Are Generative AI (LLM programs) produced illustrations… art?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

4 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

the most fundamental quality inherently required in any creator of a work of art is horniness.

I sure hope Penderecki wasn't horny when he made the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. I sure as hell ain't horny listening to it. 

 

 

[Ran]

Horniness and AI... 98% of AI images being produced is porn, near as I can tell -- waifu porn, anime porn, furry porn, I-can't-even-describe-it-porn, deepfake porn (the worst).

AI ain't horny, but for sure most of the people who are using it are horny as fuck. 

Not just image generators. Local LLMs are being trained to be sex chat bots and smut fiction manufacturing bots.

"The internet is for porn" can now be "The AI is for porn"

ETA: Okay, ChatGPT and Suno.ai delivers

Edited April 25 by Ran

[IheartIheartTesla]

9 hours ago, Larry of the Lawn said:

AI-created stuff isn't art.  It might be a really good facsimile thereof, but we're going to need a new word for it.  It's not the same thing when the creator is removed.  I think we might already be at a point with graphics and music where we can't necessarily discern if something is AI generated or not, where we can't actually tell if it's art or not.  

I have absolutely no profound thoughts to add on this topic, but whenever I think of AI art I think of Data from Star Trek painting on an oil canvas, or playing the violin where he is programmed with the techniques of 200 masters. He is critiqued for the latter of having no style of his own, but still, he made Sarek cry once.....

Edited April 25 by IheartIheartTesla

[DaveSumm]

I agree with most of @Spockydog’s thoughts earlier in the thread, humans have this desire to hold themselves as separate and special, when the truth is nothing fundamentally different is happening when AI trains on data than when humans do. It’s muddier when we do it cos it gets fed into the most complex thing in the universe, gets muddled up with a bunch of other incomprehensible factors and gets spat out again. But one day, AI will produce art as good as we can, better even. If we can’t define it, then we can’t decide when it becomes art. Same as sentience; we don’t understand it, so we won’t know when and if computers actually attain it.

We aren’t magic, we’re just computers.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

40 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

I agree with most of @Spockydog’s thoughts earlier in the thread, humans have this desire to hold themselves as separate and special, when the truth is nothing fundamentally different is happening when AI trains on data than when humans do. It’s muddier when we do it cos it gets fed into the most complex thing in the universe, gets muddled up with a bunch of other incomprehensible factors and gets spat out again. But one day, AI will produce art as good as we can, better even. If we can’t define it, then we can’t decide when it becomes art. Same as sentience; we don’t understand it, so we won’t know when and if computers actually attain it.

We aren’t magic, we’re just computers.

If we’re “just computers” you can program a human?  You can fully simulate a human?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

We aren’t magic, we’re just computers.

We're not just computers though. We're biomechanical robots with computing software shaped by natural selection. And part of that software enables us to believe in, and thirst for, magic. 

I'm not saying that AI definitely can't perfectly emulate human thought, behavior, and cultural outputs. It's hypothetically possible.

But it's only the extent that AI can successfully trigger the "wow, magic!" buttons of human beings that determines whether their output has any artistic value. There is no biological imperative to their algorithm. There is no pain, or hunger, or million-year-old mental shortcuts. There is only what they are programmed to do, the inputs, and the feedback.

And given the completely different nature of incentives, it's not necessarily guaranteed. Maybe there's some sort of limit to the aesthetic synergy; no matter how close it gets, it can't cross some uncanny valley.

I don't pretend to know. I only know that "we're just computers" is overly reductive.

Edited April 25 by Phylum of Alexandria
clarity

[Rippounet]

35 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

humans have this desire to hold themselves as separate and special, when the truth is nothing fundamentally different is happening when AI trains on data than when humans do. [...]

We aren’t magic, we’re just computers.

We're worse than that: social primates with anxiety, obsessed with social status and sex. But if you build a society around that kind of truth, you're essentially creating a dystopian hellhole.
You don't love humanity because it deserves to be loved (who the fuck could decide that?) ; you love humanity because you don't have a fucking choice, and living in a society that essentially makes human life worthless will sooner or later be hell for all but the most privileged.

[DaveSumm]

13 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

If we’re “just computers” you can program a human?  You can fully simulate a human?

Not today of course, but theoretically, yes.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

3 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Not today of course, but theoretically, yes.

When?  That’s been predicted as 20 years away for my whole life… I’m 53.

 

Edited April 25 by Ser Scot A Ellison

[IFR]

If all humans and their art were destroyed in a raging holocaust of self-annihilation, and an alien race which had no art of its own visited us, found an LLM server still surviving, and used it to form images which taught that race to make art, would this be art?

