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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35889 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Cranes, like the cotton gin, manufacturing plants or programming language compilers, are engineering tools used to serve a purpose. That is, an actual purpose. Whereas things we consider art tend to be done because it is fun or for status.

The difference is, that the existence of a crane doesn't affect the status of powerlifters. You can still appreciate a power lifter because you know he's not a crane. To the extent that Stable Diffusion etc. mimic art, you can't really tell.

Now, there are a lot of good reasons to have AI-art generators. Like cranes, they can help us engineer and build things faster. People here have mentioned that AI art is probably already being used for generic business presentations for when a slide needs to be livened up and it doesn't need to be too precise or fancy for the audience to get the point.

Fine, artists no longer get their money ripping off people making powerpoints, but AI art still threatens the status market they're engaged in, which as far as I know, has no analogue.

Most artists (graphic designers) who get paid to do stuff on an everyday basis aren't the next Michelangelo and aren't doing something extremely novel at the forefront of artistic expression. They just design another corporate logo, paint weird Rule 34 images, etc.

Fine, artists no longer get their money ripping off people making powerpoints, but AI art still threatens the status market they're engaged in, which as far as I know, has no analogue

I think power lifting is a fine analogue. You can't tell if a building used very strong men to get concrete pillars in place or a crane and yet powerlifting as a competition persists. AI art is threatening the market potential for artists, it's not removing the ability to produce art the hard way.

I own a chess board and play friends occasionally, the existence of an ai that can produce superior play than either of us does not spoil our fun.

The invention of the crane reduced the reach of the powerlifter status market, because when people look at buildings, they're assumed to all be made by cranes, but you can still watch real people lift weights and they're obviously not a crane.

AI Art will reduce the reach of artists and their monopoly on making pictures. Maybe in the future, people will assume most logos and the like are made by computers. That's all well and fine. But how can you prevent imposters from submitting AI art to museums and competitions? It would be as if a bodybuilder could hide a hydraulic arm under his clothes (or take steroids!) and compete without working.

But how can you prevent imposters from submitting AI art to museums and competitions?

I'd lean the direction in how photography is also considered an art form. It's not the mechanical creation of the image that is relevant so much as the artistic intentionally and editing that results in the image to be displayed. Prompt engineering and selecting which of many different output artifacts seems rather analogous to composing the photo and selecting which of many (and for some many many) takes to exhibit.

I agree that promptmancy is the appropriate analogy to photography.

But I can't imagine prompt engineering is subjective though. Translating human intent into a prompt to make an image feels like a skill in a way that photography feels like art

But this just might be sloppy thinking on my part, or an opinion I've been socialized to hold

You keep bringing up the counter argument yourself. Steroids! I do expect high end art competitions will have to take a trick from the sports community and take some measures to prevent ai art from winning, they even have the advantage that one can't use ai at a live event like one can use steroids. I do think most commercial art will be assumed to have come from ai in the future, this will change the artistic landscape in real ways, but so what? Art status competitions haven't exactly been a great example for long lived consistency.

But how can you prevent imposters from submitting AI art to museums and competitions? It would be as if a bodybuilder could hide a hydraulic arm under his clothes (or take steroids!) and compete without working.

Same way powerlifting tournaments prevent imposters: make them do the labor on-site.

I wonder if that would really suffice for them. After all, the guy may generate the image at home on his PC, then memorize it and paint it on site from memory. If this is still "A-ok", then this is a weird esthetic preference.

That just sounds like how a classical artist might have memorized the way nature looked in a particular spot, then went home and painted it. If someone has the skills to do all that, I think they deserve the credit for it.

"This man didn't create art -- he held an image in his mind and put it on a canvas through the movements of his hand and arm!"

Bro, at that point he's not faking anything, he's just actually making art.

Is the art in the arm movements or the idea, the composition, the choice of colors etc? If I memorize how to paint a Mona Lisa replica, am I as impressive as Leonardo?

If I memorize how to paint a Mona Lisa replica, am I as impressive as Leonardo?

If you can memorize how to perfectly replicate Leonardo's entire catalogue, I am comfortable calling you his artistic equal. Arguably we could say he still beats you in the mental aspects of composition, so an original piece of yours might not command the same respect -- but to segue back to the real topic, in time we'll see the same dynamic in AI art. There will be people who covet the status symbol of a limited physical good, and patronize human artists; there will be the masses who consume product and are satisfied; and there will be the pioneers of the field, who see that the future of art is not in the mechanical expression but in the mechanical expression, singing to the machines and optimizing the production of their unique mental images.

Art will never disappear. We'll just paint with words instead of brushes.

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