Mastodawn

Eugen Rochko Dec 10, 2023

It’s hard not to say “AI” when everybody else does too, but technically calling it AI is buying into the marketing. There is no intelligence there, and it’s not going to become sentient. It’s just statistics, and the danger they pose is primarily through the false sense of skill or fitness for purpose that people ascribe to them.

Catherine Berry Dec 10, 2023

@Gargron @darylgibson

A college professor of mine back in 1983 said "'AI' is what we call software we don't know how to write yet." I think this neatly captures the problem we have talking about current "AI". In 2000, nobody knew how to write software that would drive cars, write poetry, play grandmaster-level chess, or summarize text, so those were considered to be examples of what AI might accomplish. Now we know how to write systems that do those things, so they are no longer AI.

Magnus Ahltorp Dec 10, 2023

@isomeme @Gargron @darylgibson I agree with most of what you say, but in 2000 we knew how to write software that could play grandmaster-level chess and summarise text. And now we still don’t know how to write software that drives cars or write poetry.

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦Dec 10, 2023

@ahltorp @isomeme @Gargron @darylgibson well, not *good* poetry, anyway. 😉

I weep for humanity that so many people have been impressed with the level of “art” these LLMs and generative art (pixel plagiarism) machines spit out. This is what happens when we fail to properly teach the humanities in school.

Catherine Berry Dec 10, 2023

@KydiaMusic @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson

AIs aren't producing great art (yet), but they're easily outperforming the average human. I've seen a few AI-generated works that were quite compelling. As one of my favorite proverbs puts it, the amazing thing about a dancing bear is not how *well* it dances, but that it dances at all.

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦Dec 10, 2023

@isomeme @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson true, but great art is partly defined by the fact that the average person *can’t* do it. Innovation and originality are often other factors that elevate art to greatness. And of course, meaning, motivation, and inspiration, which require sentience—and the ability to move others to feel something, which requires empathy for both the creator and the receiver.
There are lots of things the average person can’t do as well as a machine, like math calculations.

Catherine Berry Dec 11, 2023

@KydiaMusic @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson

Absolutely. But the number of capabilities that are unique to humans will continue to decrease as AI technology advances. What happens when an AI can write a poem that reduces you to tears with its emotional punch? Pinning our claim to sentience on what computers can't do runs into the same problem as the "God of the Gaps" approach in theology.

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦

@isomeme @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson
IF a computer, completely of its own volition and with no human prompting, can write a poem that reduces me to tears because it moves me emotionally (and not because it’s synthesized plagiarism from human works), I will start lobbying for it to have rights like any sentient being.
I think we’re still a long way off from that tho.

Catherine Berry Dec 11, 2023

@KydiaMusic @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson

Has any human poet in the last 10,000 years not "plagiarized" earlier works?

Cat Lady Kydia Music 🇺🇦Dec 11, 2023

@isomeme @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson
Yes and there are laws against it for a reason.
Why are you putting plagiarized in scare quotes? Because if you’re trying to make the argument that an artist, poet, or musician creates based on all the art they’ve absorbed before and there is nothing new and everything is a remix and AI does the same thing, I’m not buying it. Humans don’t process like machines, and we bring a unique combination of millions of factors to bear on the art we create.

Magnus Ahltorp Dec 11, 2023

@KydiaMusic @isomeme @Gargron @darylgibson Yes. A human creating something of course draws on earlier works, but most importantly draws on being human.

Even if a machine, as unlikely as it is, would sentientially produce a humanly touching work, it would necessarily be fake.

A hypothetical thinking and feeling machine would never know what it feels like to be a human, and thus would have to copy from the human created works to appeal to humans.

Catherine Berry Dec 11, 2023

@ahltorp @KydiaMusic @Gargron @darylgibson

I think it would be fascinating and moving to participate vicariously in the emotional life of a sentient machine.

Catherine Berry Dec 11, 2023

@KydiaMusic @ahltorp @Gargron @darylgibson

If a human artist's works are 80% remixed earlier material, and a machine's works are 100%, is that a difference in kind?

daryl Dec 12, 2023

@KydiaMusic @isomeme @ahltorp @Gargron a machine could paint a consecutive - series - like this?
Wouldn't have compulsiveness, for a start

Catherine Berry Dec 12, 2023

@darylgibson @KydiaMusic @ahltorp @Gargron

I'm a software engineer, and I can assure you that consecutive series and compulsiveness are two things at which computers excel. 🙂 Vide infra.

#Midjourney #AIArt

Magnus Ahltorp Dec 13, 2023

@isomeme @darylgibson @KydiaMusic @Gargron It has nothing to do with “AI”, though.