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Penny Arcade - Comic - Dalliance
Dog
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Registered User, Administrator, Vanilla Staff admin
Penny Arcade - Comic - Dalliance
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Pretty much every other kind of career is more a question of when automation supersedes human effort, than if it will, provided humanity & society survives long enough.
At first I thought it was a typo for Wall-E, the cute recycling robot from Pixar.
Well, it was a good run for human artists, but how can you possibly top that avocado chair?
You're saying it doesn't read literally, and people might have different interpretations of what it means?
I don't think this is a matter of being closed or open minded about it, its a matter of observing history and the world around us. This is not a tool that will be used to benefit or encourage the creative community. I don't think you even have to have a particularly cynical outlook to see how this will hurt small artists and graphic designers. Algorithms that are capable of doing contextual image analysis and replicating the styles of established designers/artists/creatives will basically devalue the work of all but very very few artists in the commercial space.
Sure as a technical exercise its kind of interesting, but when you stop and look at how much money, and who is funding this. Its gets pretty dystopian pretty quick.
We'll look into the job replacement and inevitable AI being trained to mass produce hentai and/or extremist views by someone .... later.
Sometimes Jerry drops lines that are raw as hell, this is one for the list
And also,
(If you're about to reply to this and haven't read the news post, do yourself a favor and do so first.)
https://80.lv/articles/fortnite-uses-unreal-engine-to-procedurally-generate-music-avoid-copyright/
The cherry on top? This was suggested to me by Google News, which uses an algorithm to figure out what articles it thinks I'll like based on knowing too goddamn much about me.
Well, it's only a matter of time before it learns. Somebody is going to feed it the "truths". then... the end.
edit: it should be noted that AI is used a lot to generate in-between frames and in some cases to absolutely butcher make 24 FPS or lower frame rate animation look amazing at 60 FPS, so this isn't entirely new ground.
Automation has that potential in all sectors, just now it's going to hit the artists and creatives hard too. Funny how many people lacked a give a damn when it was hitting Labor, especially in Flyover Country, just wait till it starts hitting Customer Service and Management. Ya'll think they are making chat and analysis bots for funsies?
Agreed, which is why years ago I left the art world and I am now an electromechanical technician who works services imaging systems for art historians and library's.
My statement was a response to someone calling Mike's attitude reactionary. I have long held the opinion that if the world is going to be run by automated systems the last jobs will be the people maintaining them, hence my current career. I can tell you from first hand experience, the engineers creating these systems do not understand the downstream implications of their creations, they are caught up in the joy of solving the problem, creating the next iteration and their bosses jobs are primarily to keeps those blinders firmly in place.
As a software developer who has previously worked as a software support engineer, one of my ethos has been to try and write code in such a way that it can be followed while hungover and/or by someone looking at it months or years down the line at 3 AM. Ideally both at once. This has additional benefits because, as @urahonky once observed, sometimes that hungover and sleep deprived engineer is going to me myself.
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here's a cube with an image of a hedgehog texturewrapped around it.
Well, it was a good run for human artists, but how can you possibly top that Sonic fanart OC, Do Not Steal?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't "sampling all artists" what human creatives do already?
Does public domain enter into Tycho's objections at all?
Powers &8^]
The Resistors just need to feed it impossible images like Giant pregnant Sonic eating Miles 'Tails' Prower while giving birth to a smaller Sonic and lactating blue milk from 6 breasts.
No, what you are missing is "Transformative Use". Art is iterative, what is critical is intentionality, Mike drew on inspiration from artists like Steven Silver, his characters, particularly in the 00's owe a lot to Steven Silvers charcter designs, but his intention is not to replicate silvers work, but to build on a similar aesthetic foundation in the process of creating his own unique style. An algorithm categorically cannot do this.
If we were talking about an art generated by an artificial consciousness this would be a different discussion, AI as it exists now cannot have intention, a concious mind, in my opinion at least, does.
Sampling? No. Inspired by? For sure.
I mean, not all artists. When you listen to Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice, Baby", he definitely sampled (to be generous) "Under Pressure." And he had to compensate them.
Now, I won't claim it's very cut and dried. People have been making fan art and homages forever. You could draw characters in the style of Jack Kirby, and not have to compensate him (as long as it's not his character, at least, the few they let him have).
This has nothing to do with public domain, but the limitations on what is considered a copy.
The wrinkle is that companies can pay for software to just keep aping styles that work on their target audience instead of take a risk on a human artist. So the human artist doesn't have a job, and isn't needed anymore. Worse, art as a whole becomes stagnant.
These people didn't think this shit through. This doesn't just have knock-on effects for an industry, this has knock-on effects for humanity. Granted, someone, somewhere, was eventually going to do this.
"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
While I understand that the short-term costs must be accounted for (corporations, artists, costs of living, etc.), I do feel that in the long-term progress in AI will only be a net positive. Sure there will be rapid change in what the "human spirit" is, but I don't think the difficulty in figuring it out should stop us from exploring the possibilities of AI.
It's also not the first time someone said it's not the first time, yadda yadda.
But anyway, is anyone here crying that it will end society? The only reference in this thread was more about humanity & society surviving in general, not from this specifically. And that's a pretty valid question, considering things we've done to the planet and ourselves, totally apart from a program that can draw avocado chairs.
I think there's a strong argument for it making life suck more, as has so much technology. That isn't the same as saying "all technology bad."
