DEV Community

Discussion on: We are entering a new age: The creation age

Collapse
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

but the AI training set can't grow if there's noöne to produce more art. what AI does is riff on what it knows, it doesn't generate novelty, uncomparable works, it can't be affected by politics or its personal life. with prompts all you get is an averaging out of what has come before directed to a topic.

And if noöne is willing to pay for human artists to learn art, all we will get is art from the rich.

it is inevitable that this way lies mediocrity.

Thread Thread
 
grahamthedev profile image
GrahamTheDev

That is an interesting thought. I do not entirely disagree, but I will say this: do you think anything you do is actually original?

Humanity advances due to "prior computation", we take the work of others and rearrange it to meet our goals and aims. There are very few truly original ideas, the old saying "there is nothing new under the sun" is very true for majority of us and our work.

As I said, I do not disagree entirely, but I do not think AI necessitates mediocrity if used to it's potential.

Thread Thread
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

I'm 100% original. Everything I create has come from me living my life.

I am not an algorithm.

The people who train something like midjourney take the real expressions of real people a turn it into a slurry to be fed to the artificial neural networks.

If capitalism wasn't such a life drain maybe I wouldn't care so much, but none of the artists who have had their works fed to machines get their due credit, let alone some analogue of royalties.

These algorithms are not trying to express who they are, because they are not "whos", they are trying to predict the next word or pixel.

Yes, the tools can be helpful, but given our current socioeconomic climate it seems immoral to allow them to perpetuate unchecked like this.

Thread Thread
 
grahamthedev profile image
GrahamTheDev

First, with any artist whose work has been used to train AI, I am with you, and I have no doubt at some point there will be some large legal case or lawsuit and we will answer what is considered "fair use". I am hoping some precedence is set at some point that allows for a new type of licensing and compensation for artists whose work trains AI.

But you said something interesting there I would like to touch on: "I'm 100% original." and "I am not an algorithm".

This is not entirely true. We are a product of "prior computation". The whole of humanity advances in all fields because we build on the work of others before us.

Our art style is inspired by multiple pieces of art we have seen in life, our abilities and our passions. The words I write here are essentially a very complex algorithm that my brain is processing based on grammatical rules, social context, my experiences in the world etc.

We are algorithms, we are a product of the input of others. The difference is we have concepts of morality, spirituality, soul etc.

With all that being said, I tend very much to agree "it seems immoral to allow them to perpetuate unchecked like this", we need to, as a race and a global society, define what compromises we are and are not willing to make in this new age. 💗

Thread Thread
 
mellen profile image
Matt Ellen-Tsivintzeli

Calling life a "computation" is a broken analogy that I no longer get on board with. It's like saying we do differential calculus when catching a ball. I can't honestly say they way human culture has evolved with me along with it is comparable to computing the weights for an ANN.

We can agree to differ on that. We agree on what's important ❤