Interesting topic. I feel like it's an uncharacteristically weak argument of yours though, perhaps you just meant to provoke discussion?
Essentially, you're saying:
1) AI capabilities will soon be such that nobody will be able tell the difference between human artistic output and AI generated content
2) but that you don't consider that art because "if there’s nothing behind the pixels I’m looking at, if no one is feeling anything except the consumer, then it’s not art" and "even if an AI can compress the entire feeling of a book into a paragraph, even if it can generate masterpieces and wonders the likes of which I’ve never seen, as long as there are still humans who want to make art, I think their art matters more."
But that second point is purely a subjective view, and one that could be criticized by your own logic "if you can’t tell whether a piece is done by a human or robot, then I’m forced to treat you like those people who say they’re allergic to 5G but can’t tell if the router in the room with them is on." AI generated art is trained on human output, is it not conceivable that the same emotion in the human art is captured in the AI, even if unintentionally? Is there any difference?
If I learned to identically copy a master's piano piece, even though I did not feel the emotion of his recording, who are you to say whether or not what I am producing is art? You wouldn't even be able to tell whether it was me or him playing. AI could easily be the same.
To be honest, I’m not even sure this piece is much of an argument at all. This is just how I personally feel about art, and I describe the only path I can see to preserving meaning in humans creating art in the future
The second point IS a purely subjective view, and it’s the only view I see that art from humans can still be preserved in the era of wonders from your imagination AI. I really DO believe that AI will be able to convey the same emotionality in a piece compared to a human, probably even better than a human, so I agree with both of your final paragraphs in the comment
But I like humans creating art! If humans want to create art there’s value there! Eliezer once said that he doesn’t know whether he’s in a simulation or not, but it MATTERS if he is*. There’s no difference in his conscious experience, but if there’s real humans around him instead of nothing, he cares!
This is the only way I see in preserving value in art in the era of AI. I don’t see another path, and I think pretty much all the other arguments as to why it won’t take over are weak.
*I have some thoughts on this that I might into a post actually. Hm
Re: visiting 100 foreign countries using Google Street View - you do get some of the benefit of travel with something like that (and reading about other people’s travels, watching their travel vlogs, etc.), but there’s still an effable experience of actually physically being in a place and living amongst its people that cannot be replicated through mere distant observation. I’m reminded of the Mary’s Room philosophical thought experiment - you can learn as much as you want about the science of color, but none of it will let you know what it feels like to actually see color.
It also reminded me of Mary’s room! I didn’t mention it because it seemed like a detour, but yeah, Mary gets all the correct answers but there’s no one really communicating.
I don’t see why this doesn’t apply to books as well. There’s a difference between being able to regurgitate facts or a plot summary of a book and having it actually sink into your bones and affect your thought process. “AI can write a book“ is vastly different to “AI can compress all the relevant information into a book AND repackage it into a more distilled form that still retains all the capability of affecting your worldview“.
That second thing feels to me like the singularity: just because you can imagine it doesn’t mean it’s possible. Sitting with books for weeks on end, letting the thoughts roll in your mind and affect how you live, and discussing them with other people are all essential ways of gaining knowledge about those books. You can’t get that from a summary.
I think it depends on your goal. When I played Divinity: Original Sin, I did look up the plot of pre-DOS1 games: while I'm interested in what's happened, I'm not interested enough to suffer through 100 hours of old games that weren't even that good.
But, generally, I read fiction because I enjoy it, and I don't want things I enjoy to be short. I also enjoy skiing, and I wouldn't want to ski for two minutes when I can ski for three hours; I enjoy travelling and I wouldn't want to be in a new place for an hour when I can be there for a week. Getting full experience in real time _is_ the whole point! People enjoy it so much that in addition to reading a book they go online and read thousands of really bad written fanfics on AO3.
Now, if you like to read no more than I like to play old, not particularly good action RPGs, but still want to understand great cultural experience, reading summary is an option. Not reading at all may have other downsides, but I read movie summaries too often to have issues with the general technique.
Yeah, I think this is why book summaries obviously don’t count as reading books, the longer experience with ups and downs kinda IS the thing you’re there for. The caring about characters along the way is the journey, and indeed is more important than the destination
I get your argument, but the thing is, if consumers really do enjoy AI produced art then it seems like if you care about conscious beings, you should want more AI produced art because it doesn’t just reduce the amount of human produced art. It produces new beneficial experiences for the consumer which they would not otherwise have had. Basically, AI is not just replacing humans. They also can produce a lot more art than you would see if this field never saw substantial amounts of automation. So even if you think human made art is better, you should still want AI produced art to take off in a big way.
Also, honestly, I realise you may not agree with this, but I think the importance of art has much more to do with the interests of the thousands of consumers that enjoy an individual piece of art, then it has to do with the one artist who produced it. It’s like with the freedom of speech. Art isn’t mostly about the artist even if their contribution makes it more valuable, it’s more about the people who get to consume it even though a human producer, adds something extra to it. My view is basically that if you have two identical pieces of art, one created by human and one created by an AI, then the human produced one slightly better but realistically, the huge increase in art that AI could cause outweighs any reduction in human produced art.