Or having people like employers think that just because they can reach you at all hours that they have full license to abuse that instead of fucking off and letting you have actual downtime from workplace bullshit. Plus now a lot of them come loaded with software that actively listens to anyone around it as a core component of its functions and you can't convince me that isn't getting abused.
Just because a particular tech has made some aspects of life better or easier does not mean it cannot be abused in other ways.
I said that because someone was saying this particular thing has knock-on effects for humanity. End society is an exaggeration on my part.
Guess my point is more that it may make life suckier, but to me at least it's not enough reason to stop expanding the capabilities of AI, especially considering just how much potential it has. We have to manage it carefully and think of the potential effects, sure, but I don't think we (as in we as a species) shouldn't have invented this thing in the first place, or just stop researching AI altogether.
We've never done that for anything, have we?
As an engineer, I can only see more automation of this kind as a good thing.
The problem really lies with the political and economic structures that continue to reward the arbitrary ownership of the means of production, instead of spreading the wealth (which is now generated automatically by the means of production on its own) more evenly among the entire population that requires less and less work to produce it in the first place (and often none of the owner's work at all). Especially when it comes to digital goods, which are infinitely replicable and now self producing, the idea of anybody being rewarded for its creation is going to turn into a "first sin" that will result in decades of legal precedent trying to explain away a logical inconsistency.
But it's not engineering's fault that leadership is so far behind the curve. This is the kind of technology that makes a Star Trek style utopia possible. Or a Shadowrun dystopia. Just depends on whether we pool the wealth or distribute it. Shame we like pools so much...
It's like we have the tools to enter a post scarcity society but they do more harm than good because we cannot entertain the mindset required to actually work within that type of society.
To bring this back to the topic, if you didn't have to work to survive, and people just worked and created for the fulfillment of doing the thing itself, than this crappy AI generated "content" (in addition to the art-by-committee/focus-group-generated art that is essentially also AI generated) wouldn't threaten anyone because people are creating what they want. And that stuff would rise to the top anyway, in the ways that matter, if the main metric for art ceased to be "selling to the most people as quickly as possible".
... and this is exactly the difference between the tech in the field and the engineer in the office. If only we had better users, then our designs would be perfect!
This is exactly the myopia i was referring too. As long as there is someone for the next party to shift the responsibility too, then no one ever has to accept responsibility for the world they have participated in creating. The engineers say, well this is a socio-economic problem, if only the politicians would write better laws and regulations. The politicians say, well I would vote for it, but my constituents don't want that. Their constituents say, I would like a better society, but not if I have to make a sacrifice, what about those rich business men, they can make all the sacrifice... Everyone is responsible, which in practice means no-one is responsible
AI could be a powerful and positive tool to benefit human kind, but the engineers developing these systems need to wake up to externalities they are creating, they need to stop creating tools for the world they want to live in, and start creating tools that make that world. That starts by educating yourselves about how this technology gets applied in the real world today, trying to understand the downs-stream consequences, and building systems to mitigate the negative impacts now. There seriously needs to be a movement for ethical engineering, like yesterday. The attitudes you two are displaying are seriously distressing to those of us who have to live with the consequences of the world you are creating.
This is exactly the point Jerry is trying to make in the post. The Luddites had no issue with technological progress, what they took issue with was the human cost the choices being made by the engineers and factory owners, and politicians of the era resulted in.
Dude, I'm a retail worker with opinions on the internet. I'm not creating any world, and I'm certainly not designing art-bots. And I'm definitely not saying, "carry on making the art-bots while we sort out getting the new world built." The art-bots are being built in service to the blind capitalist machine, just like the You-tube Algorithm farms, just like many of the impersonal machines, both literal and figurative, that dictate the course of our lives without even needing malicious actors at the top pulling the strings. Some people are saying "pause making these machines that will make our lives worse" and they are right. Other people are saying, "you can't stop tech from moving forward" and they are also right. We should pause making these machines until we've gotten the world ready for them. But we also have to get jump started on making the world ready because the machines are coming either way.
I've been a cashier, and I approve of self checkout because cashiering is a garbage job that the world would be better if people didn't have to do it.
I've been a teller, and I approve of ATMs and online banking because it's a more efficient way to do things.
I've worked adjacent to the coal industry and I approve of regulations on that industry that eliminate many jobs, including the job I had, because, well, the whole planet.
I don't approve of art-bots because they don't make the world better. I do approve of automation that gets rids of BS jobs, and don't agree with the mindset that jobs need to exist for their own sake. So yeah, we need to pause development that causes active harm until we get the world ready. And I have no idea how we actually get the world ready. But we have to get the world ready one way or the other, because we can't stop the automation itself from happening.
You are correct, with context I lumped you in on that unfairly. It concerns me that everyone wants to talk about the world we need to be in and theorize on how wonderful that world would be, but never the journey we need to take as a society to get there. we need to stop imagining Utopia, and start imagining the road to exiting this horse shit.
And that's why I call it the Ian Malcolm Problem.
I've been binge watching a lot of economics and finance videos recently and combine that with some information I already know and my take is that a lot of the issues automation creates in the US are cultural. Case in point, in the US if you work more than 40 hours you're viewed as ambitious and dedicated. Apparently in Germany if you work more than the normal work week, you're viewed as inefficient with your time if you need to put in extra hours. Instead of hours worked, the respected aspect is output produced. In that context, automation can be a big public good. If an industry artist or graphic designer could feed their work into Dall-E to output more art for whatever they're working on to meet their work needs for the week and then peace out while still getting their salary, there wouldn't be anywhere near as much worry here.
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