Frankly, it’s an absurd question. Has Polygon obtained consent from all of the artists for the works used by its own human artists as inspiration or reference? Of course not. To claim that any use of an image to train or influence a human user is stealing is to warp the definition of the word beyond any recognition. Copyright doesn’t give you exclusive ownership over broad thematic elements of your work because, if it did, there’d be no such thing as an art trend.
Then what’s the studio having its name dragged through the mud for? For using a computer to speed up development? Is that a standard that Polygon wants to live up to as well?
Totally agree, but where the line is, I think, is that companies want free lunch: they want to leverage a mind-like thing (either a human brain or a trained AI) that has internalized a ton off content that it can use to generate new content from, but they don’t ever want to pay them or treat them like a living being.
If these AI models ever become advanced enough that people actually consider them to be alive or conscious or something, suddenly the tables will turn, and companies will be fighting against their ethical treatment. It will basically be another, much more philosophically difficult, slavery debate, and we all know which side the corporations will be on.
Or maybe it’s simply a false equivalence we all need to accept. Maybe creativity can exist independent from a conscious brain, or maybe it’s just a vulnerability in human consciousness to look at these stochastic arrangements of data and say “that looks inspired”.
Either way, in 300 years our progenitors will look back at us and think, “wow, I can’t believe they thought that was ok. Clearly it was just a different time.”
they want to leverage a mind-like thing (either a human brain or a trained AI) that has internalized a ton off content that it can use to generate new content from, but they don’t ever want to pay them or treat them like a living being.
That’s anybody, really. Everything you’ve ever accomplished has depended upon the insights and knowledge of countless other people who never saw a dime from you for it. That’s part of living in a society and it’s a crucial part of how it advances.
Or maybe it’s simply a false equivalence we all need to accept. Maybe creativity can exist independent from a conscious brain, or maybe it’s just a vulnerability in human consciousness to look at these stochastic arrangements of data and say “that looks inspired”.
I think that most of the value we get from creativity isn’t from the mechanics of creating something. And I think that by removing the mechanical barrier, we unlock that value much more widely across humanity. Art is a form of communication. Will we ever feel the same connection when that communication comes wholesale from an AI? I don’t know. But we’re certainly not there yet.
That’s anybody, really. Everything you’ve ever accomplished has depended upon the insights and knowledge of countless other people who never saw a dime from you for it. That’s part of living in a society and it’s a crucial part of how it advances.
Yes, that is why I phrased it as I did.
I agree that art is a form of communication, but it’s also a source of inspiration regardless of the artist’s intent. A person can derive meaning that the artist never intended. So I wouldn’t say art is totally a subset of communication.
most of the value we get from creativity isn’t from the mechanics of creating something
This part I would disagree with. I think 99.999% of all art is created solely for the creator’s benefit. The other 0.00001% of art is hanging on display in museums, etc. In the case of creating music, the playing of the instrument is very important to the fulfillment of most musicians. And learning the mechanics of painting, or sculpting, etc., is where I think most of the value of most art comes from. The mechanism of creating art IS the act of communication; it’s channeling thoughts and feelings into something tangible. You likely had an art class in school, not because they wanted you to create something you could sell, or to learn a skill that was going to pay the bills, but because the act of creating art is fulfilling to the creator.
I think this is part of why Sand Mandalas are destroyed after they are finished being created. It’s not the existence of the piece that is important, it was the creation of it.
A bit of a quibble, but I think it’s a stretch to say that current-gen AI is mind-like. I’m of the opinion that, given the way current AI works, there isn’t any “creativity” in how midjourney/etc. generates images. Though you could make a solid argument for a detailed prompt being creative, or for a functional/algorithmic AI being a creative tool of the coder, in neither case would I say that the source of the creativity is the computer.
Then again, legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans, but I think other animal species are currently capable of creativity/art, in the sense of “do they do actions for purposes other than survival or reproduction.”
Absolutely. Just yesterday I tried asking stable diffusion to draw me “An elephant and a monkey dance while two cheetahs drink punch. The elephant and monkey look very happy. The cheetahs look bored.”
It drew me two elephants with monkey hair and two cheetahs. No punch, no dance.
If what you ask is somewhere in the bank of images it will draw it. But if what you ask is a situation the AI has never encountered before in any image, it will fail to invent it.
If all artists used AI we would be stuck on a loop of content that is not novel. Years from now we would stop seeing amazing incredible art. There would be no evolution at all in the styles.
I am glad that there are artists who continue to draw without AI even if it must be hard for them.
Yeah, the thing with neural nets is they’re neuron-like. Saying they’re mind-like is like trying to say your visual or auditory cortices have consciousness. Intelligence, sure; but that’s a low bar. Single-celled organisms have cognitions about the environment. So do plants. They’re both intelligent, in the same way that a lot of the low level machinery in your brain is intelligent, the same way that neuron-like software and hardware is intelligent.
Just another example of hierarchies embedded in capitalism. Artists have no rights, humanities are disdained; but big businesses that treat people as “resources” and “consumers” are privileged.
Can you think of a better term? I tried to clarify by saying, “thing that has internalized a ton of content that it can use to generate new content from”, but there’s not a succinct term for that. I would not call an LLM a mind, but I would say minds do this observe patterns->distill information->generate new patterns thing very well. So “mind-like” is all I could come up with.
legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans
That would be part of the ethical dilemma we will need to solve, which corporations will be on a very predictable side of. Our laws were written assuming that only humans were capable of creativity and consciousness (however linked, or not, the two might be).
