch on which I believe is important is the value of art to the creator and the public. I believe that this value is independent of the form or medium used to create the art. You touched on this with your reference to photography. I think for there to be art there has to be in part a significant valuation by at a minimum the creator and perhaps also the public as well (although not required, and will likely vary from person-to-person. And key to that valuation with be the human centeredness in the creative process. Without that it, IMHO, it is not art, regardless of how breathtaking it is. A landscape, a sunset, or some other magnificent experience of nature are beautiful but not art. AI may make beautiful images just as nature creates beautiful things all the time but this is not art.
I think this is a very interesting point, and you might think I'm splitting hairs or being pedantic (but that's kind of the fun of a discussion of the finer points on something like this right?) however, I think that the idea of value is captured in "inspiration" in the "inspiration + taste + craft."
> "I think for there to be art there has to be in part a significant valuation by at a minimum the creator and perhaps also the public as well (although not required, and will likely vary from person-to-person. And key to that valuation with be the human centeredness in the creative process."
I think inspiration captures this idea quite well, actually. Value and inspiration have a similarly nebulous and subjective quality and what inspires someone is often the intangible that others value.
Stick with me for this rather esoteric discussion: Value and inspiration are both purporting to measure something but are really only measuring the effect of what they are allegedly measuring. In economics, my first career, value is defined as what someone is willing to pay for something. You don't know how much you actually value something until you have to buy it or sell it, or incur some cost around it." On the flipside, inspiration is only measured by what someone does as a result of that inspiration.
If something inspires you, do you value it? If you value something, does it inspire you? I think the answer is yes. With a notebook and enough time, someone could tease out a theory that value and inspiration are both words trying to approximate some kind of internal measure of the worthiness of external things.
For the record, I'm agreeing with the overall thrust of your argument, that there is an inherent human-ness in art, as I sad, "but I do agree with Chiang because I don’t think an AI could ever be inspired." However I'm just saying I think I tried to capture that with the definition of art as "inspiration + taste + craft."
Is not all academic like discussion splitting hairs? What follows is a whole bunch of thinking out loud as I try to reconcile these ideas. To your point, I agree, that AI cannot be intrinsically inspired. Although I am going to push back that valuation and inspiration are the same thing. Inspiration seems to track with joy or a positive experience of being inspired to create. It is the source but it is not the product. Like I might be inspired to write by a muse, a feeling of loss, or a beautiful landscape. However, the valuation of something can be based on the end product, an intermediate step or the entire process of creating. To say that something is valued, is to convert a positive subjective experience into something else (positive praise, $$$ attention, etc). The process of valuation is independent of the product. That is why, IMHO, AI (alone) cannot in my mind produce art because if it makes things that no one values (or it does not value itself), no mater how exquisitely composed. Some art is not technically exquisite (Dada) but is/was still valued. Can AI+human direction, i.e., valuation produce art, yes, IMHO. But that would be interjecting humanness into the equation. I think there are examples of this in the way that people use prompts to create certain photo realistic images. That said, it is no easy task with prompts to move from a few words to a photo realistic image that one has in their mind. And one, really has to value the process of searching/editing to find that one image that meets their expectation.
Congrats on the new subscribers!
Thank you!
There's no question that humans can make original, interesting, individual and authentic art using AI. I've done it. The insight you shared about photography is correct. You can do so much more with a camera than just set it up and take a still life or landscape photo.
The rest of the Ted Chiang quote you shared is a comic faceplant, "So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no."
The answer is NO?! What?! Speak for yourself, Ted. Igadz! The possibilities are nearly limitless and it's just a matter of how creative the individual is working writing the prompts. But you can do so much more than that. You can upload images and write prompts to interact with them, for one. You can animate images you create. You can compile those animations into a short film. If the definition of making art is making a lot of decisions, as an artist with an MFA, a background in drawing, painting, performance and conceptual art, never have I made so many small decisions as when I create my AI videos.
I created this video with it in mind to counter the silly ideas that anything created with AI is soulless, impersonal, and devivitive. No. The more power you have to create, the more you can manifest your own inner vision. "Rabid Soul": https://youtu.be/w9TpZJYKLsw
That video is a little old as AI is moving so fast. My latest music video shows off the AI better and also allows me a bit more control. I bet you didn't think anyone was making music videos like this with AI : "Calling All Gargoyles" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Xeo8ProhTs
In the right hands, AI can be the best tool for making art. Nevertheless I get a lot of hate for using it, and people think that using a piece of charcoal and recreating a facsimile of fruit in a bowl is somehow more meaningful than me creating music videos using all sorts of images, animation, and music I generated with AI... Derp!
...can it make good art?...can it make good and interesting and enjoyable and transformational art?...i see A.I. being its own art if nothing else...the facsimiles feel like so...and just like most cover songs pale in comparison maybe a.i. covers can provide interesting others into the world...but one thing a.i. can do that nothing else can is do a.i. stuff...so to that end the more a.i. can lean into the hallucinations, and eat itself, especially in the artistic realms...the more potential i see for its originality to offer ingenius, novelty, discovery, etc. into the world...all things i enjoy in my art...but art is taste in so many ways...what is one man's pile of trash ten feet tall on a corner is west oakland is my favorite photo of the last two months...my deeper concerns with a.i. are compensation, economic displacement, and the rush to make our minds and decisions robotic consensus...the world doesn't need infinity imo...it needs to be seen right now...we build too much...