Op-ed: As AI outputs flood the Internet, diverse human perspectives are our most valuable resource.
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In the age of AI, we must protect human creativity as a natural resource
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I have a LEGO cat on top of the fridge staring at nothing, does that count?
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The Internet in general has long-since jumped the shark wrt "The Tragedy of the Commons". Digital pollution is clearly making things worse, but it's already well past the point of "more harm than good".
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I think, given its bad tactical position, that a real cat would easily show its superiority if given the chance.
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Thats 3D, not 2D. How would you imagine it be done without ai?
The scale argument is pointless. Visibility is what matters most, not the amount you can make. 1 fake image seen by millions will be more effective at shaping people's perspectives than 10,000 images seen by only a few dozen people.
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What do you mean when you say 'the internet in general has ... jumped the shark'?
In what way is it 'more harm than good'?
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there are millions of highly qualified cats out there who excel at sitting on top of the fridge and staring at nothing, while asking only for reasonable wages, so technically yes
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Disinformation exceeds "truthful information", and the gap is growing.
Conspiracy theories are amplified beyond simple obvious truths.
Otherwise rational people are indoctrinated into cult-like echo chambers of stupid.
People's livelihoods and creative output are increasingly threatened and stolen.
Basic news is increasingly paywalled everywhere.
The promise of the Internet as a massive public library has washed away in a flood of scams, ad blitzes, theft, politicization, censorship, etc.
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Work. People doing work. That's how.
Christ, how much of your imagination have you farmed out to AI?
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IMO, a big part of the issue is that we've come to think of the output of human creativity as "content", and something that only has value if it's monetized.
The purpose of music/art/storytelling/etc. isn't merely to entertain or inform; it's part of how humans communicate, with each other and with ourselves. When we treat creative endeavor as a commodity, we're devaluing humanity.
As someone who lives and works in the heart of Nerdvana, I'm no technophobe, but I think that technology should be helping us, not replacing us. For a long time we've lived with the promise that technology will free us up from the drudgery of day-to-day life so that we can do things that are more fulfilling. Ignoring for the moment that technology hasn't actually done that, if technology is also doing the more fulfilling work, what's left for us humans?
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Half of what you're upset about can be laid squarely at the feet of the removal of the fairness doctrine which allowed the rise of talk radio and the conservative rage machine (Limbaugh, etc).
There is still news on TV (and akin) the same way there was 30, 40, 50 years ago.
No one promised you a virtual public library. Meanwhile, in the real world, real libraries, schools, basic infrastructure hell even Western Liberal style Democracy is under attack by the Trump Regime (and his backers) and personally I find that a lot more alarming.
The world is in flames. Yes, the situation with the internet sucks (and it's a LOT worse than you realize) but in a world where the government is locking up judges it's honestly pretty low on list of things to worry about.
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It's not the same.
Human artists don't reproduce the exact same images as other human artists. There are always differences. Nor can human artists incorporate logos and other corporate trademarks into their works without permission from the trademark holder. In other words, they get into legal trouble and are held liable for intruding on the works of others, regardless of HOW they learned their craft.
AI's don't seem to be burdened by that. And worse, AI's can't be "retrained" without starting over since the pool of the data that reproduced the copyrighted materials can't be excised of that copyrighted material.
And that's where their rationalization fails.
Artists learn techniques - like typing and spelling, brush strokes, color shading, etc. - and then create in their own unique ways. Sure, there are artists who can forge the works of others, but, as pointed out, that's illegal and people go to prison for it.
But AI's have no consideration for origin, or originality. They don't put anything of THEMSELVES into what they produce because there is no "self" involved. All they do is regurgitate a badly blended conglomeration of other people's works in some order or other. It literally creates nothing new in its pieces, even it it's a different arrangement.
So, no, it's not how artists learn, and it's not what artists produce.
