RPGs are many things to many people. I like to be in a land of pure imagination. Other folks it’s like, if you don’t have painted minis, a grid, and terrain, why bother?
It’s why session zero to set expectations and make sure everyone is on board to play the same thing is so critical.
+5
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
Wait how did we get from "cool way to get character portraits" to "way to illustrate an entire campaign," a thing I've... Never seen?
Like, from even pro-level DnD campaigns?
Aside from I guess The Adventure Zone who literally hired artists to turn a campaign into a graphic novel, an entirely different medium????
You could also like, use existing paid tools to do this, like Heroforge or Eldritch Foundry, and not support the AI aspect, if you wanted to custom make every single NPC in a campaign, I guess???
Or you could do what I have done before and use head-shots of character actors as found on IMDB.
Putting the DM on the spot by asking out-of-nowhere what the name of the tavernkeeper is is like half the fun
Having a whole illustrated encyclopedia to just flip through seems boring as hell
See this is why I like Forged in the Dark games as a DM. Because then turnabout is fair play and I can ask the players what a characters name is, or how their character knows the person they just saw is a secret member of the cult of fire. Oh, and what are the three main vows of that cult again, player?
I think it's telling that we've already got concrete, current abuses of this tech [journalism outlets outsourcing article illustrations (that suck) from AI programs; that state fair douche; troll/bot farms employing AI-generated portraits to lend fake accounts unearned appearances of legitimacy], and benefits that are either slight or ENTIRELY hypothetical (and also frequently sound bad, but that is a personal judgment on my end)
Edit: I think looking for silver-linings in still-developing bad shit, instead of looking for means of avoiding/resisting the bad shit, is depressingly defeatist. Real "at least in global warming I'll get to wear shorts more often" vibes
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
One of the tools folks use in approaching & evaluating ethical dilemmas is a review of harm. Who gets harmed and to what degree, in direct contrast to the benefit paid out in opposition.
I bring this up because I keep seeing remarks that AI-generated art will be a boon for the TTRPG community. They'll be able to receive character portraits and RPG-focused art without the traditional barriers of commissioning a piece from an actual artist.
And that boon? That is being directly weighed against artists being pushed out of those day-to-day professional jobs that put bread in their hands.
The argument being presented is that a minority group within the United States (TTRPG players) should be gifted the luxury of no-barrier art in exchange for artists losing a stable avenue of their professional income.
Does that seem equitable? Does that seem fair?
Because in my eyes that doesn't read as worth it. And as a member of that minority group, who has been playing TTRPGs for twenty-two years, let me proudly say that the dice hurlin' nerd-lingers do not need this if the trade off is artists losing a stable avenue of professional income. My hobby is not worth that trade-off.
Ok, but don't limit it to just TTRPG players. Anyone who has ever wanted to create a visual for their vision will have easier access to doing so, with a lowered barrier to entry. If this results in financial harm to artists, the fault isn't with the automation, but with our failure to have adequate social protections in place. And new jobs will be created for both people who professionally support AI Art (software devs, testers, hardware suppliers, etc) as well as for those who develop the skill of working with AI Art generators.
You wanted to storyboard a comic book idea, but can't draw or afford to hire an artist? Well now you have an option. It won't get you a final comic book, yet, but it can help block things in.
What realistic alternative do you think could slow down/stop AI Art at this point?
I think it's telling that we've already got concrete, current abuses of this tech [journalism outlets outsourcing article illustrations (that suck) from AI programs; that state fair douche; troll/bot farms employing AI-generated portraits to lend fake accounts unearned appearances of legitimacy], and benefits that are either slight or ENTIRELY hypothetical (and also frequently sound bad, but that is a personal judgment on my end)
Yeah. I don’t think this is an amazing use of Weak AI. There are uses out their like faster vaccine development or more efficient distribution of scarce resources, but this ain’t it imo. Mostly seems like a tool for churning out corporate art for the most part.
I think there may be some neat uses for Weak AI and art in the future. For say, animation for example, maybe something where you can draw 1/4 or 1/10 as many key frames and have an AI fill in the rest for animation without underpaid animation farms, or maybe something like that DBZ fan animation project would not have taken so long to create. Stuff like that. Lowering the cost and staff size for animation could open up animation to more folks.
Of course, it’s also not the worst use for weak AI that I have heard either, I think using it to tell police where to go and what to do, or using it to make legal decisions still are near the top of my “this is a bad idea” lists.
