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0 pointsForceBru1mo ago0 comments

Person: finds the article beautifully written. The comments: "but it's AI, so you aren't allowed to think that it's beautifully written!!!!"

This doesn't follow. For instance, there are some pictures that I know are AI-generated, yet they're still beautiful to me. Nothing jaw-dropping, just very nice. Being AI-generated doesn't automatically mean being not worthy, especially when it comes to art. I understand, this is kind of insulting to human artists, writers, etc: we thought only the human soul and Nature could produce "the beautiful", but apparently not.

Which is not surprising, because LLMs are specifically trained to please their audience. Of course they can produce uhhhh "content" that people will find beautiful, that's not even necessarily a "bad" thing.

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8 comments · 4 top-level

rogual1mo ago· 2 in thread

Are the comments really saying that? That the person isn't allowed to think it's beautiful?

ForceBruOP1mo ago

Not this exactly, but IMO they're saying that since the text is presumably AI-generated, it kind of can't be beautiful? Or shouldn't feel beautiful? Or it's beautiful, but... it's AI-generated and thus "bad", not the right kind of beautiful. Or "it's beautiful, but that's because it's AI-generated", which is again not good for some reason.

rogual1mo ago

I agree, I think that's a good summary of the comments.

It's more like: Person: Finds the article beautifully written. Comments: Doesn't find the article beautifully written.

Now Comments looks less like an unreasonable control freak and more like they're just someone who has different ideas about what's beautiful.

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago· 2 in thread

> but it's AI, so you aren't allowed to think that it's beautifully written

Um...I didn't actually say that.

I just said that the reason it is beautifully-written, was probably (not 100% sure) that it might be because it was LLM-written. There was definitely some human input (like not having read the Witches books, but that was strangely-written, so it may have been they read, but didn't like), but there's a better-than-even chance that the prose was written by an LLM.

I'm not really into that "you're not allowed to feel..." thing. I sincerely apologize if that's how it came across. That wasn't how I meant it to be taken.

ForceBruOP1mo ago

Right, I'm just hyperbolizing to capture the overall vibe of "you may think it's beautiful, but it's AI, so it's actually not good" of three comments here. Didn't mean to put words in your mouth, of course.

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago

Well, it's a bit sad, to me, but I know a lot of profoundly uncreative people, who do work that they think is beautiful, but is not, actually beautiful.

For those folks, having an LLM do the expression may actually raise the bar for most people. An LLM can probably take a good idea, from someone with mediocre talent, and create something nice.

I think that electric guitars (then synthesizers), had a similar reception. As we now know quite well, they actually enabled some truly marvelous creativity, once folks understood how to use them properly.

I was an artist, and used airbrushes. My airbrush work was treated that way by "real" artists. I used to pooh-pooh 3D modelling, until I spent some time, interacting with folks that did it, and I now have a lot more respect for their work.

simonw1mo ago

The best explanation I've seen for why AI art doesn't deliver like human art is this from Ted Chiang:

> Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. […] to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.

> If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-i...

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago

I already addressed this, in other comments, but I think that this is a wonderful opportunity to remind folks of this marvelous audio short[0]. It's The Gap, by Ira Glass.

I feel as if LLMs can help more people to cross it, but the inevitable result, will be that a lot of subpar stuff will also be made. It raises the signal level, but also raises the noise floor.

[0] https://vimeo.com/85040589

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8 comments · 4 top-level

rogual1mo ago· 2 in thread

Are the comments really saying that? That the person isn't allowed to think it's beautiful?

ForceBruOP1mo ago

rogual1mo ago

I agree, I think that's a good summary of the comments.

It's more like: Person: Finds the article beautifully written. Comments: Doesn't find the article beautifully written.

Now Comments looks less like an unreasonable control freak and more like they're just someone who has different ideas about what's beautiful.

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago· 2 in thread

> but it's AI, so you aren't allowed to think that it's beautifully written

Um...I didn't actually say that.

I'm not really into that "you're not allowed to feel..." thing. I sincerely apologize if that's how it came across. That wasn't how I meant it to be taken.

ForceBruOP1mo ago

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago

Well, it's a bit sad, to me, but I know a lot of profoundly uncreative people, who do work that they think is beautiful, but is not, actually beautiful.

For those folks, having an LLM do the expression may actually raise the bar for most people. An LLM can probably take a good idea, from someone with mediocre talent, and create something nice.

simonw1mo ago

The best explanation I've seen for why AI art doesn't deliver like human art is this from Ted Chiang:

> If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-i...

ChrisMarshallNY1mo ago

I already addressed this, in other comments, but I think that this is a wonderful opportunity to remind folks of this marvelous audio short[0]. It's The Gap, by Ira Glass.

I feel as if LLMs can help more people to cross it, but the inevitable result, will be that a lot of subpar stuff will also be made. It raises the signal level, but also raises the noise floor.

[0] https://vimeo.com/85040589

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