[TheLastWolf]

5 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I sure hope Penderecki wasn't horny when he made the Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. I sure as hell ain't horny listening to it. 

 

 

Dostoevsky suffered. Nietzsche despaired. Camus and Sartre and Kafka and a whole bunch of glorious miserable folks made my shitty life bearable. Because their woe stemmed from anguish that mere sex or other physical cathartic outlets couldn't assuage. You don't find existential solace without being horny in the first place. For the simple purpose of life begetting life didn't seem satisfactory to live. Yet primordial programming pulled one towards the same. You think AI could stare into the abyss?

5 hours ago, Ran said:

Horniness and AI... 98% of AI images being produced is porn, near as I can tell -- waifu porn, anime porn, furry porn, I-can't-even-describe-it-porn, deepfake porn (the worst).

AI ain't horny, but for sure most of the people who are using it are horny as fuck. 

Not just image generators. Local LLMs are being trained to be sex chat bots and smut fiction manufacturing bots.

"The internet is for porn" can now be "The AI is for porn"

ETA: Okay, ChatGPT and Suno.ai delivers

There's no life to it. The basest of our desires is the basis of our existence and reducing that to this uhh even worse than Hentai. Desensitizing...

Edited April 26 by TheLastWolf

[JGP]

3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Same as sentience; we don’t understand it, so we won’t know when and if computers actually attain it.

Please.

We don't understand the precise neurological mechanisms that were ground for its emergence, but we know what it is. We'll also know if an AI ever achieves it lol  

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, JGP said:

Please.

We don't understand the precise neurological mechanisms that were ground for its emergence, but we know what it is. We'll also know if an AI ever achieves it lol  

We almost certainly won't unless we develop significantly better testing methodologies. Because right now doing things like LLM have shown our speech and communication isn't actually that sophisticated. 

[JGP]

They'll let us know, man. 

 

[TheLastWolf]

1 hour ago, JGP said:

They'll let us know, man. 

 

What if a Matrix like scenario was preferable to them, would we ever break free?

[DaveSumm]

5 hours ago, JGP said:

Please.

We don't understand the precise neurological mechanisms that were ground for its emergence, but we know what it is. We'll also know if an AI ever achieves it lol  

We have no clue what it is. Theories range from “it’s a programming loop” to “it’s quantum mechanical tubules” to “it literally doesn’t exist, it’s an illusion”. That doesn’t sound like a theory we have a good handle on. We’re completely incapable of describing what we’re even talking about, other than to reference our own confusion; ‘that thing that has no actual inconsistency to be explained, other than that we all appear to be confused by it’. 

And they’ll let us know, awesome. Go ask Chat GPT if it exists or not. A “lol” at one of the most complex and vexing issues imaginable, I return your ‘lol’ my friend.

[JGP]

40 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

We have no clue what it is. 

Pfft.

We don't know how it is [sentience/consciousness] but what it is? Insofar as we human beings experience it, yes, we know.

 

40 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Theories range from “it’s a programming loop” to “it’s quantum mechanical tubules” to “it literally doesn’t exist, it’s an illusion”. That doesn’t sound like a theory we have a good handle on. We’re completely incapable of describing what we’re even talking about, other than to reference our own confusion; ‘that thing that has no actual inconsistency to be explained, other than that we all appear to be confused by it’. 

 [stares directly at the camera, points up]

 

40 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Go ask Chat GPT if it exists or not. A “lol” at one of the most complex and vexing issues imaginable, I return your ‘lol’ my friend.

 

Complex issue, sure. Vexing though? [shrugs]

ChatGPT isn't sentient. To think the fanciful crap it spews when asked such a question would be similar to how an actually sentient AI would respond is unimaginative and intellectually lazy.

 

Edited April 26 by JGP

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, JGP said:

Insofar as we human beings experience it, yes, we know.

Cool, so what is it?

It reminds me of the ‘left and right’ problem, in that it’s impossible to define either direction without referencing said direction. Imagine aliens visited and we had a cracking conversation about physics and mathematics, when certain things got invented and how, comparing histories. “What about consciousness?” we ask. “Con… what? We don’t have that, I don’t know what you mean”. “You know, that sensation that makes you feel like you’re aware you exist.” “I am aware I exist. I still don’t know what you’re talking.” “Well … that thing we’re confused about, but you don’t appear to be. How about this: imagine you were a bat. It’d be ‘like something’ to be a bat, wouldn’t it.”