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
*jerk-off motion*
tired: idiocracy was right
wired: wall-e was a prophecy
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
*jerk-off motion*
Just one of the many perks of solitude
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
Did I miss the boat on something here? Am I supposed to be fearing people more these days?
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
Did I miss the boat on something here? Am I supposed to be fearing people more these days?
I didn’t get that memo I guess.
Lemme tell you about this cool documentary called Death Stranding
One of the tools folks use in approaching & evaluating ethical dilemmas is a review of harm. Who gets harmed and to what degree, in direct contrast to the benefit paid out in opposition.
I bring this up because I keep seeing remarks that AI-generated art will be a boon for the TTRPG community. They'll be able to receive character portraits and RPG-focused art without the traditional barriers of commissioning a piece from an actual artist.
And that boon? That is being directly weighed against artists being pushed out of those day-to-day professional jobs that put bread in their hands.
The argument being presented is that a minority group within the United States (TTRPG players) should be gifted the luxury of no-barrier art in exchange for artists losing a stable avenue of their professional income.
Does that seem equitable? Does that seem fair?
Because in my eyes that doesn't read as worth it. And as a member of that minority group, who has been playing TTRPGs for twenty-two years, let me proudly say that the dice hurlin' nerd-lingers do not need this if the trade off is artists losing a stable avenue of professional income. My hobby is not worth that trade-off.
Ok, but don't limit it to just TTRPG players. Anyone who has ever wanted to create a visual for their vision will have easier access to doing so, with a lowered barrier to entry. If this results in financial harm to artists, the fault isn't with the automation, but with our failure to have adequate social protections in place. And new jobs will be created for both people who professionally support AI Art (software devs, testers, hardware suppliers, etc) as well as for those who develop the skill of working with AI Art generators.
You wanted to storyboard a comic book idea, but can't draw or afford to hire an artist? Well now you have an option. It won't get you a final comic book, yet, but it can help block things in.
What realistic alternative do you think could slow down/stop AI Art at this point?
If you want a rough draft of a comic you can do it with stick figures before paying somebody to help you with it, but sometimes you have to pay somebody when you want a job done. Or you train to do it yourself.
One of the tools folks use in approaching & evaluating ethical dilemmas is a review of harm. Who gets harmed and to what degree, in direct contrast to the benefit paid out in opposition.
I bring this up because I keep seeing remarks that AI-generated art will be a boon for the TTRPG community. They'll be able to receive character portraits and RPG-focused art without the traditional barriers of commissioning a piece from an actual artist.
And that boon? That is being directly weighed against artists being pushed out of those day-to-day professional jobs that put bread in their hands.
The argument being presented is that a minority group within the United States (TTRPG players) should be gifted the luxury of no-barrier art in exchange for artists losing a stable avenue of their professional income.
Does that seem equitable? Does that seem fair?
Because in my eyes that doesn't read as worth it. And as a member of that minority group, who has been playing TTRPGs for twenty-two years, let me proudly say that the dice hurlin' nerd-lingers do not need this if the trade off is artists losing a stable avenue of professional income. My hobby is not worth that trade-off.
Ok, but don't limit it to just TTRPG players. Anyone who has ever wanted to create a visual for their vision will have easier access to doing so, with a lowered barrier to entry. If this results in financial harm to artists, the fault isn't with the automation, but with our failure to have adequate social protections in place. And new jobs will be created for both people who professionally support AI Art (software devs, testers, hardware suppliers, etc) as well as for those who develop the skill of working with AI Art generators.
You wanted to storyboard a comic book idea, but can't draw or afford to hire an artist? Well now you have an option. It won't get you a final comic book, yet, but it can help block things in.
What realistic alternative do you think could slow down/stop AI Art at this point?
The idea that AI generated art is somehow going to remove barriers is just ... What. No it's really not going to remove barriers
Time, money, social connections to people able to produce the quality of work these things can, these are all barriers that this stuff is gonna remove
Every RPG campaign is gonna get to have really nice customized illustrations for every character portrait and location, for example
Ofc the bulk of what these things are gonna be used for is probably stuff like newspapers no longer paying for illustrations so y'know
Those are barriers to "getting shit cheap and fast," not barriers to creation
I think I get the distinction you are making, but what I'm saying is that these things will eg allow people to generate a bunch of images to go with their D&D session next week, images that would otherwise take either a large amount of money or time
The idea that AI generated art is somehow going to remove barriers is just ... What. No it's really not going to remove barriers
Time, money, social connections to people able to produce the quality of work these things can, these are all barriers that this stuff is gonna remove
Every RPG campaign is gonna get to have really nice customized illustrations for every character portrait and location, for example
Ofc the bulk of what these things are gonna be used for is probably stuff like newspapers no longer paying for illustrations so y'know
It is pretty easy to learn to draw a quick sketch of your character or locations. It's not going to look like a professional drew it for you, but it's going to show the character you want. If you don't want to spend money on a drawing of your character you can just find a drawing of a character like yours and say they look like that.
