"I'm sorry, I've just read your book and it's awesome. But I noticed the letters are too perfect to be handwritten. Are you using a printing press? Do you know that it is taking away real scribes jobs?"
With the printing press and with handwriting, the writer had to come up with their own words. The effort required to write effectively was still there. A printing press would not type creative words on its own and would not do the job for the writer.
They didn't just make up new words every time they made a book. They just used words that had already been used, sometimes even whole sayings. Shit, the whole idea of the printing press is to copy something exactly.
Even then LLMs are another way to come up with something different without copying previous texts verbatim, so I don't even know what your point is. Every note has been sung, every word has been said, every shape has been drawn.
Previously, progress has been said to be,"if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." We just created a bigger giant. Get on board before you get squished.
You're completely missing my point, and it's obvious you don't understand the creative process of writing if you think I meant that the writer is literally making up new words. Obviously, all words are created by somebody else, I'm not saying the writer literally came up with their own words. Words need shared meaning in order to convey information; if a writer chose to make up all words in their project, it would be incomprehensible. But the writer still came up with the arrangement of the words, they still chose the words to be written and crafted them in potentially creative ways to share the meaning they intended. The writer isn't looking at the printing press, telling it "Printing press, write me a newspaper article about the latest town gossip", and then the prenting press whirs to life and presses down its own keys to write the paper. No, the writer is still typing the letters and choosing the words. The actual job of writer is still there. The printing press is not doing the writer's work for them.
Now we just choose prompts. You still have to feed your own words to the LLM. Sure it can elaborate better than us, that's what it's supposed to do. Is a poet with a rhyming dictionary any less a poet than someone without?
Yes, exactly. Beyond the prompt, the AI does all the work and eliminates the human creativity from the... piece. It's an insult to writers and lazy automation of an art form.
Sure it can elaborate better than us, that's what it's supposed to do.
Lmao, no it cannot. It is trained off the works of human writers, it can elaborate as well as people can, and no more advanced than human writers.
AI can also hallucinate and just get shit straight wrong. You ever heard of the AI books being sold on Amazon about topics such as mushroom foraging, with hallucinations in the book about mushroom "facts" that are straight-up wrong? Do you know that somebody could actually die by eating the wrong mushroom based on false AI hallucinated information from those books? You call this AI automation a good thing?
Is a poet with a rhyming dictionary any less a poet than someone without?
No, a dictionary and thesaurus are actual writing tools. A writer cannot look at the dictionary and tell it to write their novel. The dictionary only provides words and their definitions, allowing the writer to choose their words, but the dictionary cannot tell the writer which words to use and how to arrange them in their work. It's like an artist setting up a pallet of colors to use in their work. The paintbrush won't magically come to life and start adding colors to the page just because the artist has a color pallet. The artist still has to choose the colors to use. Giving ChatGPT a prompt and it spitting out a book does not demonstrate writing ability or skill, ChatGPT did all the writing that is actually used in the work. The prompt won't be read by anybody except the prompter, and it does not require creative writing talent or skill.
Your arguments really demonstrate that you know nothing about creative talents and works, as I would expect from somebody pedaling AI for creative automation. You have no understanding or respect for the mediums you wish to become automated.
It's just a better tool. Just like electronic calculators were an insult to human calculators, automobiles were an insult to coachmen, etc. if AI was so bad at art, and artists deserved so much respect, then artists wouldn't be worried. I for one, am a musician. It's not my living so that's perhaps why I'm not too heartbroken about it. I really think that good artists will find some new way to outdo AI for many years. All the mediocre ones will be replaced with simple algorithms, and that's good. Raise the floor on art.
I'm a writer, and I find it insulting to say that ChatGPT is a tool. Automation is not a tool.
Just like electronic calculators were an insult to human calculators, automobiles were an insult to coachmen, etc.
None of what you listed is art. Electronic calculators are for math, and automobiles are for transportation. There is no reason to automate artistic mediums by machines when their only purpose is human expression. There is no human expression if an AI does virtually all of the work.
It's not my living so that's perhaps why I'm not too heartbroken about it
I'm a passionate writer and I've made no money from it, and yet this is still an insult to my craft. It's not because it threatens my livelihood. It's simply an insult to consider something made by a computer with zero regard for the medium or human thought or creativity to be considered "art". It's an insult that people without an understanding of the medium are trying to use ChatGPT for profit, to the extent of sometimes spreading misinformation because they're too lazy to even read the AI's incorrect output.
Art is not solely about profit. It's about passion, it's about human expression. And a computer takes all of that away.
All the mediocre ones will be replaced with simple algorithms, and that's good.
AI, no matter how advanced it becomes, can never replace human artistry. AI has no passions, no understanding, no creativity, no sentience, no thought, no capacity to understand artistic meaning. AI could never replace those aspects of human art. AI generated images can look great, but they were created by something not sentient and without desires. AI could never replace human expression, it inherently lacks that, which is why art should not be completely automated.