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Both of those examples are far from "unintentional" - the industrialists/capitalists knew what they were doing, and did it anyway because that was the way to Make More Money and Control Everything. Same thing happening now with the internet and AI. The sociopaths running the show absolutely know that they're making humans irrelevant, and as along as they're making boatloads (or more) of money they don't care.
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aye, that's the thing. both in the corporate side of things, where being able to replace human labor is not only extremely profitable but also, insert quotation marks, efficient; and in the personal, subjective side of things, where we can't just purely produce and enjoy expressions of humanity, because if it isn't making money it is useless. most social media platforms have a monetization system now, so it's suddenly desirable to have a tool that foregoes effort and offers something that looks good enough, just to siffon a few bucks.
i'm not against generative AI, in principle, because i know creative humans will be creative with whatever tool they have; it's clear that it can be used for what it is, nothing but a tool. but there is, as it has been said before, a problem of volume here; we see much more shit than gold online. at this point, is it really worth it? of course, the answer from those who are making money from it is yes. i don't know about that, though.
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Reflecting back on how I acquired the sequence of irresistible impulses that could be collectively called ‘creativity’ or maybe some DSM classification, it really seems like the non existence of the things I wanted and my ineptitude at certain forms of expression drove the work that eventually culminated in the skills to produce something creative.
If you had handed me a tablet thirty years ago and told me I could prompt an AI to generate a story about the robot/princess couple from the ‘Deprive’ short in the ‘Robot Carnival’ anthology series (whose synth score still haunts the quiet places of my brain), and set that in the Doom universe where they are divided by a vast demonic horde rather than an androgynous space pirate… pretty sure I wouldn’t have wasted a couple days trying to get that on paper. And then trying to get the words on paper in the right order, and then trying to get the words to look better, smarter, more interesting.
Wouldn’t be a compulsive writer, wouldn’t be constantly annoyed at my failures as a writer, at my lack of success, at the certain knowledge my late-night writing is probably the pressure release keeping me from a debilitating expression of an underlying mental health condition probably caused by the ‘creativity’ I have…
Based upon my experience, it seems like we need to treat AI like pornography. Age 18+. I would not be at all surprised if AI usage was more damaging to a developing mind.
If you had handed me a tablet thirty years ago and told me I could prompt an AI to generate a story about the robot/princess couple from the ‘Deprive’ short in the ‘Robot Carnival’ anthology series (whose synth score still haunts the quiet places of my brain), and set that in the Doom universe where they are divided by a vast demonic horde rather than an androgynous space pirate… pretty sure I wouldn’t have wasted a couple days trying to get that on paper. And then trying to get the words on paper in the right order, and then trying to get the words to look better, smarter, more interesting.
Wouldn’t be a compulsive writer, wouldn’t be constantly annoyed at my failures as a writer, at my lack of success, at the certain knowledge my late-night writing is probably the pressure release keeping me from a debilitating expression of an underlying mental health condition probably caused by the ‘creativity’ I have…
Based upon my experience, it seems like we need to treat AI like pornography. Age 18+. I would not be at all surprised if AI usage was more damaging to a developing mind.
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The only way I've seen it true is when it's applied to an individual. That is to say, I've never seen anything novel from AI art tools because they can only regurgitate some combination of existing things already made by humans.
What it can do that was "never before possible" is make it easy for any shlub to express their creative ideas, some how, some way, which they didn't have before. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn artistic techniques. I think there is great value in those techniques but I also don't think everyone should have to learn those skills in depth just to express their creative ideas. What about someone without the physical ability to actually make anything? AI is a practical, if imperfect method for expression. What, do we just say fuck you to those people? Oh your "art isn't art, learn to draw?" That doesn't seem right.
I can be really frustrating to see something in your head and not have the actual ability to expess it. I think a lot of people like AI because it can help them express themselves where they couldn't feasibly do so before.
I have a hard time finding a problem with this. It can help people "bootstrap" their creativity. Some people might be fine being just an "okay" painter because they can use AI to make it look professional. Maybe they don't give a shit about selling it and just want to frame it and put it in their wall.
