I honestly think that there might be some truth to that.
If you look at Boston Dynamics, these are some of the very best roboticists on the planet, and it's taken decades to get robots that can walk almost as well as humans. I don't think it's incompetence on Boston Dynamics' end, I think it turns out that a lot of the stuff that's trivial and instinctual for us is actually ridiculously expensive to try and do on a computer.
Washing dishes might not be the best example because dishwashers do already exist, and they work pretty well, but having a robot with anywhere near the same level of flexibility and performance as a human hand? I'm not going to say it's impossible obviously, but it seems ridiculously complex.
Probably not, but the difference is that we can generate art at the "pixel" level instead of the "hand" level. Not really a way to do that for most other stuff.
I mean a literal PAINTing is made with paint, obviously.
If you were to try and create a robot hand that painted as well as humans that would probably comparably difficult to any other task involving a human hand. I was saying that we solve the AI art problem by skipping straight to an end state (pixels) instead of the same mechanism a human might.
Why? Plotters do this all the time. It's not hard to imagine something like LLaVA hooked up to a plotter generating whatever the LLM imagines on a paper medium at a stroke level.
Paintings have texture and are three-dimensional, which I'd imagine you'd have realized having seen them in real life.
>You’re being kind of an ass, which is fine but I just felt it should be acknowledged.
Very generous coming from the poster that's saying "we can make a thing like the other thing, assuming it's not actually like the other thing in any way that isn't superficial." It's like you're shooting for a gold medal in the obtuse olympics.
The obtuse thing is you were talking about washing dishes and boston dynamics robots and then when I asked about painting, your response was that doesn't matter because of pixel art.
>Sorry, just a bit confused, isn’t focusing on an artifact of the painting, namely the three dimensionality of it, a superficial detail?
Artifact of the painting? Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about.
I'm not sure how the texture or three-dimensionality of a painting is 'superficial.' Besides the fact that it literally isn't, it's an actual facet of the painting that is objectively there, it just seems to reflect a lack of understanding on your part. If painting is all superficial anyway, what does it matter that a certain element of it is as well?
I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state and then you acted like a douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand.
>I said we have a workaround with art because we can skip to an end state
I guess you still don't see the irony of this?
> douchebag and said it’s not the same and that if I had seen true paintings I would understand
I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others.
It's readily apparent if you view paintings that they are not "flat."
If you want to be happy with your pixel art approximation, don't let me stop you. It was you who suggested it was an end run around an actual problem and all I did was point out how that's apparently not true.
> Do you appreciate painting at all? It's fine if you don't, but that's kinda the whole issue in this thread. People who don't appreciating things making value judgments about the things they don't fundamentally care about.
I don't really think you're "asking" a question here, just kind of asserting that you don't think I appreciate paintings. That's fine, albeit a pretty dishonest way to speak, and perhaps my feeble brain isn't smart enough to appreciate paintings in the same way that your brain does. I have been to the Met a bunch of times and looked at the classic paintings and enjoy them, I guess not to your satisfaction though.
I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important.
> I'm not sure how the texture or three-dimensionality of a painting is 'superficial.' Besides the fact that it literally isn't, it's an actual facet of the painting that is objectively there
I think we're using slightly different definitions here.
If someone told me that he only liked his girlfriend because she has DDD breasts, I might say he's really focusing on a superficial detail. The woman having DDD breasts might still be objectively true, but I would still call that focusing on the superficial.
Modern art generation programs can actually generate things like brush strokes and whatnot, but obviously it will be flat when represented on a monitor, so sure if you feel like you can see the depth associated with that then more power to you.
> I didn't say anything about "true" paintings, and your own insecurity is your own issue you need not project as accusations coming from others.
Again, you're speaking dishonestly. You didn't say the word "true", but you did suggest that if I had seen a painting in a museum then I'd appreciate them better. Specifically, you said "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"
Now obviously I don't have the same giant brain that you do, so maybe I can't "appreciate" your writing style correctly because I "have a gold medal in being obtuse", but that sure seems like passive aggressive dismissal to a dumbass like me.
>I don't think I know what the word "appreciate" means, and I suspect what it really means in this conversation is going to be the details that you think are important.
Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic elements to it and one would expect that anyone experienced with wine tasting would have some understanding of those basic elements. Here in painting, the texture of a painting is a basic element of what a painting is.
