[jkingsman]

I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it.

One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote:

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE ART.

Hate is an emotional word, and I suspect many people (myself included) may leap to take logical issue with an emotional position. But emotions are real, and human, and people absolutely have them about AI, and I think that's important to talk about and respect that fact.

† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

[andybak]

> replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

Please don't. That offends me much more than a very mild word ever could.

[stronglikedan]

I think it's obvious virtue signaling, but I would never let something so insignificant actually offend me. Life's too short.

[fridder]

I do wonder if a significant portion of the hate is from the AI push coming from the executive level.

[raxxorraxor]

I love to employ AI but completely understand the criticism. It does increase my productivity as a software dev.

I also think the 10 hours of random electro swing or other genres of generated music is of extremely high quality. It isn't bland music, on the contrary it is playful and varied. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmUSK1IjoQg&list=RDLmUSK1Ijo...

It is entertaining and a viewing experience. And yet, I still doesn't feel the same if you know it is just generated by some carefully selected prompts. Sure, that itself is a creative endeavor, but I would have preferred for AI to clean my room for me instead of slowly replacing every creative venue from writing to art to music.

I continue to play music myself, but I will never reach a level AI is able to achieve in a few minutes. Sure, this example certainly took a while to create and the result is awesome. So what do we do with all the superfluous artists now?

[lucyjojo]

did you link the right video?

it was extremely bland... dry as an oat in a flash freezer...

[_Algernon_]

>† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

1. You're on the internet. Nobody will get mad if you say "horny".

2. Bastardizing a quote is a worse outcome than you missing an opportunity to virtue signal your puritan values. Just say the original quote.

[didibus]

Hate can be emotional, but it can also have underlying rational causes.

For example, someone can feel like they already have to compete with people, and that's nature, but now they have to compete with machines too, and that's a societal choice.

[lo_zamoyski]

I'm not terribly interested in emotional reactions. This is too common of a problem: we think emoting is a substitute for reasoning. Many if not most people believe that if they feel something, then it must be true; the disagreeing party just doesn't "get it". We must learn to reason and make arguments.

I am interested in the intelligible content of the thing.

Also, AI does not reason. Human beings do.

[petralithic]

How can we be sure humans reason?

[Ferret7446]

> A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR ...

Can other humans (aka NPCs)? They seem like they do so I treat them as such, but as far as I know other humans and a sufficiently emoting AI both act equally like they feel emotions.

[oasisaimlessly]

What was the original word?

[jclulow]

"horny"

[sam_lowry_]

I had to search and found the word "horny".

[petralithic]

I've talked to people like this and when you dig deep enough, it's a fear of the economic effects of it, not actually any strongly held belief of AI inherently not being intelligent or emotional. Similarly, and I'm speaking generally here, ask artists about coding AI and they won't care, and ask programmers about media generation AI and they also won't care. That's because AI outside their domain does not (ostensibly) threaten their livelihood.

[hofrogs]

I am not an artist, yet I care about media generation "AI", as in I resent it deeply.

[footy]

I'm no artist (I even failed high school art) and I think AI media generation is a travesty.

[doctorpangloss]

> I've talked to people like this and when you dig deep enough, it's a fear of the economic effects of it

You hear what you want to hear. You think fine artists - and really, how many working fine artists do you really know? - don't have sincere, visceral feelings about stuff, that have nothing to do with money?

[eaglelamp]

If you dig deep enough isn’t the same thing true of people like yourself? Do you truly believe that the large language models we currently have, not some fantasy AI of the distant future, are emotional and intellectual beings? Or, are you more interested in the short term economic gains of using them? Does this invalidate your beliefs? I don’t think so, most everyday beliefs are related to economic conditions.

How could a practical LLM enthusiast make a non-economic argument in favor of their use? They’re opaque usually secretive jumbles of linear algebra, how could you make a reasonable non-economic argument about something you don’t, and perhaps can’t, reason about?

[rsoto2]

I care because it's outright theft. That's what AI companies do and what you are an accessory to.

AI is not intelligent or emotional. It's not a "strongly held belief" it simply hasn't been proven.

[diamond559]

And most "AI" evangelists are actually stock holders.

[randcraw]

Picasso's Guernica was born of hate, his hate of war, of dehumanization for petty political ends. No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. It must forever parrot.

[petralithic]

A human might generate a piece of media using AI (either via a slot machine spin or with more advanced workflows like ComfyUI) and once they deem it looks good enough for their purpose, they might display it to represent what they want it to represent. If Guernica was AI generated but still displayed by Picasso as a statement about war, it would still be art.

Tools do not dictate what art is and isn't, it is about the intent of the human using those tools. Image generators are not autonomously generating images, it is the human who is asking them for specific concepts and ideas. This is no different than performance art like a banana taped to a wall which requires no tools at all.

[perching_aix]

To honor the "spirit" of OP's post:

I looked up Picasso's Guernica now out of curiosity. I don't understand what's so great about this artwork. Or why it would represent any of the things you mention. It just looks like deranged pencilwork. It also comes across as aggressively pretentious.

What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?

[dragonwriter]

> No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work.

Neither will a paintbrush.

The tool does need to, though.

[exoverito]

Needless to say, most humans are unoriginal parrots too, one need only look at the prevalence of memetic desire. Few are capable of artistic genius like Picasso.

One technical definition of empathy is understanding what someone else is feeling. In war you must empathize with your enemy in order to understand their perspective and predict what they will do next. This cognitive empathy is basically theory of mind, which has been demonstrated in GPT4.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01882-z

If we do not assume biological substrate is special, then it's possible that AIs will one day have qualia and be able to fully empathize and experience the feelings of another.

It could be possible that new AI architectures with continuously updating weights, memory modules, evolving value functions, and self-reflection, could one day produce truly original perspectives. It's still unknown if they will truly feel anything, but it's also technically unknowable if anyone else really experiences qualia, as described in the thought experiment of p-zombies.

[andybak]

The same Picasso that was notorious for churning them out towards the end of his career?

I'm being slightly flippant but I do think this is a motte and bailey argument.

Not even painting is a Guernica nor does it need to be.

And not every aesthetically pleasing object is art. (And finally - art doesn't even have to be aesthetically pleasing. And actually finally "art" has a multitude of contradictory meanings)

[jondwillis]

We must unironically give the computer pain sensors. :( don’t hurt me mr. Basilisk, I’m just parroting someone else’s idea.

[kelseyfrog]

> No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war

My computer does. What evidence would change your mind?

[racl101]

Monkey's paw closes.

Now, just like you can with Studio Ghibli art, you can generate new images in the style of Guernica.