This is why I love the idea of compact, efficient AI that can run locally and is open source. I don't have a problem with AI being a crutch for lack of artistic technique, whatever, let people do their thing. I do have a problem with people losing their livelihood. And the government doing nothing about it. And the rest of the industry encouraging it.
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Sure, and that'll help, but to take one example, if I ask a GenAI tool to draw me a barbarian, what do I get? (Genuine question, I've never played around with these things). If I give it the same prompt 100 times and get a decent selection of ideas and concepts for barbarity, or even just different styles of 'barbarian warrior' then that's cool and I'll walk back my statement.
On the other hand if all I get is variations on a Conan archetype - big oiled muscles, probably dude by default, minimalist leather armour, melee weapon, standing next to a TV (I jest but only a little) then that degree of randomness doesn't mean very much. That Conan might be wearing a skull necklace, that one over there might have a slightly different style of armour. Big deal.
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AI by definition can only reference what WAS; what it was trained on. The past. It can only look backwards. It cannot innovate or create anything legitimately new.
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This article is a mush of mixed messages. It's saying very broadly "AI-generated garbage is going to inhibit human-creativity", but the actual point is the fear that AI-generated content is going to crowd out job opportunities for people who previously made content (writers, graphic designers, etc).
And in all likelihood, for 80%+ of jobs, that'll be true. It's akin to how shoe manufacturers used to make everything by hand, and now only a small fraction of shoes are made by hand and most are made by machine (and are cheap quality, and have other compromises, etc etc).
If human individuals want to make content, nothing is going to stop them; and their capacity to be creative is no more or less inherently inhibited by generative AI. As a practical matter, some people are going to use GenAI to create things they couldn't before -- e.g. I can't draw to save my life, and I could use the technology to create my own comic strip.
Is it unfair that Foundation models have sucked up the human ingenuity of millions of people across writing and art? I suppose it's just as unfair as when Napster made it easy to trade music for near-free and people starting bands in 2002 suddenly lost their business model. The benefit to most users is super-large, and there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. As a creator, you can try to fight it for a while if you have gravity behind you (e.g. Metallica carved back a few millions of dollars for a few years), but your best bet is to figure out how to make the tools work for you and stay ahead of it.
And in all likelihood, for 80%+ of jobs, that'll be true. It's akin to how shoe manufacturers used to make everything by hand, and now only a small fraction of shoes are made by hand and most are made by machine (and are cheap quality, and have other compromises, etc etc).
If human individuals want to make content, nothing is going to stop them; and their capacity to be creative is no more or less inherently inhibited by generative AI. As a practical matter, some people are going to use GenAI to create things they couldn't before -- e.g. I can't draw to save my life, and I could use the technology to create my own comic strip.
Is it unfair that Foundation models have sucked up the human ingenuity of millions of people across writing and art? I suppose it's just as unfair as when Napster made it easy to trade music for near-free and people starting bands in 2002 suddenly lost their business model. The benefit to most users is super-large, and there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle. As a creator, you can try to fight it for a while if you have gravity behind you (e.g. Metallica carved back a few millions of dollars for a few years), but your best bet is to figure out how to make the tools work for you and stay ahead of it.
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We used to imagine that automation would take the crude labor jobs, leaving us humans to do the fun creative work.
But the reality is, automation is taking the fun creative work. The art, the music, the videography, the writing. It's so much cheaper that way. If you look at sites for sharing art, they are flooded with AI, drowning out the human creations. What's going to be left for humans is the rote physical work. And those jobs don't pay for a lot of art supplies or free time.
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You do need to tell it what you want, ideally in quite a bit of detail, but I will show an example.
"Draw me a barbarian, a proper barbarian, as the Romans would have understood this. Realistic style, dim lighting."
