A.I.

[pdub]

Super cool but also super shitty.

Super cool: will continue to speed processes up and assist in complicated labor intensive tasks.
Super shitty: there isn't any way around this - will put people out jobs.

Getting specific is the shitty way that A.I. is generating art.
Images have been collected, without artists consent, in order to train these systems.
In this case, the argument that A.I. is a tool is flawed - I would say the artists are the tools for the A.I. system.

This can be applied to other things, including coding, where public github code has been scraped by A.I. with no consent from the programmers.

One of the bigger reasons why this isn't happening with as much traction with music at the moment is because record labels are amped and ready to shut it down.

I think the future of this needs to be opt in. It should be easy for anyone to shield their content from any/all of these models. Put a value in the meta data of the file - easy peasy.

[ousdahl]

there isn't any way around this - will put people out jobs.

good.

[ousdahl]

...hear me out!

if AI and technology in general can make things easier, make economies and services and productions more efficient, and ultimately make it so we humans have to work less, why SHOULDN'T that be a good thing?

of course, this requires us to re-think entire systems, and re-think in a way that thinks of more as real life living breathing loving humans (eek!), and less as some construct of "workers;" just some economic cog whose primary function is compulsory economic participation by pretty much everyone from ages 16-65 or so or else you effectively don't even deserve to exist, much less receive basic living necessities as simple as food and housing, and stuff.

And, let's face it. Rethinking entire systems is difficult! It requires a creativity and a vision and a willingness to be open to questioning the status quo, which are all qualities that are really only possessed by Qusdah...nm

now quick! Que you guys to completely miss the point about rethinking whole systems in favor of some status quo doubling down on how I just don't know how the real world works.

[ousdahl]

also, plano/overlander, don't you have a story about AI robots who were programmed to barter oranges, and within seconds they were ripping apart the oranges and attacking each other?

[pdub]

"...and ultimately make it so we humans have to work less, why SHOULDN'T that be a good thing?"

Because some people enjoy their work.

[TDub]

except for in uniquely controlled, monitored and specific applications....fuck A.I.

[ousdahl]

yea. enjoy!

nobody's saying you CAN'T work, or preventing you from pursuing whatever vocation you'd like. If anything, incumbent systems prevent such pursuits more so to begin with.

while we're at it, let's rethink systems (and in the spirit of this thread, leverage technology) to afford more opportunities to pursue things we actually enjoy, and afford the education to enrich ourselves toward our goals; rather than pursuing things just cuz they're the most economically viable, or the only available (in the absence of better access to education, transportation, economic mobility, etc.)

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

[pdub]

Your philosophy is far more hypothetical than mine.
Mine is actually happening in real time in a world in which we live in.
Yours would have to somehow completely tear down most constructs in which the greater world lives in which is a competitive economic environment instead of a utopian communism.

Not really where I wanted this thread to go because it doesn't really relate to the current world in which we live in and the direct future of A.I.

[pdub]

Your answer belongs more in the thread:
Why Karl Marx Was Right

[twocoach]

...hear me out!

if AI and technology in general can make things easier, make economies and services and productions more efficient, and ultimately make it so we humans have to work less, why SHOULDN'T that be a good thing?

of course, this requires us to re-think entire systems, and re-think in a way that thinks of more as real life living breathing loving humans (eek!), and less as some construct of "workers;" just some economic cog whose primary function is compulsory economic participation by pretty much everyone from ages 16-65 or so or else you effectively don't even deserve to exist, much less receive basic living necessities as simple as food and housing, and stuff.

And, let's face it. Rethinking entire systems is difficult! It requires a creativity and a vision and a willingness to be open to questioning the status quo, which are all qualities that are really only possessed by Qusdah...nm

now quick! Que you guys to completely miss the point about rethinking whole systems in favor of some status quo doubling down on how I just don't know how the real world works.

We are going through this process right now on my team. We are in the beginning stages of building automated testing so that we can create a reliable base of automated tests that validate that our system is running as expected after code changes. Once it is in place, it will save us dozens of person-hours per year performing regression testing, which frees us up to do more valuable work to our business unit. One of my coworkers is super nervous that it is going to put her out of work. I remind her weekly that an AI robot is just a lifeless hunk of bolts of a human does not share its knowledge of exactly how to do things and spend time maintaining it to ensure that it performs as expected. I remind her that freeing ourselves of mundane "grunt labor" caliber tasks frees us up to spend more time working on the huge backlog of more expert level analysis and work that we have waiting on our availability.

Much of AI isn't focused on "replacing" employees; it is focused on doing more mundane, repetitive work at a higher success rate so that the human employees can be utilized more as true subject matter experts. If the humans involved in the process don't offer any unique "expertise" and are just performing repetitive grunt labor (likely at a lower success rate than can be automated, then they aren't valuable resources to the employer and should be replaced.

[jfish26]

Super cool but also super shitty.

Super cool: will continue to speed processes up and assist in complicated labor intensive tasks.
Super shitty: there isn't any way around this - will put people out jobs.

Getting specific is the shitty way that A.I. is generating art.
Images have been collected, without artists consent, in order to train these systems.
In this case, the argument that A.I. is a tool is flawed - I would say the artists are the tools for the A.I. system.

This can be applied to other things, including coding, where public github code has been scraped by A.I. with no consent from the programmers.

One of the bigger reasons why this isn't happening with as much traction with music at the moment is because record labels are amped and ready to shut it down.

I think the future of this needs to be opt in. It should be easy for anyone to shield their content from any/all of these models. Put a value in the meta data of the file - easy peasy.