I mean yes the point I'm making is that people are gonna get to have really sweet artwork without spending time or money
I'm not saying that this makes the existence of these things a net good or anything like that, just that people are gonna get some joy out of them
Yes, because the machine took art work from working artists and then makes
One of the tools folks use in approaching & evaluating ethical dilemmas is a review of harm. Who gets harmed and to what degree, in direct contrast to the benefit paid out in opposition.
I bring this up because I keep seeing remarks that AI-generated art will be a boon for the TTRPG community. They'll be able to receive character portraits and RPG-focused art without the traditional barriers of commissioning a piece from an actual artist.
And that boon? That is being directly weighed against artists being pushed out of those day-to-day professional jobs that put bread in their hands.
The argument being presented is that a minority group within the United States (TTRPG players) should be gifted the luxury of no-barrier art in exchange for artists losing a stable avenue of their professional income.
Does that seem equitable? Does that seem fair?
Because in my eyes that doesn't read as worth it. And as a member of that minority group, who has been playing TTRPGs for twenty-two years, let me proudly say that the dice hurlin' nerd-lingers do not need this if the trade off is artists losing a stable avenue of professional income. My hobby is not worth that trade-off.
Ok, but don't limit it to just TTRPG players. Anyone who has ever wanted to create a visual for their vision will have easier access to doing so, with a lowered barrier to entry. If this results in financial harm to artists, the fault isn't with the automation, but with our failure to have adequate social protections in place. And new jobs will be created for both people who professionally support AI Art (software devs, testers, hardware suppliers, etc) as well as for those who develop the skill of working with AI Art generators.
You wanted to storyboard a comic book idea, but can't draw or afford to hire an artist? Well now you have an option. It won't get you a final comic book, yet, but it can help block things in.
What realistic alternative do you think could slow down/stop AI Art at this point?
If you want a rough draft of a comic you can do it with stick figures before paying somebody to help you with it, but sometimes you have to pay somebody when you want a job done. Or you train to do it yourself.
You're also presumably... pitching to make the comic? With a comics artist? Who you presumably want to be able to take your textual suggestions for characters and make into art?
Like it should be a test that they can work with your scripting to... make the comic, right?
I think this dnd discussion has made me realize what will secure the victory of AI: isolation. As we fear other people more and more, we will retreat further into the embrace of technology.
Did I miss the boat on something here? Am I supposed to be fearing people more these days?
I didn’t get that memo I guess.
Don't worry about it.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
So, just to follow up the the removing barriers to artists creating, here's stuff that would make creating for me more accessible as a disabled artist:
Money. (Art supplies)
Better access to mental health resources so I can sort out the brain crap that gets in the way
An Easel (I can draw with my right hand sitting down, but I learned to draw from my shoulder with my left arm, so it's hard to do sitting down)
A house I actually own instead of renting, so i can have a dedicated art room to put the easel in
Money (therapy)
Money (batteries for my tens kit to manage my chronic pain)
Money (various books, non fiction and fiction to build a reference and inspiration library)
Money (so I don't have to get a job and can spend my limited energy and resources on creating instead of surviving)
Things that won't help me make art:
Stealing other artists work! Which, to be clear, is what ai art would be doing.
These days most of my artistic output is done via writing because there's way less barriers to writing for me, and I'm lucky enough to be someone who can both write and draw. (I should actually make a thread here in the writing forum for my messages in a bottle series)
I will mail someone the amazing self-portrait I did, on the condition that they post a self-portrait of themselves pondering how to procure pencils, and are willing to mail it to the person after them who will produce and post their own self-portrait, etc.
I will mail someone the amazing self-portrait I did, on the condition that they post a self-portrait of themselves pondering how to procure pencils, and are willing to mail it to the person after them who will produce and post their own self-portrait, etc.