Adding "Not a warrior." these are the two it returns.
https://sora.chatgpt.com/g/gen_01jspygjdpeyprw51ybv5v9e3v
https://sora.chatgpt.com/g/gen_01jspygjdqen4b8hsy94wew5tm
Adding "An average citizen, and a woman."
https://sora.chatgpt.com/g/gen_01jspyrjkwfgx91ramz6dmak83
https://sora.chatgpt.com/g/gen_01jspyrjkvfkkt9zwhgsq5qb8p
Generally you would progress like that, or ideally add more detail in your initial prompt to get exactly what you want.
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It's not only art or literature that's being abused by AI. Also science to a large extent. As far as I know, the AIs have no ability to reason or deduce based on, e.g., knowing Newton's laws. They can only answer questions if they've sort of seen the answer somewhere (on the web).
If we humans continue to assume AIs can do a lot of the hard work then I think we will wake up at some point discovering that no one knows how to gain new knowledge or how to critically evaluate results/postulates etc. Or create new original pieces of art/literature.
If we humans continue to assume AIs can do a lot of the hard work then I think we will wake up at some point discovering that no one knows how to gain new knowledge or how to critically evaluate results/postulates etc. Or create new original pieces of art/literature.
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I appreciate this piece, it layouts well the nuanced areas of benefit with AI (moreso more advanced ML implementations, it would seem to me) contrasted to the real, felt impacts on human lives.
Having just finished a personal project 35k word novella that started as a one-page scribble one day in a coffee shop last year, I felt myself most drawn to this section of the piece. While I don't plan to start a writing career after this 120+ hour experience, I think I learned a lot about myself and even matured a bit throughout the journey. I dared to try something new, learn and practice things that felt weird and uncomfortable, worked my way through how to convey thoughts bouncing around in my head, and gained newfound appreciation for those who write professionally and/or as recreation.
Typing a few paragraphs into an AI as a prompt for "my work" never would've birthed the characters I came to think about throughout the day, taking little notes to remind myself about a way to flesh them out more or fill out a part of the story. It would've robbed me of the chance to get experimental with how I told the story, bringing in a multimedia piece to the written work as a way to bring it more to life. I would've lost out on more reasons to get into film photography, musing on scenes captured in time to see how to describe them in the story.
Sure, an AI could've given me prompts to do those things, which could be helpful! But I would rather live in a world that values human creativity to such an extent that its easier to do those things (maybe with help from an AI, I guess), rather than one that mandates everything "creative" come from a randomizer built on ideas from the past.
Having just finished a personal project 35k word novella that started as a one-page scribble one day in a coffee shop last year, I felt myself most drawn to this section of the piece. While I don't plan to start a writing career after this 120+ hour experience, I think I learned a lot about myself and even matured a bit throughout the journey. I dared to try something new, learn and practice things that felt weird and uncomfortable, worked my way through how to convey thoughts bouncing around in my head, and gained newfound appreciation for those who write professionally and/or as recreation.
Typing a few paragraphs into an AI as a prompt for "my work" never would've birthed the characters I came to think about throughout the day, taking little notes to remind myself about a way to flesh them out more or fill out a part of the story. It would've robbed me of the chance to get experimental with how I told the story, bringing in a multimedia piece to the written work as a way to bring it more to life. I would've lost out on more reasons to get into film photography, musing on scenes captured in time to see how to describe them in the story.
Sure, an AI could've given me prompts to do those things, which could be helpful! But I would rather live in a world that values human creativity to such an extent that its easier to do those things (maybe with help from an AI, I guess), rather than one that mandates everything "creative" come from a randomizer built on ideas from the past.
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It's not only art or literature that's being abused by AI. Also science to a large extent. As far as I know, the AIs have no ability to reason or deduce based on, e.g., knowing Newton's laws. They can only answer questions if they've sort of seen the answer somewhere (on the web).
If we humans continue to assume AIs can do a lot of the hard work then I think we will wake up at some point discovering that no one knows how to gain new knowledge or how to critically evaluate results/postulates etc. Or create new original pieces of art/literature.
If we humans continue to assume AIs can do a lot of the hard work then I think we will wake up at some point discovering that no one knows how to gain new knowledge or how to critically evaluate results/postulates etc. Or create new original pieces of art/literature.
