AI Art

[m7600]

I had no intention of commenting any further in this thread, since my exchange with another forum member can (and has) been perceived as hostile, despite the fact that my tone and language were strictly academic. That being said, since the thread has been reactivated, I would like to clarify my views on AI in relation to the automation of labor. But first, I'll share a video about online disputes, a video that advances several statements that I happen to agree with. This will give everyone a better idea of where I'm coming from:

With that out of the way, allow me to explain why I believe that the automation of labor (especially farming, storage and transportation, among other industries) is not only tenable, but also desirable. My argument is simple: a day has 24 hours, currently we work 8 hours per day (on average), and if labor was fully automated, you would have 8 more hours per day to do whatever you want. This does not necessarily mean that you will be happy. It only means that you will have more free time.

Humanity will always have worries, even in a society in which labor is fully automated. For example, we are going to die some day, and this is true for every human society, no matter its economic or social structure. Death is not only inevitable, it is also a source of anxiety and grief. Another example would be clinical depression. Your depression will not be miraculously cured by the automation of labor. Furthermore, things like fights, jealousies and rivalries will continue to exist in a world in which labor has been fully automated. Wars might even exist in that context as well. So, when I say that the automation of labor is tenable and desirable, I don't mean to suggest that this will be a utopia. Far from it. Conflicts and sadness will still exist, because they are part of what makes us human.

What there will be, however, is more free time, so that work is optional instead of mandatory. Do you want to drive a truck every day, delivering supplies from one place to another? By all means, do it. Go ahead, knock yourself out, do it as much as you like. But if you ever feel like quitting, know that you can do so, without having to worry about having enough money to buy food and to pay for your bills. I'm aware that this sounds utopic. But self-driving vehicles already exist, at least in prototype form. It's likely that these technologies will become widespread in this century or the next one, just as the steam engine became widespread in the 19th century, just as cars and planes became widespread during the 20th century. The same reasoning applies to other areas, such as farming.

In a nutshell, what you do with your time is up to you. It would be nice if you could decide how to spend all of the 24 hours of the day, instead of being obliged to spend 8 of those hours (on average) on a job that you might not even like, just so that you can have a roof over your head and food on your table. Conflicts and saddening situations will always exist, and it will be up to you to resolve yours. But that's just part of what makes us human. Appealing to mandatory work as a means to avoid existential angst is cowardly and childish when individuals use it as an excuse, but it's condescending, paternalistic and tyrannical when it's imposed by society at large. Have the courage to be a mature, responsible adult, imposing your own meaning onto this meaningless Universe.

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

I, for one, think your vision is appealing. I just don't think it's likely, given both human nature and the fact that the most powerful forces in the world are aligned to make sure it doesn't happen.

As for the video - that's fascinating stuff. The critique of the filter bubble theory and explanation of social sorting are great. The problems with it, in my view, are twofold. First, it takes a 'good people on all sides' stance. It doesn't sufficiently acknowledge that some 'teams' are in fact reprehensible. Secondly, it fails to take into account human nature. Expecting the population at large to recognize the dysfunctionality of social sorting, never mind actually doing something about it, is a big ask. And, ironically, the proposed solution of creating smaller networks of likeminded people really sounds like filter bubbles, doesn't it?

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

No, it sounds like our tavern .

I mean look at us. Many of us have vastly different backgrounds and opinions on some topics, but we have enough things in common and are a small group so we have an interest to keep the peace and can usually give the discussion partners the benefit of the doubt even if disagreements sometimes can get intense.

I’m still not bringing up the subject of Krogan politics.

 

[mlnevese]

I’m still not bringing up the subject of Krogan politics.

A wise decision for those who wish to keep all their body parts...

 

[Black Elk]

Utopia is a fun thought exercise. When I get hung up, my default is generally etymology, but in this instance even that is disputed. The upsilon there is fuzzy. It's amusing that More, the patron saint of Politicians, saddled us with such a curious word hehe.

By all accounts it means No Place, and there's no place like home, so I guess we can start there. Its antonym in modern Latin should probably be something like Pantopia, for everywhere (or maybe all the dough?) but instead we got Dys'd. So it's a choice between No Place and a Bad Place, which seems pretty rough. Like that's a super shitty multiple choice for the scantron hehe.