You know, a sort of art exchange ring-thing
I used to hang out on a website called EnterVoid - it was a comic battle website, where artists would have a character, make comics about fighting each other's character and then folks would vote on the winner
Anyway, one of the traditions was people would get a sketch book, and they'd fill half of it - every other page would be left blank. Then you'd ship that to your buddy, and they'd send you their one... And then you'd fill in the empty pages using their stuff as inspiration and ship it back
Sounds like current AI art programs are stealing existing art from artist in order to make their pictures. Is this accurate? *Because if so then those AI are plain bad. There should be laws and shit to stop it.
*Well, the people behind them are because AIs are just tools.
Sounds like current AI art programs are stealing existing art from artist in order to make their pictures. Is this accurate? *Because if so then those AI are plain bad. There should be laws and shit to stop it.
*Well, the people behind them are because AIs are just tools.
My impression is they're basically scraping massive amounts of stuff with no real consideration of whether or not the artists involved want to. There's already been a lot of these Ais having to be taught to not duplicate the artists signatures, and artists finding that their work has been used to train the AI, despite never having given permission to do so
As i keep saying, i've little to no objection to people training AI off their own output, or work that has been released under Creative Commons or similar "You're free to reuse this as you see fit". At that point the "Ai generated art is just a tool" argument is actually true.
But also again, that's not what we're seeing, and just because there's the not bad use case of a piece of tech, doesn't mean the bad use cases stop existing, or aren't the dominant kind.
Sounds like current AI art programs are stealing existing art from artist in order to make their pictures. Is this accurate? *Because if so then those AI are plain bad. There should be laws and shit to stop it.
*Well, the people behind them are because AIs are just tools.
They seem to be scraping via bulk search tools like Google Image Search, which means they are getting art from artists without approval from the artist, yeah.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Arguing that using an AI to generate art is an assault on the ineffable qualities of humanity as Poorochondriac did is a much broader, more aggressive position than "AI should only be able to train on art with consent". These are two extremely different cases: one is that AI art is bad for society and even imperils the virtues that make us human, the other is that scraping art without consent is bad even if the art is only used as part of a vast aggregate database.
I think more people are receptive to the latter, smaller-scale argument. But I also think the smaller-scale argument, if it won the day and changed how AI art trains the machine, would do little or nothing to protect artists from the economic impact of automation.
The idea that AI generated art is somehow going to remove barriers is just ... What. No it's really not going to remove barriers
Also, actually i wanna follow this up further, because the whole idea of AI generated art helping disabled artists is real fucking squirrely.
I would never look at anything I made with such a generator as being "my art". Because it wouldn't be - it'd be the blended remains of hundreds of other artists. It wouldn't have any of my processes, my happy little accidents (Bob Ross knew what he was on about), my style or efforts or how i think about the world and creativity in it. Because you cant capture any of that in a sentence you gave an AI, and the AI wouldnt understand even if you could.
I think this is one of the fundamental disconnects we're seeing in this thread and elsewhere: a lot of us artist types want to do art because we want to do art. The process of creating is as important as the final result. Hell, i'd call myself firmly in the sketch artist area - i love the creation process a ton, i kinda hate trying to actually "Finish" a piece. Give me sketchy evocative shit to do and concepts to explore, none of this trying to hang it in a gallery
Like talk to any digital artist who's established and you'll find they have whole libraries of custom tweaked brushes and other little tools and weird quiggly things that suits their workflow
(Also, if you folks do want me to share my writing, just yell or react or something. The other thing artists need is massive quantities of Validation, which I'm sure @Poorochondriac would never agree on, being clearly a perfect being =P)
Learning how to create art isn't easy. Among other things, it involves developing coordination and muscle memory. And this guy has done it with his mouth! That's fucking amazing!
I've watched him work in person a few times. He's a fucking legend.
(Also, if you folks do want me to share my writing, just yell or react or something. The other thing artists need is massive quantities of Validation, which I'm sure @Poorochondriac would never agree on, being clearly a perfect being =P)
haha love this point! I do wonder how much motivation I'd have to paint and animate if I wasn't sharing it with an audience that then validated my effort.
Or in the beginning, dreaming of one day receiving praise.