>If someone told me that he only liked his girlfriend because she has DDD breasts, I might say he's really focusing on a superficial detail. The woman having DDD breasts might still be objectively true, but I would still call that focusing on the superficial.
This isn't an issue of the definition of "superficiality" but what it means to focus. You saying it'd be superficial to emphasize body parts a certain ways. Not that body parts are inherently superficial.
>Modern art generation programs can actually generate things like brush strokes and whatnot, but obviously it will be flat when represented on a monitor, so sure if you feel like you can see the depth associated with that then more power to you.
Yeah, and they'll be flat when printed too. But if you go to a museum and look at some old or new paintings, which is why I asked if you did that, you will immediately see that paintings aren't even remotely flat.
>Again, you're speaking dishonestly. You didn't say the word "true", but you did suggest that if I had seen a painting in a museum then I'd appreciate them better. Specifically, you said "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"
No, I suggested that if you had been to a museum you'd have observed basic facets of paintings. You keep putting this value judgment into it (ironic considering your accusations against me) that I'm not. Sure, I might be acting like a bit of a jerk but that's because I found your "Oh yeah, sure I was talking about robots but that doesn't matter with painting because of pixel art" which is fundamentally disingenuous as we were discussing the capabilities of robots' "hands".
> "I'm curious, have you been to a museum that has good old paintings?"
Good old paintings are dense with layers of texture and paint that come off the canvas, and it'd be readily observable to anyone seeing them in person, regardless of whether they had taste or a "giant brain."
> Now obviously I don't have the same giant brain that you do,
> Like I said before, your own insecurities are your own issues and not something you need to repeatedly insist I'm poking at. When I say appreciate, my point is that it's a basic element of art and art theory. It's like in wine tasting, there are basic elements to it and one would expect that anyone experienced with wine tasting would have some understanding of those basic elements. Here in painting, the texture of a painting is a basic element of what a painting is.
This doesn't actually dispute what I said. You're making an assertion that I'm not appreciating a "basic" element of art. You keep saying I'm exposing some insecurity, but this is exactly what some holier-than-thou sanctimonious asswipe who thinks that they truly "get it" would say.
> You saying it'd be superficial to emphasize body parts a certain ways. Not that body parts are inherently superficial.
I'm arguing that emphasizing the 3-dimensionality of this is a superficial decision. I'd argue less-superficial stuff would be something like "what is the intended meaning of this painting".
> "Oh yeah, sure I was talking about robots but that doesn't matter with painting because of pixel art"
I didn't really say that. I said, and this is I believe the third or fourth time I've repeated myself, with AI art I was suggesting we have a workaround to avoid a lot of robotics by fast-forwarding to an end state. You call it "pixel art" to dismiss it and that's fine but it's also pretty stupid.
As I said in my first response (which you very dismissively responded to because fundamentally you don't have much to go on outside of being self-righteous about your superior "appreciation" of art apparently) if you want to be literal of course a PAINTing would require paint. And if the texture of it is really important to you then fan-fucking-tastic, Stable Diffusion and DALL-E isn't going to replace that any time soon. You win I guess? I never disputed this fact.
I used the term "painting" in a less literal sense, and it's actually not in any way weird for me to do so. There are digital art programs like "Corel Painter" and "Paint Shop Pro" and "PaintStorm", which as far as I am aware do not actually involve any real paint. They use the computer display as a metaphor for the canvas, and these things give some facsimile of something like "painting".
You're then of course free to say "well real artist appreciators like me don't consider that painting", and that's fine, but I'd like to point out that you are on Hacker News, so a person using the term "Painting" to mean something like CorelPainter isn't really weird at all, and getting annoyed by that really comes off as pedantic.
> Good old paintings are dense with layers of texture and paint that come off the canvas, and it'd be readily observable to anyone seeing them in person,
I've seen plenty of paintings in person. Clearly it's not as important to me as it is to you. That's fine.
ETA:
Wait, how exactly is it "fundamentally disingenuous" to say we have a workaround for AI art that doesn't involve hands? It's not "disingenuous", I didn't really know what specific aspect of painting you were fucking talking about, so I mentioned we can work at a pixel level. I didn't know that you were going to be a fucking pedantic douche and just say LOL THAT'S NOT PAINTING AND YOU'RE INSECURE AHAHAHHA FUCK OFF!
I think this line of reasoning is really bizarre, as if there's this straight-line path of progress, and then we stop the second it starts doing shit that we consider "fun".