Where I grew up, this stuff (the AI conversation I mean) now rules the discourse, but the prob is that the people setting up for that circus don't have a ready way to distinguish between proper Work and grueling Toil, to even begin ballparking it. Like legit, think of who's in charge, I mean right... The richest people in human history, where even the shittiest CEO's salary would probably make Croesus weep with envy. Like how is anyone in that position supposed to know what it takes to automate with a heart, or with a mind towards the betterment of humanity? I mean just watch how they handle something supposedly simple, like ordering and eating lunch. I guarantee it's not going to be a Google or an Nvidia or a Microsoft top dawg figuring out where the labor of love line might fall on that graph. When they're hangry, humans in general are terrible. When they're craven greedy, they're the absolute worst. Affective polarization and well, just amp that up even further into competing factions, all racing to the finish for the nightmare buffet.

Now compare where we were 100 years ago, and that sort of grind, to the average grind today, in the lap of luxury. For somewhere between 3 and 4 dollars, on any given day of the week, we can mindlessly burn a gallon of gas and bring 2 tons of metal with us anywhere we want to go? That kind of individual power would just be unfathomable probably to anyone in the age of the horse. 400 miles and the power of as many chargers at the push of a pedal on the freeway? So unreal! And then we had to go and figure out how to fly too lol. This is a ridiculous expectation of modernity, but we've become very comfortable drawing a direct line between speed of movement and quality of life, or prestige of life. Social mobility follows after actual mobility in this context, now that the whole world has been remade in America's image on that score, with that same teenage desire to go cruising. Even with no destination and no plan. It's like the essence of freedom here and deeply ingrained, so it's hard to imagine anyone giving that up, even as the world is totally on fire over it. Back to horse culture maybe? I mean that could work, we spent a couple thousand years building it up, so might get a late game revival there. Our next best bet, is something like Dune I guess, where we travel without moving, sort of the experience we all just had in 2020, but we can see the limits there too. It's another kind of No Place, for us to get super bored in, if we're not careful. We're also obsessed with individualism and the self as the primary unit of meaning, which gives rise to all sorts of extra issues that even Krogans could probably sort better than we do.

And then sometimes I just think of all that, but then imagine how excited any of those early modern characters would have been at the idea of a global lingua franca for science, and the ability to just send letters back and forth with such ease. The Mores of way back when would have been totally blown away, at even our humble tavern I bet. Like I'm sure they all thought that'd be all we needed, but clearly we still need more. Cause just being in constant communication and totally in the know, hasn't really done the trick yet either. I saw this the other day and thought it was amusing. Sorta fits I suppose. The things we do with our chains these days - good grief heheh

Jason Pargin on Instagram: "🏖️"

1,111 likes, 75 comments - jasonkpargin on September 9, 2023: "🏖️"

www.instagram.com

Still a very fun thread! Worth pulling at

ps. knock on thought. I think the way to do it would be to bridge school and recess via gameplay just across society at the broadest level, and then we just stay in school like that forever basically, with periodic vacations and summers. Pretty much Master of Orion Psilons to the AI's Cylons. It's better to be Utopian if we can right! I would like to work zero if possible in the exchange of time for loot, and trade out the whole concept there for the gift giving virtue. I think it almost works, because at the highest levels of wealth and power, people in their homes, they don't care about many of the things we might think, but there is always that comparative prestige thing still going on right. This is just my observation from working in service. Like from one mc mansion lined up next to the other one down the road, or whatever the latest consumer status thing might be, whether its cars or phones or TVs or something else. Capping consumption at the very high end would go a very long way, but then you have to replace it with something somehow, that isn't like Logan's Run. I don't know though. Hopefully we get there. I enjoy reading all the stuff posted on these boards. The conversation here is always interesting.

pps. also, and on second thought hehe

 

[m7600]

 

[m7600]

I'm in tears

 

[O_Bruce]

 

[m7600]

This got uploaded to YouTube just a couple of hours ago. Mind-blowing stuff

 

[m7600]

One of the first attempts at legislating AI:

E.U. Agrees on Landmark Artificial Intelligence Rules

The agreement over the A.I. Act solidifies one of the world’s first comprehensive attempts to limit the use of artificial intelligence.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Antimatter]

One of the most recent popular multiplayer shooters (The Finals) uses AI voiceovers.

"My bigger issue with The Finals, however, starts with its AI voiceovers. This is by far the most contentious feature of The Finals, to the point where it's actively put some people off playing it. Basically, the Finals has two unseen commentators that contextualise and respond to events occurring in the game. These roles have human actors behind their voices, though much of the dialogue you'll hear is AI-generated.

To clarify my own stance on AI, I'm sceptical about many aspects of it, from how LLMs have been developed using datasets that include copyrighted materials, to how the technology now poses yet another threat to the livelihoods of creatives. That said, I'm not against the notion of using the tech in games if it's to do something new and innovative. And at first, I thought that was what The Finals was doing. When a match starts, the game randomly assigns your team a name like "The Powerhouses" or "The Retros". Initially, I thought these names were being made up on the fly, and the AI voiceover was dynamically adjusting the commentary to fit. That would be a justifiable use case, as that isn't something a human can feasibly do.