So, just to follow up the the removing barriers to artists creating, here's stuff that would make creating for me more accessible as a disabled artist:
Money. (Art supplies)
Better access to mental health resources so I can sort out the brain crap that gets in the way
An Easel (I can draw with my right hand sitting down, but I learned to draw from my shoulder with my left arm, so it's hard to do sitting down)
A house I actually own instead of renting, so i can have a dedicated art room to put the easel in
Money (therapy)
Money (batteries for my tens kit to manage my chronic pain)
Money (various books, non fiction and fiction to build a reference and inspiration library)
Money (so I don't have to get a job and can spend my limited energy and resources on creating instead of surviving)
Things that won't help me make art:
Stealing other artists work! Which, to be clear, is what ai art would be doing.
These days most of my artistic output is done via writing because there's way less barriers to writing for me, and I'm lucky enough to be someone who can both write and draw. (I should actually make a thread here in the writing forum for my messages in a bottle series)
But again, the root conflict here is not between artists and ai art programs, it's between labor and technology. And the solutions to this have to be societal, and not specific to just a single topic. Otherwise you're creating a carve out so that artists are given privileged status. Which I think is patently unfair to society as a whole. If we had preferably a UBI but at least a GI bill for citizens without requiring military or governmental service, then artists would have other avenues to retrain if displaced by ai art, including into a different field of art to something completely unrelated to their previous works.
I am really surprised that the apparent need for a UBI isn't a popular concept here.
There is a subset of people that want to express themselves via visual media but do not have the physical capability to use modalities other than text.
I mean, we can develop visual gesture brushes, but that is niche technology that exists as custom made for those who can afford it - most assistive devices that are covered by insurance or otherwise available are designed for communication and efficient interface, which means a keyboard or voice recognition.
I've got a conference coming up so I'll do some fact finding.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I am really surprised that the apparent need for a UBI isn't a popular concept here.
Have you read any of my posts dude? At all? I'm super fucking on board with a UBI. I've also spent time, repeatedly, going over why just allowing AI art to happen without push back is going to harm the chances of a UBI. And again, WE STILL DONT HAVE UBI. Which is quite the sticking point for a UBI will solve things!
There are some real characters in the AI space. I don’t know if this is true of the art fair fellow, but there are definitely people in the AI space that basically think “as the single cell organism lead to the multi-cell organism, the true purpose of mankind is to give birth to strong AI and retire from the scene”
Which is, you know, totally bonkers to me. And also the weak AI we have currently is such a far cry from anything approaching a strong AI that the idea is currently laughable, but there are some real doomsday cult folks out and about.
This kind of singularity cult nonsense is very frustrating because it generally comes from people who have no grounding in philosophy, but also actively look at philosophy with contempt, including philosophy of technology and philosophy of science. So they make major conceptual and procedural errors when engaging in these thought experiments about future AIs and simulations and ethical imperatives, and then they go on to work at or build companies that operate on these principles and lobby politicians with tech money
Have you ever had a conversation with someone who thinks Roko's Basilisk is real? It's absolutely surreal. There are people cutting deals with politicians who believe in this garbage.
What’s Roko’s Basilisk?
I want to expand on previous answers:
Roko's Basilisk posits a future AI of immense power and intelligence. Specifically, it is capable of fully simulating the brain and body of a human being, including a full virtual consciousness.
It posits that such a simulated person would have absolutely no way of knowing that they are a simulation.
It posits that an AI of such power would be motivated to punish the people who refused, in the past, to help it come into being, perhaps out of sheer malevolence.
It would therefore simulate all human beings, based on reconstruction from copious records and data, and run them through their lives to see if they ever had the idea that such an AI could exist and refused to help it. If they so refused, the AI would consign them to eternal simulated torture.
This then means that KNOWING about the Basilisk is dangerous — because you don't have any way of knowing if you're one of those test simulations, and if you are, even hearing the concept would doom you unless you immediately worked toward the Basilisk's creation. It's a cognitohazard that condemns you to technoperdition.
As a result, the other possible motivation for this convoluted torture is that the Basilisk knows all this and needs to enforce the mechanism that traps humans who understand it into working toward its genesis, retroactively. In fact, a benevolent AI would do the same to hasten its own existence because it will save more lives the earlier it exists
Obviously this is tremendously stupid and confused, down to the causal, temporal level, or else I have doomed anyone who read this to cyberdamnation.
Arguing that using an AI to generate art is an assault on the ineffable qualities of humanity as Poorochondriac did is a much broader, more aggressive position than "AI should only be able to train on art with consent". These are two extremely different cases: one is that AI art is bad for society and even imperils the virtues that make us human, the other is that scraping art without consent is bad even if the art is only used as part of a vast aggregate database.