I mean seriously, ‘it’s like something’ is such a feeble answer to anyone who isn’t already confused about it. It’s called the Hard Problem for a reason, we haven’t got our hands around what the problem actually is, because as far as we can tell, there isn’t anything to be explained. The entire function of the brain is completely explainable from what we know, that we have motor function and memory and logic processing. There just isn’t some magic space that accounts for us feeling sentient, feeling like something fundamentally different has happened to us that hasn’t happened to a toaster. “The toaster seems to be confused about something it can’t explain” isn’t much of a statement to someone with a full technical manual of a toaster. Maybe confusion is just a by-product of complexity?

To be fair, I don’t believe that. I do think there is something fascinating happening, and I’m fascinated that of all the various scientific truths we know of, my own consciousness is the one I can be surest of. Even if I’m a brain in a jar in an alien lab, or I’m in a simulation, I MUST be conscious. However confused I am, the confusion exists and someone must be the subject of that confusion. But I also believe we’re a long way off of real progress on this, and AI will go sailing past this benchmark while we’re all still in the dark. 

Edited April 26 by DaveSumm

[JGP]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

Cool, so what is it?

Well, you said it: Maybe confusion is just a by-product of complexity? I mean, in light of science's inability to yet riddle the how and the why, it's kinda natural to default to philosophical meanderings I suppose, but it resolves about as much as stirring up the silt on this subject [yet I'll admit it's hard to avoid]   

So what it is, is Me Myself and I. That sense of self-- I am, I feel. Simple as that.

[and no, beyond severely depressing individual exceptionalism, the unlikely possibility of an intelligent hive mind wouldn't stymy that. Me Myself and I would just become We. Us. Ourself, if language even need be present in that type of species rather than some type of pheromonal programming... to close out the loop]  

Anyway. 

It's arguable that a select few of our animal brethren are self aware, but without language to express themselves, to themselves, to each other, it's a primitive type in comparison, right? Doesn't necessarily mean it's less rich, mind [instinct, emotional bonding, all that] but it's not the same. Yet if it was solely language that made it happen, then AI perhaps should be sentient already but it's not. So, I think therefor I am is only part of it.

You say you must be sentient/conscious [I'd say the same about myself] but because of who we are: genetically, intellectually, personally, experientially, our individual perceptions will be a little different [or a lot] dig? Like, say you and I are plunked into the exact same stress scenario. It's exceedingly unlikely we're going to react the same way. How we feel about it, does it trigger anything in our pasts whether good/bad/indifferent, what we each think/post-rationalize about the circumstance, blardeblar. Those differences between you and I, me and Fragile Bird, between Ran and Relic, they speak to something  -so there's definitely a here, here- because it's not reality that's subjective [it's us] and therein lies at least few proofs of consciousness/sentience to my mind.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Imagine a human child was born blind, deaf, and entirely numb. From birth until the age of 20, 40, after having seen nothing, heard nothing, accompanied by zero tactile experience; with no language or subliminal context, would we determine they're neither sentient or conscious? Probably, because there are no avenues for that mind. 

So at least as we experience it, to be conscious and sentient has requirements. Current AI [IA for Euros] is hardly nascent in these regards except one, and even that's arguable, so... [spreads hands]  

 

---

 

It's late, I'm tired, need to be up in less that 4 hours [really need to stop checking the board after some late binging] so I'm not even going to edit this shit, but I'll leave it with: if sentience/conciousness is a Hard Problem, it's due to us. Because we make everything hard.

But maybe that's part of it too. 

 

edit: I lied, the egregious couldn't be countenanced. but now I'm really going to bed

 

Edited April 26 by JGP

[Rippounet]

I don't think the issue is whether ChatGPT or other AIs are sentient.
The issue is how do we prove we are.

If everything that was once seen as proof of sentience (writing literature/poetry, writing/playing music, drawing/painting... etc) can be mimicked by programs then how do you prove that you are in fact sentient?
Especially if even the confusion/metaphysical angst can be mimicked by a program...

And it might seem trivial, but I really don't think it is. It's the question of "philosophical zombies," or as Nabokov put it, "the temptation of solipsism." If others can't prove to you that they are in fact human, then it is tempting to think you're the only one who truly thinks by himself, and all the others are just zombies/bots or secondary characters in your story.

And again, it might seem trivial, but it really isn't. If you live in a world where you can no longer make the difference between AIs/bots and humans, then you will, by default, assume everyone else is a bot, and treat them as such.
It all becomes one big video game. And in video games, it's not wrong to hurt or kill others.

Or, if you're just on an internet board, there's no reason why you wouldn't start trolling people, because for all you know, they'r enot even real people.