iprayiam3
10hr ago
I know. I am saying then the connection you are making to abundance and the cultural malaise makes less sense. AI (not art specifically or even meaningfully. That was not meant to be causal, just exemplar) will increase the meaning deficit as it removes purpose for a lot of people.
iprayiam3
10hr ago
Ok but this is a wholly generalizable dismissal of the ops observation about material malaise within a society of abundance. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily that it’s wrong. But I think those who recognize the ops observation should consider AI abundance making it worse.
Sure there will still be transcendent art. Just like now there’s plenty of meaningful and spiritually fulfilling lives and communities within the culture. I myself have the latter in spades.
But it can be both true that the potential for any individual or subgroup remains and can be found, while the broader culture deteriorates and the ratio worsens
iprayiam3
12hr ago
We're materially better off than ever. We're spiritually dead. We have more freedom than ever. We're trapped in our heads like anxious prisons. We solved hunger, and crippled ourselves with food.
Just wait to see what AI does here, when at best jobs really start getting replaced with UBI.
This is generally my argument against AI art. I’m not moved by the “look at the abundance! Look at what is now possible and accessible at scale!” Genre of argument, like the ones made a few threads down. Because exactly I don’t think they are net positive for any sense of flourishing. It’s a hedonic treadmill. Art thrives under constraint, and the human spirit works similarly.
iprayiam3
2d ago
My biggest disgust here is not about the object level position, but the fact that for the past 2 weeks, MAGA has been pushing all the fiscal irresponsibility of the BBB and slandering any detractor as traitors to the border under a message that this now completely and totally undermines.
None of the argument for raising the debt ceiling or SALT deductions or anything else have any leg to stand on.
iprayiam3
3d ago
Again, the analogy might not be a very good one, but we’re getting hung up on technical comparisons. My analogy was supposed to focus on the social ritual nature of where dividing lines are that focus on discrete moats around the methodology, rather than comparisons of outcome quality.
iprayiam3
3d ago
I can admit that it's not an adequate comparison, but the distinction I'm making is between repurposing existing art (signing a premade card) and outsourcing it to a computer (someone else signs the card for you). I don't think these are directly analagous. I'm not saying they belong in the same category, but the analogy is on the gradient down from personal touch to outsourced sentiment.
I'm not trying to make a generalized defense of lazy album covers. And I fully accept there's an argument as a soldier going on here to mask more utilitarian concern rather than an ontological one. Gun to their head, I'm sure a lot of people criticizing the AI album cover would prefer an interesting AI cover to a lazy repurposed image for a given instance, especially for a 2 bit band. But they are arguing for a moat around actually creative ablum art in general. With the repurposed picture, it can be lazy or unique, but not both.
This is analagous (but not categorically equivalent) to the moat of 'you at least have to sign the Hallmark card yourself'. OBVIOUSLY that's less meaningful than somethign unique and closer in practicality to nothing at all. But the ideosyncratic moat of 'signed card' has social signficiance that defends against a drift into nothing at all.
iprayiam3
3d ago
How would you compare something like content aware fill to inpainting or other AI image techniques?
For the argument of AI, I would not compare based on outcome, or level of effort, because I agree those are somewhat gradients. It is a question of technology used which has clear and unabiguous answers.
As far as I understand it, content aware fill uses ML, but not Generative AI.
So if one is against AI as a general category, then they can make an argument against CAF. Or if they are specifically against Generative AI, they can make an argument for CAF.
My main point is that Unaltered, Digitally altered, CGI, ML, and GenAI are all scrutable categories, not gradients or judgement calls. Now the valance you assign to the categories can be gradient or judgement calls.
But I disagree with the argument that the categories don't discretely exist or we can't to assign valence to them due to equivalency of outcome.
iprayiam3
4d ago
Sure but album cover art is already a Lindy anachronism, and this makes sense to be a place of resistance. Neither albums nor covers really exist anymore. It’s more obligatory ritual than anything else and I think someone faking a ritual is more taboo than someone participating lazily.
It’s like the difference sending a thoughtful thank you note and signing a card and having someone else sign the card for you.
Everyone can agree that the first is superior, but the autist mistakes the second and third for being equivalent.
iprayiam3
4d ago
And the spot that has bugged me for a while now: how much AI/digital assistance is really crossing the arbitrary line you've drawn?
My personal takes aside, how is this an arbitrary or ambiguous line; Whether or not an LLM was employed is pretty black and white.
The argument I keep seeing ends up taking this shape over and over:
AntiAI: LLM different from other tool. LLM bad.
ProAI: LLM not bad. LLM no different from other tools!
Whether or not 'LLM bad', it seems obvious that LLM is qualitatively different from other technology (except perhaps slave labor, but that's a tangent not worth exploring). But what I see most from the ProAI response is not a rebuttal of the leap from different to bad, but of a rebuttal of bad with a denial of different. Whcih I think is the weakest argument for a postive AI position.
no idea what denomination this guy is, but in the Catholic world, prolife, pro-immigration, pro-social justice like healthcare for the poor, anti-Trump is not particularly ideosyncratic. Rather it's extremely common, and a relatively consistent worldview. This probably describes the pope himself, and many priest and bishops in the US.
However, I don't this agree that this maps to 'Red-coded'. I think it's the default left-wing half of Catholicism in America, consistenly votes democrate, and is pretty solidly blue tribe, just not woke.
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