I think more people are receptive to the latter, smaller-scale argument. But I also think the smaller-scale argument, if it won the day and changed how AI art trains the machine, would do little or nothing to protect artists from the economic impact of automation.
My opinion is indeed broad and aggressive - I find AI Art generators inherently disrespectful to artists. Even the (I think worth reminding, currently-imaginary) open-source-art-only version. I think "a machine could do your job" is an insult. I feel no need to treat an insult with respect, or dignify it, or be kind to it.
The (again, imaginary) open-source-only models, they are less harmful. If one is going to exist, I'd prefer it be that. People who support those are at least attempting to mitigate harm. While I'd prefer harm be avoided entirely, a position of mitigation is, technically, better than nothing
But I'm not gonna back down from a position of "this shit sucks stem to stern and I don't care if my expression of that fact is uncomfortable for people"
+19
Zonugal(He/Him) The Holiday ArmadilloI'm Santa's representative for all the southern states. And Mexico!Registered Userregular
I am really surprised that the apparent need for a UBI isn't a popular concept here.
It isn't that we don't support UBI.
We simply acknowledge that its being presented in these discussions as an unrealistic cure-all, in an attempt to allow for AI-generated art.
Its incredibly insufferable because it comes across as saying, "this societal issue won't be a problem when we bring together all seven of the Dragon Balls."
There are some real characters in the AI space. I don’t know if this is true of the art fair fellow, but there are definitely people in the AI space that basically think “as the single cell organism lead to the multi-cell organism, the true purpose of mankind is to give birth to strong AI and retire from the scene”
Which is, you know, totally bonkers to me. And also the weak AI we have currently is such a far cry from anything approaching a strong AI that the idea is currently laughable, but there are some real doomsday cult folks out and about.
This kind of singularity cult nonsense is very frustrating because it generally comes from people who have no grounding in philosophy, but also actively look at philosophy with contempt, including philosophy of technology and philosophy of science. So they make major conceptual and procedural errors when engaging in these thought experiments about future AIs and simulations and ethical imperatives, and then they go on to work at or build companies that operate on these principles and lobby politicians with tech money
Have you ever had a conversation with someone who thinks Roko's Basilisk is real? It's absolutely surreal. There are people cutting deals with politicians who believe in this garbage.
What’s Roko’s Basilisk?
I want to expand on previous answers:
Roko's Basilisk posits a future AI of immense power and intelligence. Specifically, it is capable of fully simulating the brain and body of a human being, including a full virtual consciousness.
It posits that such a simulated person would have absolutely no way of knowing that they are a simulation.
It posits that an AI of such power would be motivated to punish the people who refused, in the past, to help it come into being, perhaps out of sheer malevolence.
It would therefore simulate all human beings, based on reconstruction from copious records and data, and run them through their lives to see if they ever had the idea that such an AI could exist and refused to help it. If they so refused, the AI would consign them to eternal simulated torture.
This then means that KNOWING about the Basilisk is dangerous — because you don't have any way of knowing if you're one of those test simulations, and if you are, even hearing the concept would doom you unless you immediately worked toward the Basilisk's creation. It's a cognitohazard that condemns you to technoperdition.
As a result, the other possible motivation for this convoluted torture is that the Basilisk knows all this and needs to enforce the mechanism that traps humans who understand it into working toward its genesis, retroactively. In fact, a benevolent AI would do the same to hasten its own existence because it will save more lives the earlier it exists
Obviously this is tremendously stupid and confused, down to the causal, temporal level, or else I have doomed anyone who read this to cyberdamnation.
Why…. Do I care if it creates a simulation based on me that it tortures forever? I feel like I am missing a step here.
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
Posts
It’s why session zero to set expectations and make sure everyone is on board to play the same thing is so critical.
Or you could do what I have done before and use head-shots of character actors as found on IMDB.
See this is why I like Forged in the Dark games as a DM. Because then turnabout is fair play and I can ask the players what a characters name is, or how their character knows the person they just saw is a secret member of the cult of fire. Oh, and what are the three main vows of that cult again, player?
So good.
Edit: I think looking for silver-linings in still-developing bad shit, instead of looking for means of avoiding/resisting the bad shit, is depressingly defeatist. Real "at least in global warming I'll get to wear shorts more often" vibes
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Ok, but don't limit it to just TTRPG players. Anyone who has ever wanted to create a visual for their vision will have easier access to doing so, with a lowered barrier to entry. If this results in financial harm to artists, the fault isn't with the automation, but with our failure to have adequate social protections in place. And new jobs will be created for both people who professionally support AI Art (software devs, testers, hardware suppliers, etc) as well as for those who develop the skill of working with AI Art generators.