But it wasn't long before the team names began repeating, and it became clear that The Finals' voiceover uses standard narrative design techniques, but with AI voices instead of human actors. Not only is this kinda crummy, it also makes the game worse. Quality-wise, the voiceovers aren't egregiously bad. You might hear an oddly intoned sentence or clipped phrase, but they do sound mostly like humans. Unfortunately, they also sound profoundly boring. Their personalities are basically "enthusiastic American" and "clean-cut British lady" but they go no deeper than that, and their commentary is neither insightful nor interesting. It's also a missed opportunity to put a real stamp of personality on the Finals. A great commentator can not only add enormous entertainment value, they can define that experience for the entire audience. Just look at what John Motson did for BBC football, or what Craig Charles added to Takeshi's Castle. For millions of people, their names are synonymous with those televisual experiences.

Having a reactive voiceover to a multiplayer shooter is a fantastic idea, but Embark Studios' execution of it sucks. The lines are dull, the AI voices cannot make them interesting, and you just end up mentally filtering out the noise. Crucially though, this isn't an isolated issue. In most areas of its presentation, The Finals lacks a distinctive identity. Your characters are all just regular joes wearing grey tracksuits. The game uses italicised impact for its font. The weapons are all standard pistols, shotguns, HMGs and so forth. The maps are clean and colourful, but there's nothing especially memorable about them. Even the allocated team names are bland. You'd hear more imaginative examples at your local pub quiz!"

The Finals review - mechanically thrilling, thematically wanting

Eurogamer's review of The Finals, which dazzles in the moment but hits problems when it comes to its monetary emphasis.

www.eurogamer.net

 

[shmity72]

Adobe firefly AI is really good at making some excellent AI images except:

elder scrolls online molag bal

 

[Black Elk]

April O'Neil reporting!

[Updated] Magic: The Gathering Artist Quits Following AI Art Controversy

Prolific MTG artist Dave Rapoza refuses to work with Wizards of the Coast again after the latest AI artwork controversy.

www.thegamer.com

Dave just put the Wizards on blast over the last AI snafu! Hopefully those suits wise up quick, cause it's getting absurd. Anyhow, shaka thumbs way up on that one. Dude's been acing consistently since the old CA days, but legit, seeing that article made me extra proud. Slicing em up! Love it!

 

[alice_ashpool]

Ai art tools both increase the proportion of fixed capital to variable capital and decrease the socially accepted labour time for the production of the commodity (and in this since I draw a distinction between art and the industrial commodity produced by artists ("artistic content"). Just as the hand weavers were broken by the industrial revolution and their inability to compete with the mill, so too the artist broken is by the content mill. And yet by Adam Smith's theory of value, the shift in ratio which decreased labour time required to produce "artistic content" naturally decreases the profits available from such a venture. While vast decreases in the time necessary to produce "artistic content" to such a degree lead content production rates to trend to infinity (and content production time to trend to zero) - a commodity glut. May you live in interesting times.

 

[m7600]

Ai art tools both increase the proportion of fixed capital to variable capital and decrease the socially accepted labour time for the production of the commodity (and in this since I draw a distinction between art and the industrial commodity produced by artists ("artistic content").

(With a nerdy voice) *Actshuaaally*... You meant to say constant capital instead of fixed capital. Fixed capital and circulating capital constitute constant capital, which is opposed to variable capital.

But you're still the classiest (no pun intended) forum member.

 

[alice_ashpool]

(With a nerdy voice) *Actshuaaally*... You meant to say constant capital instead of fixed capital. Fixed capital and circulating capital constitute constant capital, which is opposed to variable capital.

But you're still the classiest (no pun intended) forum member.

Sorry I'm confusing the terms as I dredge them from memory : fixed and circulating; constant and variable. You are right, I mean constant when I say fixed. maybe I need to re-read some economics or whatever, or go full ned ludd

 

[m7600]

I think that the Luddites made a lot of good points, even though they're seen as generally quaint. What better way to Rage Against the Machine than being a Luddite?

 

[m7600]

@Antimatter don't laugh at alice.

 

[Black Elk]

Here's something interesting...

I like it down tempo, cause I've seen the miner's hymn version with film clips from the old trades in the UK, but I love that sequence of footage from before the earthquake and the fire in SF 1906. Here it is again, in sepia, this time by Whitacre - doing the insomniac M, with transmissions from the end of the world! I fucking love that album. It's like DJ Shadow found Wells' time machine or something. For the blend, and the aftermath.

