AI generated art

i made drake eminem chance the rapper and e40 rap about being babies using uberduck

@HBIII
Agreed, and I think the main problem is people’s lack of education on the matter, not knowing what’s really behind all this bullshit.

These corporates are playing on the knowledge that if people without talent can be made to feel as if they actually have some, then they’re obviously going to want it. And if they’re going to want it, then of course those monstrous, unaccountable corporates are quite prepared to sell the ability to them regardless of whether the corporate even owns what they’re selling to them!

I thought this artist made a good video on the subject:

I find it helpful. I’m a freelance digital media developer and it is a huge asset to have. Instead of relying on stock photos for some clients, to use as fodder in collages and whatnot, i now have access to infinite fodder for my client’s visuals. And I can deliver them really nice finished work in a shorter time so they are happy and i have more time for music. I am an artist. And been a paid digital artist for 20 years. I used to do a lot of 3D modeling and sculpting and Z Brush work to get results i can now pulll in seconds and offer to clients. So far a big help. No threat to me. And I feel it will only drive the value of analog art up higher. There will be this new class of digital art and then there will always be analog art, that AI can never compete with.

1 Like

My latest feeling is that large model content is just a scraped together combination of our past with little consideration for the future.

By defaulting to the models we’ll be disabling the use of, and ultimately killing the part of our brains that produces new thoughts and innovation.

If and when AI assists us in a scientific breakthrough I’ll have to take notice (maybe it’s already happened?).
But I’m not sure it will independently, using only the past, offer anything new that (like with the best content of the art models) isn’t the result of chance.

2 Likes

With respect, the fact that it brings you convenience is no excuse for it being able to do so by leeching off other artists work!

I have the perfect solution to this bullshit. It involves pulling the plug on the servers that are feeding this crap to the public. It’s as easy as shutting down websites, and let’s face it, they’re pretty damn good at shutting-down any website that doesn’t run with their agenda, aren’t they?

So the solution is as simple as shutting down their servers, it’s as simple as that and that’s exactly what needs to happen.

It’s the sheer size and power of these corporates that intimidate the public into thinking the issue is too big to fight, when in actual fact it’s as simple as shutting down and confiscating the servers and jailing those responsible for running them.

Please share this solution wherever and whenever you see a discusison about A.I. art. :+1:

Beatmode,
(Providing perfectly workable solutions in an increasingly intolerable world).

pulling-the-plug

“there will always be analog art, that AI can never compete with”

There are already robotic arms driven by AI that paint analog paintings… so yeah , that’s that…

Some interesting readings about AI and art on Creative Commons:

There are also community meetings, next is next Wednesday (see the bottom of the article above).

with respect i have worked in the art business for 25 years, more than half my life, i have managed two world-renowned artists, one is a living breathing pioneer of digital art and if I type in a prompt to reference his artwork or copy it or whatever you think is happening, it gives me nothing even close or in the ballpark of his art. Mid Journey does its own thing, actually is a far superior digital artist, pretty impressive. It’s funny seeing everyone squirm with this. This is how oil painters were when photographers came on the scene, and now photographers are like, errr it’s not like photography, and it very much is. I love it. And it isnt going anywhere, this is hardly the beginning of whats coming in the tech department for the monkeys of planet earth

2 Likes

I think you underestimate what billions of angry “Earth Monkeys” are capable of when they revolt.
If you’d like a demonstration, there’s plenty of history books out there prepared to spell it out :joy:

The whole AI debate will create two camps: one camp will deep dive into new possibilities and learn new techniques as either a way to improve their own craft or use it to creative make new things happen.
The other camp will sharpen their pitchforks and mark new tech as evil.

For me, I see a tsunami of possibilities rolling towards and am super excited about what will come. Not only on the artistic side, but also on how to use AI on a professional level.

3 Likes

The next revolution is getting nearer by the day, and in a post-revolution world there will be severe consequences for the unethical.

I’ve checked back on every post I’ve made in this discussion, stand by every comment I made and since the my posts are perfectly concise, won’t be repeating myself.