You wanted to storyboard a comic book idea, but can't draw or afford to hire an artist? Well now you have an option. It won't get you a final comic book, yet, but it can help block things in.
What realistic alternative do you think could slow down/stop AI Art at this point?
Yeah. I don’t think this is an amazing use of Weak AI. There are uses out their like faster vaccine development or more efficient distribution of scarce resources, but this ain’t it imo. Mostly seems like a tool for churning out corporate art for the most part.
I think there may be some neat uses for Weak AI and art in the future. For say, animation for example, maybe something where you can draw 1/4 or 1/10 as many key frames and have an AI fill in the rest for animation without underpaid animation farms, or maybe something like that DBZ fan animation project would not have taken so long to create. Stuff like that. Lowering the cost and staff size for animation could open up animation to more folks.
Of course, it’s also not the worst use for weak AI that I have heard either, I think using it to tell police where to go and what to do, or using it to make legal decisions still are near the top of my “this is a bad idea” lists.
*jerk-off motion*
http://www.audioentropy.com/
I already have an AI therapist.
Her name is Eliza and she really understands me.
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Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Did I miss the boat on something here? Am I supposed to be fearing people more these days?
I didn’t get that memo I guess.
Lemme tell you about this cool documentary called Death Stranding
http://www.audioentropy.com/
If you want a rough draft of a comic you can do it with stick figures before paying somebody to help you with it, but sometimes you have to pay somebody when you want a job done. Or you train to do it yourself.
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Unions
You're also presumably... pitching to make the comic? With a comics artist? Who you presumably want to be able to take your textual suggestions for characters and make into art?
Like it should be a test that they can work with your scripting to... make the comic, right?
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Don't worry about it.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Money. (Art supplies)
Better access to mental health resources so I can sort out the brain crap that gets in the way
An Easel (I can draw with my right hand sitting down, but I learned to draw from my shoulder with my left arm, so it's hard to do sitting down)
A house I actually own instead of renting, so i can have a dedicated art room to put the easel in
Money (therapy)
Money (batteries for my tens kit to manage my chronic pain)
Money (various books, non fiction and fiction to build a reference and inspiration library)
Money (so I don't have to get a job and can spend my limited energy and resources on creating instead of surviving)
Things that won't help me make art:
Stealing other artists work! Which, to be clear, is what ai art would be doing.
These days most of my artistic output is done via writing because there's way less barriers to writing for me, and I'm lucky enough to be someone who can both write and draw. (I should actually make a thread here in the writing forum for my messages in a bottle series)
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You know, a sort of art exchange ring-thing
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I used to hang out on a website called EnterVoid - it was a comic battle website, where artists would have a character, make comics about fighting each other's character and then folks would vote on the winner
Anyway, one of the traditions was people would get a sketch book, and they'd fill half of it - every other page would be left blank. Then you'd ship that to your buddy, and they'd send you their one... And then you'd fill in the empty pages using their stuff as inspiration and ship it back
Just a really cool communal art thing
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*Well, the people behind them are because AIs are just tools.
My impression is they're basically scraping massive amounts of stuff with no real consideration of whether or not the artists involved want to. There's already been a lot of these Ais having to be taught to not duplicate the artists signatures, and artists finding that their work has been used to train the AI, despite never having given permission to do so
As i keep saying, i've little to no objection to people training AI off their own output, or work that has been released under Creative Commons or similar "You're free to reuse this as you see fit". At that point the "Ai generated art is just a tool" argument is actually true.
But also again, that's not what we're seeing, and just because there's the not bad use case of a piece of tech, doesn't mean the bad use cases stop existing, or aren't the dominant kind.
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They seem to be scraping via bulk search tools like Google Image Search, which means they are getting art from artists without approval from the artist, yeah.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I think more people are receptive to the latter, smaller-scale argument. But I also think the smaller-scale argument, if it won the day and changed how AI art trains the machine, would do little or nothing to protect artists from the economic impact of automation.
Also, actually i wanna follow this up further, because the whole idea of AI generated art helping disabled artists is real fucking squirrely.
I would never look at anything I made with such a generator as being "my art". Because it wouldn't be - it'd be the blended remains of hundreds of other artists. It wouldn't have any of my processes, my happy little accidents (Bob Ross knew what he was on about), my style or efforts or how i think about the world and creativity in it. Because you cant capture any of that in a sentence you gave an AI, and the AI wouldnt understand even if you could.