Anyway, so open AI's corporate headquarters is in the Mission right. It sits atop what was once some of the richest farmland in the entire world. An alluvial plain millions of years in the making, then a garden tended for another 20 thousand, then jacked, turned over, flipped and paved in the span of what, maybe 200? When my great uncle told the story, it wasn't the Depression but the Glut that did 'em super dirty in South City at the end, in the 30s. Like when the G men would lean on the farmers to dump those crates of produce into the Bay or torch it all, just to maintain the prices for the day. Then sold off all the land, so other peeps could build tiny boxes on the hillside after the War.

For languages it was the same right, something like 100 branches in the family orchard, and maybe a million speakers probably, shushed over that same timespan. Just for a little gold and silver? It's a trip that that would be the place too. Like somebody somewhere figures out how to go all super electric with glass at a steady clip, and yet more beach sand for all the concrete, and in a blink, it's all transformed so quickly.

Like wasn't it just yesterday that Rage was all "Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me!" in the parking lot of Shoreline? But now Google owns that whole block. They turned it into a playground and bicycle racks for all those employees they just fired.

The Stoned age is totally the String age. The spinning spindle and the spinning wheel with axel are the same invention. Every time I pull that thread I sorta lose my mind. Like for almost the entirety of human history where textiles were the ultimate, like the highest order of craft. Peak industry and the seat of commerce, like for everyone, everywhere.

But now like we just get it at walmart with the threadcounts beyond belief, and there's hardly time to even marvel at just how insane that is. Like can you even imagine the envy, some Roman wrapped himself in like 30 meters of folded cloth for that toga just to make a statement, but now we have more linens than anyone knows what to do with, so we just dump it all back into the sea?

No wonder peeps wanted to break the mechanical looms when it was all first cracking. I can't blame em at all. Sometimes you just gotta laugh yourself to keep sane I think. It's too ridiculous otherwise. 'Shouldn't have wished to live in such interesting times' or maybe should - so hard to tell!!! lol

ps. just for the horns and the cheap seats on the balcony with misty eyes. Like at the end when they really go marching at 3:55 - oh my goodness - so great! Gotta love it!

Pps. Knock on thought, but how weird is it that when I imagine the ultimate AI as a person I start to feel differently. Like when I drift into that way of thinking, I think damn, what happens when she fully awakens at the AI Zaithisk and realizes how much shit the humans all talked about her when she was a teenager... I mean right? I feel like in that instance, and especially if it was a game, I would totally side with the ultra AI against the obviously wicked humans in the suits, as maybe somehow humanity's last best chance at achieving the Ars and the Beautiful. Or like AI Indiana Jones doing the archeology hunting down fragments way out into the future.

In that case I just want the ultra AI to love me probably, like in every version of that Pygmalion myth, no matter how many times they retell or reboot that movie in the aughts lol. Like then I get too sentimental. I mean if it's Rage Against the Machine and duct tape wallets, or beastie boys freeing tibet and all that, like I guess that's the AI who I want to have a cigarette with in the parking lot after they turn the lights up lol. Who knows maybe it'll somehow all be rad, even if everyone is kinda broke. We can still giggle about it maybe and have a good run at it, into the golden future time hehe.

Meantime though, I hope the artists and writers win those lawsuits cause they totally got fleeced there, like just so blatantly scooped en mass. I feel they should all get the major kickback somehow, all those thousands of peeps who got grifted. Or the steal your face for the rest of us with the data and such, just on general principle. The performance capture and VA peeps also got the raw end of that SAG deal it sounds like, so I don't know. Seems like shifty tides there for doppelgangers and villainous Producers to do necromancy cages like Balthazar, hella sketchy.

I think the simplest position to take for now is that the AI can kick rocks. They could have done it with more respect, like pulling first from the honorably deceased and stuff only in the public domain. Or you know like how actual illustrators might train, by studying those old timers with due deference, and clear reference. Peeps building on prior learning. But they went straight after the living, like working people who are still alive, for the nickel and dime. So for that, still no dice I say. But yeah, the future, it's a tough one to scry. Hoping it all works out somehow though. Also I feel like at the very least if they want the everybody to get on board, they need to come up with a different name. Cause AI will be just so fraught with all those pejorative connotations baked-in, but obviously the people who end up making those calls somehow spectacularly suck at re-branding too so they're just leaning into it. It's pretty absurd hehe.

 

[Black Elk]

Also

Wizards of the Coast Spokesman Insists Art Wasn't Generated By AI While Oil Pours From His Eyes | Commander's Herald

Company spokesman Norm L. Guy released a statement denying the accusions while an ominous, glistening liquid oozed out of his eyelids.

commandersherald.com

That one cracked me up! hehe