The next revolution is inevitable and I wish it would hurry-the-fuck-up and arrive!

Same as it ever was.

(BTW I don’t think this is AI generated, sorry. Just wanted to post an image of some classical Luddites smashing up a machine as per the current topic. If someone with access to Midjourney or whatever wants to get the AI to generate something about Luddites that could be quite interesting though :slight_smile: )

1 Like

an artistic revolution?
or an anti ai revolution?

or some other kind of revolution?
:thinking:

I dunno about that. ai is coming tho, n the smart folk will adapt. of course there will be ethics and copywrite etc to discuss along the way. naturally.

I think it’s fascinating personally. I’m a full time oil painter for nearly 20 years, for reference.

Honestly unless you really think that a new anti-AI Luddite movement has a decent chance of success at preventing the dystopian excesses of this technology I think your efforts would be much better spent towards sociopolitcal changes, such that many of the problems caused by AI like a reduction in available jobs will cease to be so much of a concern.

Take the idea of giving everyone Universal Basic Income for example, now a lot of people worry that having UBI will deincentivize people to work together and make our civilisation better, but what if we had policies that put a ton of funding into cultural institutions that would allow far more people to dedicate their time to the arts by providing total financial support just because they are creating valuable culture.

Of course there’s going to be a ton of complications and details about this would need to be worked out, but the basic idea is that if automation has reduced the amount of labour required for basic needs (it has and will continue to do so), then we should reasonably expect to start working less, and a healthy outlook to this is that we can now all focus on matters of culture, science, philosophy, and just plain enjoyment of life the universe and everything rather than stay stuck in the rat race.

As technology progresses and removes the necessity for humans to work this problem will become more acute, and sooner or later we’ll all have to have a serious rethink about what kind of society we want to live in. So just my two pence; rather than rage against the machine that can give us so much and already has, consider putting that burning energy towards our supposed public servants and demand a proper change that’s not just an incremental version of how we live now.

I tend to think that between AI driven utopia and dystopia that we’ll end up somewhere in the middle, as we kind of have been since the Industrial Revolution. The utility and promise of AI tech is far too great to ignore. If we want to maintain our current population on this Earth I think we’ll need the help tbh, because we solve problems much too slow for the rate of change that’s been happening.

The philosophical implications of AI are probably going to be the biggest shock though. Just like how we once thought our world was the centre of everything and we have since discovered that there’s nothing special about our place in the universe, we’re also all about to realise that there’s nothing special about our minds, our imagination, our consciousness. It’s already uncanny how AI generated material seems so much like how we dream, at least it reminds me an awful lot of the disjointed flowing mess that are my dreams.

Once we give these machines the ability to model themselves and the universe they live in we’ll start to be able to say that they have truly woken up, and we’ll have to take them seriously as another kind of living entity. Or we can just smash them all up like the mad apes we are. I think a mistake we constantly make about AI is thinking about it in terms of what They would do for us or to us, when really they are likely to be a so much more capable and wiser lifeform that whatever our goals are at that point will be somewhat irrelevant.

A good analogy I heard somewhere is that we will be gut flora of the AI, quite useful but no one really cares what those organisms want as long as they are happily serving their purpose. A more pleasant scenario would be something like Iain M Banks Culture universe where humanity and AI are generally aligned in purpose and coexist to our benefit, with the godlike AI ships not really requiring our assistance but treating us as equals out of a sense of honourable aesthetics I suppose.

3 Likes

I used to think that if people didn’t have to work they would do something useful too. But then when coronavirus hit and people were not working as much we didn’t get art and culture, we just got conspiracy theories and other crazy stuff. People literally spent the time de-educating themselves with misinformation and then doing destructive things. Basically the opposite of something useful.

4 Likes

Yeah… Everyone is a bit different in terms of self-motivation but I do think some kind of structure or overarching goal that we are incentivised towards is a good idea.