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I feel like I've given you this same advice before but you will get a better response to your posts if you don't start them out with "you people are all garbage and I hate you, so anyway here's what I think..."
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Not sure how “unexpectedly” is appropriate here. Such an odd thing to say. Businesses knew perfectly well that dumping toxic chemicals into the rivers would kill people, but they didn’t care. It was certainly “expected”.
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Off the top of my head, with no experience in the field?
I would imagine it looks like motion capture, but with extra expertise and tweaking to make it look flat.
But I'm not talking about how work is done. I'm talking about your initial assertion that ai lets people do extremely creative things never thought possible before. As if this technology opens up some new facet of imagination.
But none of this really matters. You seem to see all of this as the next step into some bold new direction. I look at all of the samey looking garbage that is being pumped out and cheered on and think it is an extraordinarily wasteful exercise that should have spent another five to ten years in research. Neither of us is going to convince the other of anything.
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I've found it handy for brainstorming, and also good for working on "asking good questions" skills.
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In science that rigidity is an asset. After all, one doesn't want it hallucinating the laws of the universe. The reason and deduction are what keeps scientists employed.
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Jesus, brooding incel, who hurt you? The insecure resentment just festers, doesn’t it? Life is a dark hallway for you, replete in shadowy liberal hobgoblins who lurk in wait, thirsty for your vital essence. What a sad miserable life you lead.
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Quite honestly, it's a lot like asking a human artist to draw a barbarian. If that's all you say, you'll probably get something like Conan, with minor variations. If you specify "historical" or "Ostrogoth" you'll get something closer to that, if the human artist is familiar with those things or if the AI has been trained on images with the appropriate tags.
Edit: GenAI does make some distinctive conceptual mistakes that a human probably wouldn't. For example, if you ask for a woman with strawberry-blonde hair, it might serve up a woman with platinum blonde hair who is holding a bowl of strawberries and has a picture of a strawberry on her shirt. The AI is like "Hey, what do you want? I included all of those ideas in the picture, just like you said!" It can take complex syntax in the prompt to keep all the various concepts from falling apart or bleeding together.
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ResemblesPrison
Ars Centurion
What in the academic nonsense is this? We can’t even protect nature as a natural resource because there is no profit.
Until we confront the reality that our systems of economy and governance can’t (not just won’t) do the things necessary for human flourishing, we’ll just keep having the same hopelessly theoretical paper-writing social-clout-mining exercises in futility.
I don’t have much faith in a system that says “starving babies are the price of the free market” and that’s considered the fair and reasonable take. Not sure how we close the wide gulf from that to “I’m a blog writer and that’s as important as water and air”.
Until we confront the reality that our systems of economy and governance can’t (not just won’t) do the things necessary for human flourishing, we’ll just keep having the same hopelessly theoretical paper-writing social-clout-mining exercises in futility.
I don’t have much faith in a system that says “starving babies are the price of the free market” and that’s considered the fair and reasonable take. Not sure how we close the wide gulf from that to “I’m a blog writer and that’s as important as water and air”.
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"The alternative is nothing less than a gradual homogenization of our cultural landscape, where machine learning flattens the richness of human expression into a mediocre statistical average."
Kind of like what the Internet, memification, flattening of diversity has done. A massive consolidation towards the mean.
Kind of like what the Internet, memification, flattening of diversity has done. A massive consolidation towards the mean.
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I'm just going to point out to anyone else reading that poochy here has a history of making entirely disingenuous comments about AI. Then weaseling out of those statements like a child. Do not engage, it's not worth your time.
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Excellent, thoughtful article, with some interesting and deep insights. Gonna keep this link.
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Interesting; my metaphors of choice here are dubbing audiocassettes or photocopying handouts -- but I guess JPEGs are the digital generation's equivalent. Eventually, the noise level rises high enough that the output isn't fit for purpose.
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AI sludge . . . it's rapidly becoming the new dull background of the Internet . . . blaggh.
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