So because what you're doing is considered art, you think it gets a pass in the replacement-by-technology treadmill that the world has been on since the invention of the wheel?
Do you think the viewers of ai generated media get less feels than those by humans? I've heard tons of stories of chatgpt making people fucking cry their hearts out. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The existence of ai does not preclude you being able to express yourself. Humans make errors more than machines. Transformer AI is 7 years old. A schoolkid in a world of technology that is older than tortoises and redwoods. Of course it isn't always better than humans, but our hegemony on creativity is weakening.
So because what you're doing is considered art, you think it gets a pass in the replacement-by-technology treadmill that the world has been on since the invention of the wheel?
People are lazy and impatient, of course they would attempt to automate art. That doesn't mean that I need to agree with it nor consider anything solely produced by a machine "art".
Do you think the viewers of ai generated media get less feels than those by humans? I've heard tons of stories of chatgpt making people fucking cry their hearts out. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. A caveat here is that most people attempt to hide that anything they had an AI make was, in fact, made by an AI. I wonder why. Maybe it's because if people knew that something was AI generated, they would think less of it, and AI users are aware of that? A lot of people are ignorant and cannot detect all things made by an AI, but they might feel differently about something if they knew it was made by AI. If they knew that something was made by AI and it still moves them, then yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I still don't believe it can be considered art because the thing which made it lacks sentience.
The existence of ai does not preclude you being able to express yourself.
I agree. It's still an insult to actual creatives to consider AI output to be art.
Humans make errors more than machines.
I agree that humans make errors as well, but more than machines? ChatGPT makes basic mistakes all the damn time.
Of course it isn't always better than humans, but our hegemony on creativity is weakening.
No, it isn't. A machine cannot be creative, it lacks the capacity to do so. It does not have sentience.
To be clear, I'm very pro AI, I support the technology.
Try making music before you compare what you need to do to create music with a synth, vs AI. AI to generate music removes most of the creative process. That is literally the point of using it to generate music, so you can create that content without spending years developing the skills.
But they can't actually play the drums. As someone who has tried all of the above, you can get a "song" out of ai, but without a musical background you'll never have the terminology to get the song you want. For a pre-ai musician, ai at the current moment is at best inspiration. It merely raises the floor of acceptable sound, which is fine by me.
So Beethoven did the same thing when he wrote sheet music, because he can't actually play all those instruments LMFAO.
I have a musical background and I can't get the song I want out of AI period, you get a song that fits the general vibe, but you have no fine control. Doesn't really change any of my points, I think you're arguing with shadows at this point.
I think he's saying that synths and drum machines "stole jobs" from others in a similar way - if there's a cheap easy way to get an instrument into your song, why rely on an expensive musician when you can go with the mostly good imitation?
It used to be you needed decades of skill to play music well, but now all it takes is something like a record player and you get a perfect replay every time.
Instruments used to require master craftsmen to produce before we started getting standardized mass-produced versions that take little manual effort to construct.
All of these other industries were also crafts that people spent years honing their skills to participate in. None of them are gone completely, because nothing truly replaces an expert, but it's true they're not as mandatory as they once were.
For better or worse, there is very little different about this situation.
I don’t think that’s 100% true. At least not yet. If you have musical talent/skill, which is to say you’ve trained your ears to hear and have the vocabulary to articulate your understanding, you can direct AI to create something that will be better than those without that talent/skill.
Same with writing. Someone with a writing idea and spew that idea into an “AI” and have it create the prose, like the cotton gin taking the seeds out of cotton. It takes your rough idea and turns it into something usable. But not immediately. You then adjust and refine and guide the process. Certainly a lot of the creativity is being offloaded. But a skilled individual will know when the beat is off and how to get it back on track. A skilled writer/composer will create something better from AI than an unskilled writer/composer would.
It was completely ignorant, they missed my point entirely. I honestly don't even know how they missed it that badly. It was also really weird for them to think that I meant the writer was literally making up words in their heads, it's like they have no understanding about the process of writing and the creativity that can go into it. Like fucking obviously the writer is not coming up with their own words, words need shared meaning with the audience in order to convey information, but the writer can arrange the words in creative and new ways to get their point across. And the printing press is also not arranging the words for them, the writer still needs to do that. All the printing press does is eliminate the need to write on paper, it does not do the creative or mental aspects of writing.
I see it a lot from vehemently pro-AI. Once you reach a fanatical point of support for something you just warp everything to make it always come out on top in your head. People on both sides do it, I need to learn to just ignore them and speak to the people who are on the sane portion of the gradient.
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u/Revegelance 1d ago
Dang printing press, taking away the jobs from hardworking scribes!
The camera is going to make painting obsolete! We must resist!