Who is to say that "washing dishes" (to use your example) is a less complicated problem than art, at least in regards to robotics and the like?
it's not a matter of what's complicated, it's a matter of what it replaces. the quote isn't reflecting on what's easiest to solve, it's reflecting on the impact that it has on culture as a whole.
a tangible impact of the current generation of AI tools is they displace and drown out human creations in a flood of throwaway, meaningless garbage. this is amplifying the ongoing conversion of art into "content" that's interacted with in extremely superficial and thoughtless ways.
just because something _can_ be automated doesn't mean it _should_ be. we actively lose something when human creativity is replaced with algorithmically generated content because human creativity is as much a reflection of the state of the art as it is a reflection of the inner life of the person who engages in it. it's a way to learn about one another.
in the context of the broader discussion of "does greater efficiency everywhere actually have any benefit beyond increasing profits," the type of thing being made efficient matters. we don't need more efficient poetry, and the promise of automation and AI should be that it allows us to shrug off things that aren't fulfilling - washing dishes, cleaning the house, so on - and focus on things that are fulfilling and meaningful.
the net impact of these technologies has largely been to devalue or eliminate human beings working in creative roles, people whose work has already largely been devalued and minimized.
it's totally akin to "where's my flying car?" nobody actually cares about the flying car, the point is that as technology marches on, things seem to universally get worse and it's often unclear who the new development is benefitting.
I'll agree that AI has flooded the internet with low-effort slop. I feel like I can make a pretty strong argument that this isn't new, low-effort SEO spam has been a thing for almost as long as search engines have, but it does seem like ChatGPT (and its ilk) has brought that to 11.
> just because something _can_ be automated doesn't mean it _should_ be.
I guess agree to disagree on that. If a machine can do something better that a human, then the machine should do it so that the human can focus on stuff that machines can't do as easily.
> I guess agree to disagree on that. If a machine can do something better that a human, then the machine should do it so that the human can focus on stuff that machines can't do as easily
Machines exist for the pleasure of humans, not the other way around
This isn't some kind of "division of labour, we both have strengths and weaknesses and we should leverage them to fill pur roles best" situation
Machines are tools for humans to use. Humans should not care about "doing the things the machines aren't good at". All that matters is can machines do something that humans do not want to do. If they can't, they aren't a useful machine
Replacing humans in areas that humans are passionate about, forcing humans to compete with machines, is frankly inhuman
> Replacing humans in areas that humans are passionate about, forcing humans to compete with machines, is frankly inhuman
I don't think it's going to "force" anyone out. We didn't suddenly fire all the artists the second that the camera was invented. We didn't stop paying for live concerts the moment that recorded music was available to purchase.
> Machines exist for the pleasure of humans, not the other way around
I am not good at art. I find it pleasurable to be able to generate a picture in a few seconds that I can use for stuff. It allows me to focus on other things that I find fun instead of opening up CorelPainter and spending hours on something that won't look as good as the AI stuff.
I could of course hire someone to do the art for me, but that cost money that I don't really have. The anti-AI people who just parrot "JUST PAY AN ARTIST LOLOLOL!" are dumb if they think that most people just have cash lying around to spend on random bits of custom art.
Last time I checked, I am human. The AI art manages to allow me to enjoy things I wouldn't have been able to easily achieve before.
> as if there's this straight-line path of progress
I think your rebuttal is really bizarre. OP is simply saying what they want AI to do.
> Who is to say that "washing dishes" (to use your example) is a less complicated problem than art
I think dish washing is a bad example, because we have dishwashers. But until the market brings AI and robotic solutions to market at an affordable cost that actually fulfill most people's needs, it will continue to be a net drain on the average person.
You don't get to tell people what they want or need.
I guess what I was getting at (and I'll acknowledge that I didn't word it as well as I should), is something along the lines of: "what if automating art is a necessary step if we want to automate the boring stuff?"
I think you are probably right. But what is really frustrating about this is the lack of alignment on what people want vs what industries need.
We talk so much about how capitalism is built around people's needs, but that betrays another reality, which is that people only get what capitalism produces.
If we were a planned economy we could skip right to an android in everyone's homes. But we wouldn't even have the tech for the android with a planned economy. So instead, we have to feed capitalism what it needs so it can innovate. Which sometimes is just a net loss for everyone in the meantime.
I need an AI that can do the dishes so I can do art.
- Someone else on twitter.