Interesting topic. I feel like it's an uncharacteristically weak argument of yours though, perhaps you just meant to provoke discussion?
Essentially, you're saying:
1) AI capabilities will soon be such that nobody will be able tell the difference between human artistic output and AI generated content
2) but that you don't consider that art because "if there’s nothing behind the pixels I’m looking at, if no one is feeling anything except the consumer, then it’s not art" and "even if an AI can compress the entire feeling of a book into a paragraph, even if it can generate masterpieces and wonders the likes of which I’ve never seen, as long as there are still humans who want to make art, I think their art matters more."
But that second point is purely a subjective view, and one that could be criticized by your own logic "if you can’t tell whether a piece is done by a human or robot, then I’m forced to treat you like those people who say they’re allergic to 5G but can’t tell if the router in the room with them is on." AI generated art is trained on human output, is it not conceivable that the same emotion in the human art is captured in the AI, even if unintentionally? Is there any difference?
If I learned to identically copy a master's piano piece, even though I did not feel the emotion of his recording, who are you to say whether or not what I am producing is art? You wouldn't even be able to tell whether it was me or him playing. AI could easily be the same.
To be honest, I’m not even sure this piece is much of an argument at all. This is just how I personally feel about art, and I describe the only path I can see to preserving meaning in humans creating art in the future
The second point IS a purely subjective view, and it’s the only view I see that art from humans can still be preserved in the era of wonders from your imagination AI. I really DO believe that AI will be able to convey the same emotionality in a piece compared to a human, probably even better than a human, so I agree with both of your final paragraphs in the comment
But I like humans creating art! If humans want to create art there’s value there! Eliezer once said that he doesn’t know whether he’s in a simulation or not, but it MATTERS if he is*. There’s no difference in his conscious experience, but if there’s real humans around him instead of nothing, he cares!
This is the only way I see in preserving value in art in the era of AI. I don’t see another path, and I think pretty much all the other arguments as to why it won’t take over are weak.
*I have some thoughts on this that I might into a post actually. Hm
Thanks for your thoughts, makes sense
Re: visiting 100 foreign countries using Google Street View - you do get some of the benefit of travel with something like that (and reading about other people’s travels, watching their travel vlogs, etc.), but there’s still an effable experience of actually physically being in a place and living amongst its people that cannot be replicated through mere distant observation. I’m reminded of the Mary’s Room philosophical thought experiment - you can learn as much as you want about the science of color, but none of it will let you know what it feels like to actually see color.
It also reminded me of Mary’s room! I didn’t mention it because it seemed like a detour, but yeah, Mary gets all the correct answers but there’s no one really communicating.
I don’t see why this doesn’t apply to books as well. There’s a difference between being able to regurgitate facts or a plot summary of a book and having it actually sink into your bones and affect your thought process. “AI can write a book“ is vastly different to “AI can compress all the relevant information into a book AND repackage it into a more distilled form that still retains all the capability of affecting your worldview“.
That second thing feels to me like the singularity: just because you can imagine it doesn’t mean it’s possible. Sitting with books for weeks on end, letting the thoughts roll in your mind and affect how you live, and discussing them with other people are all essential ways of gaining knowledge about those books. You can’t get that from a summary.
I agree! It definitely applies to books. Which is why the original parody tweet is so funny.
I think it depends on your goal. When I played Divinity: Original Sin, I did look up the plot of pre-DOS1 games: while I'm interested in what's happened, I'm not interested enough to suffer through 100 hours of old games that weren't even that good.
But, generally, I read fiction because I enjoy it, and I don't want things I enjoy to be short. I also enjoy skiing, and I wouldn't want to ski for two minutes when I can ski for three hours; I enjoy travelling and I wouldn't want to be in a new place for an hour when I can be there for a week. Getting full experience in real time _is_ the whole point! People enjoy it so much that in addition to reading a book they go online and read thousands of really bad written fanfics on AO3.
Now, if you like to read no more than I like to play old, not particularly good action RPGs, but still want to understand great cultural experience, reading summary is an option. Not reading at all may have other downsides, but I read movie summaries too often to have issues with the general technique.
Yeah, I think this is why book summaries obviously don’t count as reading books, the longer experience with ups and downs kinda IS the thing you’re there for. The caring about characters along the way is the journey, and indeed is more important than the destination
I get your argument, but the thing is, if consumers really do enjoy AI produced art then it seems like if you care about conscious beings, you should want more AI produced art because it doesn’t just reduce the amount of human produced art. It produces new beneficial experiences for the consumer which they would not otherwise have had. Basically, AI is not just replacing humans. They also can produce a lot more art than you would see if this field never saw substantial amounts of automation. So even if you think human made art is better, you should still want AI produced art to take off in a big way.
Also, honestly, I realise you may not agree with this, but I think the importance of art has much more to do with the interests of the thousands of consumers that enjoy an individual piece of art, then it has to do with the one artist who produced it. It’s like with the freedom of speech. Art isn’t mostly about the artist even if their contribution makes it more valuable, it’s more about the people who get to consume it even though a human producer, adds something extra to it. My view is basically that if you have two identical pieces of art, one created by human and one created by an AI, then the human produced one slightly better but realistically, the huge increase in art that AI could cause outweighs any reduction in human produced art.