I think this is one of the fundamental disconnects we're seeing in this thread and elsewhere: a lot of us artist types want to do art because we want to do art. The process of creating is as important as the final result. Hell, i'd call myself firmly in the sketch artist area - i love the creation process a ton, i kinda hate trying to actually "Finish" a piece. Give me sketchy evocative shit to do and concepts to explore, none of this trying to hang it in a gallery
Like talk to any digital artist who's established and you'll find they have whole libraries of custom tweaked brushes and other little tools and weird quiggly things that suits their workflow
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Learning how to create art isn't easy. Among other things, it involves developing coordination and muscle memory. And this guy has done it with his mouth! That's fucking amazing!
I've watched him work in person a few times. He's a fucking legend.
haha love this point! I do wonder how much motivation I'd have to paint and animate if I wasn't sharing it with an audience that then validated my effort.
Or in the beginning, dreaming of one day receiving praise.
But again, the root conflict here is not between artists and ai art programs, it's between labor and technology. And the solutions to this have to be societal, and not specific to just a single topic. Otherwise you're creating a carve out so that artists are given privileged status. Which I think is patently unfair to society as a whole. If we had preferably a UBI but at least a GI bill for citizens without requiring military or governmental service, then artists would have other avenues to retrain if displaced by ai art, including into a different field of art to something completely unrelated to their previous works.
I am really surprised that the apparent need for a UBI isn't a popular concept here.
I mean, we can develop visual gesture brushes, but that is niche technology that exists as custom made for those who can afford it - most assistive devices that are covered by insurance or otherwise available are designed for communication and efficient interface, which means a keyboard or voice recognition.
I've got a conference coming up so I'll do some fact finding.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Have you read any of my posts dude? At all? I'm super fucking on board with a UBI. I've also spent time, repeatedly, going over why just allowing AI art to happen without push back is going to harm the chances of a UBI. And again, WE STILL DONT HAVE UBI. Which is quite the sticking point for a UBI will solve things!
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I want to expand on previous answers:
Roko's Basilisk posits a future AI of immense power and intelligence. Specifically, it is capable of fully simulating the brain and body of a human being, including a full virtual consciousness.
It posits that such a simulated person would have absolutely no way of knowing that they are a simulation.
It posits that an AI of such power would be motivated to punish the people who refused, in the past, to help it come into being, perhaps out of sheer malevolence.
It would therefore simulate all human beings, based on reconstruction from copious records and data, and run them through their lives to see if they ever had the idea that such an AI could exist and refused to help it. If they so refused, the AI would consign them to eternal simulated torture.
This then means that KNOWING about the Basilisk is dangerous — because you don't have any way of knowing if you're one of those test simulations, and if you are, even hearing the concept would doom you unless you immediately worked toward the Basilisk's creation. It's a cognitohazard that condemns you to technoperdition.
As a result, the other possible motivation for this convoluted torture is that the Basilisk knows all this and needs to enforce the mechanism that traps humans who understand it into working toward its genesis, retroactively. In fact, a benevolent AI would do the same to hasten its own existence because it will save more lives the earlier it exists
Obviously this is tremendously stupid and confused, down to the causal, temporal level, or else I have doomed anyone who read this to cyberdamnation.
My opinion is indeed broad and aggressive - I find AI Art generators inherently disrespectful to artists. Even the (I think worth reminding, currently-imaginary) open-source-art-only version. I think "a machine could do your job" is an insult. I feel no need to treat an insult with respect, or dignify it, or be kind to it.
The (again, imaginary) open-source-only models, they are less harmful. If one is going to exist, I'd prefer it be that. People who support those are at least attempting to mitigate harm. While I'd prefer harm be avoided entirely, a position of mitigation is, technically, better than nothing
But I'm not gonna back down from a position of "this shit sucks stem to stern and I don't care if my expression of that fact is uncomfortable for people"
It isn't that we don't support UBI.
We simply acknowledge that its being presented in these discussions as an unrealistic cure-all, in an attempt to allow for AI-generated art.
Its incredibly insufferable because it comes across as saying, "this societal issue won't be a problem when we bring together all seven of the Dragon Balls."
Why…. Do I care if it creates a simulation based on me that it tortures forever? I feel like I am missing a step here.
I should introduce you to Dr. Sbaitso, he's great
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