Humans and computers see and understand artwork completely differently. If you tasked both a human and a computer to look at a painting for 10 milliseconds and asked them to recreate it from memory, how accurate would their reproductions be? It is completely wrong and very misleading to equate human learning with machine learning. They are completely different processes.
Frankly, it’s an absurd question. Has Polygon obtained consent from all of the artists for the works used by its own human artists as inspiration or reference? Of course not. To claim that any use of an image to train or influence a human user is stealing is to warp the definition of the word beyond any recognition. Copyright doesn’t give you exclusive ownership over broad thematic elements of your work because, if it did, there’d be no such thing as an art trend.
Then what’s the studio having its name dragged through the mud for? For using a computer to speed up development? Is that a standard that Polygon wants to live up to as well?
Totally agree, but where the line is, I think, is that companies want free lunch: they want to leverage a mind-like thing (either a human brain or a trained AI) that has internalized a ton off content that it can use to generate new content from, but they don’t ever want to pay them or treat them like a living being.
If these AI models ever become advanced enough that people actually consider them to be alive or conscious or something, suddenly the tables will turn, and companies will be fighting against their ethical treatment. It will basically be another, much more philosophically difficult, slavery debate, and we all know which side the corporations will be on.
Or maybe it’s simply a false equivalence we all need to accept. Maybe creativity can exist independent from a conscious brain, or maybe it’s just a vulnerability in human consciousness to look at these stochastic arrangements of data and say “that looks inspired”.
Either way, in 300 years our progenitors will look back at us and think, “wow, I can’t believe they thought that was ok. Clearly it was just a different time.”
That’s anybody, really. Everything you’ve ever accomplished has depended upon the insights and knowledge of countless other people who never saw a dime from you for it. That’s part of living in a society and it’s a crucial part of how it advances.
I think that most of the value we get from creativity isn’t from the mechanics of creating something. And I think that by removing the mechanical barrier, we unlock that value much more widely across humanity. Art is a form of communication. Will we ever feel the same connection when that communication comes wholesale from an AI? I don’t know. But we’re certainly not there yet.
Yes, that is why I phrased it as I did.
I agree that art is a form of communication, but it’s also a source of inspiration regardless of the artist’s intent. A person can derive meaning that the artist never intended. So I wouldn’t say art is totally a subset of communication.
This part I would disagree with. I think 99.999% of all art is created solely for the creator’s benefit. The other 0.00001% of art is hanging on display in museums, etc. In the case of creating music, the playing of the instrument is very important to the fulfillment of most musicians. And learning the mechanics of painting, or sculpting, etc., is where I think most of the value of most art comes from. The mechanism of creating art IS the act of communication; it’s channeling thoughts and feelings into something tangible. You likely had an art class in school, not because they wanted you to create something you could sell, or to learn a skill that was going to pay the bills, but because the act of creating art is fulfilling to the creator.
I think this is part of why Sand Mandalas are destroyed after they are finished being created. It’s not the existence of the piece that is important, it was the creation of it.
A bit of a quibble, but I think it’s a stretch to say that current-gen AI is mind-like. I’m of the opinion that, given the way current AI works, there isn’t any “creativity” in how midjourney/etc. generates images. Though you could make a solid argument for a detailed prompt being creative, or for a functional/algorithmic AI being a creative tool of the coder, in neither case would I say that the source of the creativity is the computer.
Then again, legal definitions would only allow creativity to come from humans, but I think other animal species are currently capable of creativity/art, in the sense of “do they do actions for purposes other than survival or reproduction.”
Absolutely. Just yesterday I tried asking stable diffusion to draw me “An elephant and a monkey dance while two cheetahs drink punch. The elephant and monkey look very happy. The cheetahs look bored.”
It drew me two elephants with monkey hair and two cheetahs. No punch, no dance.
If what you ask is somewhere in the bank of images it will draw it. But if what you ask is a situation the AI has never encountered before in any image, it will fail to invent it.
If all artists used AI we would be stuck on a loop of content that is not novel. Years from now we would stop seeing amazing incredible art. There would be no evolution at all in the styles.
I am glad that there are artists who continue to draw without AI even if it must be hard for them.
Yeah, the thing with neural nets is they’re neuron-like. Saying they’re mind-like is like trying to say your visual or auditory cortices have consciousness. Intelligence, sure; but that’s a low bar. Single-celled organisms have cognitions about the environment. So do plants. They’re both intelligent, in the same way that a lot of the low level machinery in your brain is intelligent, the same way that neuron-like software and hardware is intelligent.
Just another example of hierarchies embedded in capitalism. Artists have no rights, humanities are disdained; but big businesses that treat people as “resources” and “consumers” are privileged.
Absolutely. The problem isn’t the technology, it’s how it’s incorporated into capitalism.
Can you think of a better term? I tried to clarify by saying, “thing that has internalized a ton of content that it can use to generate new content from”, but there’s not a succinct term for that. I would not call an LLM a mind, but I would say minds do this observe patterns->distill information->generate new patterns thing very well. So “mind-like” is all I could come up with.
That would be part of the ethical dilemma we will need to solve, which corporations will be on a very predictable side of. Our laws were written assuming that only humans were capable of creativity and consciousness (however linked, or not, the two might be).
Humans and computers see and understand artwork completely differently. If you tasked both a human and a computer to look at a painting for 10 milliseconds and asked them to recreate it from memory, how accurate would their reproductions be? It is completely wrong and very misleading to equate human learning with machine learning. They are completely different processes.