I definitely do not think there is fundamental fairness in a system where those producing value are blocked from seeking and receiving what they're worth.

[Mjl]

I assume when you refer to GitHub code being scraped that you're referring to copilot - I would hope that all common licenses add a line or two to say that is not allowed, and it's up to the owner of each repo to update the license file to include that.

AFAIK GPT-3 doesn't do that - and ChatGPT is an absolute monster game-changer, though it'll need to start updating its answers at some cadence since it's stuck in 2021.

Totally agree about opting in in general.

I think we're at an inflection point right now. It's such a common thing where people get scared by the implications of these inflection points. E.g. machines will destroy all the jobs because they will do everything in factories. I think eventually we figure out that it's for the better, we're nowhere near the point where humans aren't needed. They're just needed for different things.

If machines can make better art, great. There's other things that artistic minds will be good at.

[twocoach]

I assume when you refer to GitHub code being scraped that you're referring to copilot - I would hope that all common licenses add a line or two to say that is not allowed, and it's up to the owner of each repo to update the license file to include that.

AFAIK GPT-3 doesn't do that - and ChatGPT is an absolute monster game-changer, though it'll need to start updating its answers at some cadence since it's stuck in 2021.

Totally agree about opting in in general.

I think we're at an inflection point right now. It's such a common thing where people get scared by the implications of these inflection points. E.g. machines will destroy all the jobs because they will do everything in factories. I think eventually we figure out that it's for the better, we're nowhere near the point where humans aren't needed. They're just needed for different things.

If machines can make better art, great. There's other things that artistic minds will be good at.

There will always be a need for human workers. Someone has to build those robots. Someone has to code them to do anything. They are just a pile of lifeless parts until a human gets involved.

Same with art. There will always be a market for traditional human artists. But now, we also have a choice to buy art from human artists who used digital tools to create their art or by artists who coded a robot to create art. It's not a replacement of humans; it's just an enhancement. They are tools to be used by humans, not replacements of humans.

Let me ask it this way; if it takes a team of 50 humans to design, develop and build a robot to replace one worker on an assembly line, have we really "lost workers"?

[japhy]

Getting specific is the shitty way that A.I. is generating art.
Images have been collected, without artists consent, in order to train these systems.
In this case, the argument that A.I. is a tool is flawed - I would say the artists are the tools for the A.I. system.

My mind goes to three installations I have seen in recent years, all of which are intricately complex. They take years of experiences, and sourcing of objects, and multiple medias. Not sure how AI could source enough experience or such a vast array of objects to create anything like these.

https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/ra ... rg-14-mile

I saw this at LACMA just before covid hit the west coast. It took 17 years of collecting and building and creating. It is so big it had only been seen in it's entirety once as far as I know.

https://mcadenver.org/explore-nari-ward ... udio-guide

The most striking part of this was "Amazing Grace". We took friends who aren't real art fans but they were intrigued. When you walked into that room it had an emotional effect on everyone who went in. You didn't even need to know what he was was trying to express to understand that this was a a very somber place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnL642uCZeM&

This installation was incredible. You walk into an abandoned Catholic Church on the east side of KC and when you open the doors there is all of this "water" rushing towards you. Everyone who came in the door stopped and hesitated before stepping out into the flow. Your knew it was video and yet you hesitated. There were a crazy number of projectors that needed to be synched to work seamlessly and fill in the shapes in the walls and the floor plan.

I think much of what goes into these is so emotionally elemental to a human that a software program could only recreate the imagery. But it would be near impossible for it to be imagined out of thin air by an algorithm.

[pdub]

If machines can make better art, great. There's other things that artistic minds will be good at.

So very very gross.
Art is human to me.

[Mjl]

I assume when you refer to GitHub code being scraped that you're referring to copilot - I would hope that all common licenses add a line or two to say that is not allowed, and it's up to the owner of each repo to update the license file to include that.

AFAIK GPT-3 doesn't do that - and ChatGPT is an absolute monster game-changer, though it'll need to start updating its answers at some cadence since it's stuck in 2021.

Totally agree about opting in in general.

I think we're at an inflection point right now. It's such a common thing where people get scared by the implications of these inflection points. E.g. machines will destroy all the jobs because they will do everything in factories. I think eventually we figure out that it's for the better, we're nowhere near the point where humans aren't needed. They're just needed for different things.

If machines can make better art, great. There's other things that artistic minds will be good at.

Wait, I described opt-out and then said I agree with opt-in... Huh.

Ok... I don't know. So, like, with an MIT license, you're allowing people to use your code for whatever... AI could be considered whatever... This is tough

[Mjl]

If machines can make better art, great. There's other things that artistic minds will be good at.

So very very gross.
Art is human to me.

I'd let humans and the free market decide that. I mean, if you prefer letters over email, go for it.

[KUTradition]

this thread makes my mind go in two directions…

wall-e

terminator

[Mjl]

Those seem similar in that they're dystopian directions. Which I think is what people see with any technological game changer throughout history. And I disagree that dystopia is the only path, or even the likely path

[pdub]

If machines can make better art, great. There's other things that artistic minds will be good at.

So very very gross.
Art is human to me.

I'd let humans and the free market decide that. I mean, if you prefer letters over email, go for it.

Humans and the free market, today, will choose cheaper.
So if it's good enough, that'll do.
Off the backs of hundreds of thousands of artists, who didn't want to be a part of this at all, art will be watered down to typing in a prompt and picking from those generated results.

Letters v email isn't quite the same.
That is devaluing art.