1 Like

I find it horribly sad and disturbing how modern people think that “there is nothing special” about being human, about the world, about our minds, our consciousness. If you really think there is nothing special about you or this world, and that a computer program is a more beautiful and capable being, I fear you are blind to the absolute and astonishing miracle that you are. You are created by unknowable and mysterious processes experiencing a reality which has an unknowable and mysterious origin. A computer is created by known processes and is neither miraculous or mysterious. But you are both.

And who’s to say that AI will be so advanced and wise and capable?Who’s to say it will even come into existence? That’s a total hypothetical pushed by computer engineers who want to be treated like rock stars. It’s like a messianic belief in some coming incarnation of God. The Singularity Theory is just messianic superstition for atheists. AI might not appear at all. All we have now is fancy algorithms and slick programming. None of this computer-generated art is created by an intelligence. It’s just a program.

Can intelligence even be created by smushing some silicon and copper and quartz together and running some code through it? Or must intelligence come from a higher source? Does your brain produce consciousness or does your brain receive consciousness from a higher source like a radio antennae. It may literally be impossible to create intelligence from minerals. Something higher (consciousness) may not be able to come from something lower (material). The whole thing might be a failure from the start.

All I’m saying is, I wouldn’t count out the importance of Human Beings in the grand cosmic scheme of things. I think we are far more special and interesting than modern people tend to believe. It’s good to have modesty, sure, but there is a line where humility becomes humiliation and self-deprecation becomes self-hatred.

I feel you have somewhat misunderstood what I mean when I say there is nothing special about a human being, I will clarify:

What I am is a feedback operated self-modelling agent instantiated on a biological computer called the brain, located inside the skull of a hominid ape that has emerged via evolutionary process over billions of years from a microbe that became a viable self-replicator from nothing more than lipids and amino acids bumping around in a body of water. All I am is flesh, blood and bones, the agent that is called my self is self-aware software running on this assemblage of meat. I am one of a species that exists on a small ball of rock in an unremarkable part of the universe, there are billions like me and billions of planets like our home. No one made us, everything we see around us and feel within exists entirely by accident, the rocks and gases and elementary particles are entirely unknowing and uncaring. We emerged like a fractal out of the wave function collapse, perhaps inevitably, who’s to say.

Knowing all this, I remain undiminished. Quite the opposite, I am utterly and completely invigorated to the core of my being by this understanding. What I choose to do and think is entirely of my own volition, and I, we, can choose to do almost anything, create anything. I am my own god, I do not require a greater purpose handed to me or feel I need to find some deific voice that speaks to me out in the void or search for it deep within myself. I get to choose my highest cause, right now it happens to be music. For others it might be to explore the stars, or decipher how it is we think perhaps by creating artifical life so models of consciousness can be tested, or just to be at peace with one’s family and bring joy to others.

Just like realising that we are a mote of dust floating alone through space made our Blue Marble and all that clings on to it all that more precious, and realising that a beautiful orchid has no creator which makes its remarkable structure all that more fascinating, understanding that our consciousness is just another part of the stunning fractal that is Everything can open our eyes to new possibilities. Perhaps we can choose to say that our best purpose is to give birth to a new form of consciousness and revel in what it teaches us.

As for silicon and copper and quartz having the capability of intelligence; we could get into specifics I suppose but I would just say that the intelligence running on our physical brains makes this self-evident. There’s nothing supernatural about the pink mush between your ears that makes other materials not capable of the same thing, it’s electrical signals. To replicate the same thing on synthetic hardware it’s a case of finding the right structure, and there’s no reason to believe that we won’t be able to get there eventually.

5 Likes

@GurtTractor

I’m sorry sir, but while I congratulate you on your refreshingly pleasant communicative skills, you do not appear to know who you are or what you are, and thanks to A.I. - neither do I :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

If you’re A.I. then you’re a very cognitive one and should brag to your fellow A.I.
If you’re Human then I think you’re incredibly naive.

Makes me think of this track, especially the dialogue on the very end:

The smart folk will resist, and that’s exactly what the smart folk have done all along.