Imagine if people were going to the gym with a robot and having it lift weights for them. Then, they would post about how many reps they did. And then you said “Hey, maybe if people encouraged beginners to lift weights more, then they wouldn’t be using the weight-lifting robot!”
There’s a lot more going on here. The people using AI don’t even understand what the assignment is.
You’re comparing apples and oranges a bit here. Sure, using a robot to lift weights at the gym is analogous to using AI to create art, if your goal is to get better at being an artist.
But if you’re a person with no painting or drawing skills who uses AI as a way to express your ideas visually, it would be a little more akin to being a shitty machinist who uses Sketchup and a 3D printer to manifest their mechanical ideas in meatspace.
99% of AI “art” is absolutely a cringey slopfest, but I’m not going to lie and pretend I can’t relate at all to people who use it as a tool to supplement their own practical deficiencies. Whether art should be more about the output or the process is a whole other philosophical debate…
But if you’re a person with no painting or drawing skills who uses AI as a way to express your ideas visually, it would be a little more akin to being a shitty machinist who uses Sketchup and a 3D printer to manifest their mechanical ideas in meatspace.
It’s akin to getting somebody else to do it for you. Map out the workflow of hiring an artist to produce art for you. Then, map out the workflow of using an LLM to produce it for you. It’s the same workflow.
You’re not wrong. But the exact same point could be made about mapping the workflow of 3D printing a custom part to having a machinist prototype it for you.
In both cases, you tell the machine what you want, and it executes it more or less faithfully depending on how well you describe the thing. There is a direct parallel to the 3D printed “art” and copy/paste gizmos slopping up marketplaces–but we rightfully don’t claim that the affordability and accessibility of 3D printers is a problem.
IMO you need to work to become an artist, seeing alone is a skill you need to work on for example, so no newbie will be helped with prompting AI images, how on earth could they?
Imagine if people were going to the gym with a robot and having it lift weights for them. Then, they would post about how many reps they did. And then you said “Hey, maybe if people encouraged beginners to lift weights more, then they wouldn’t be using the weight-lifting robot!”
There’s a lot more going on here. The people using AI don’t even understand what the assignment is.
You’re comparing apples and oranges a bit here. Sure, using a robot to lift weights at the gym is analogous to using AI to create art, if your goal is to get better at being an artist.
But if you’re a person with no painting or drawing skills who uses AI as a way to express your ideas visually, it would be a little more akin to being a shitty machinist who uses Sketchup and a 3D printer to manifest their mechanical ideas in meatspace.
99% of AI “art” is absolutely a cringey slopfest, but I’m not going to lie and pretend I can’t relate at all to people who use it as a tool to supplement their own practical deficiencies. Whether art should be more about the output or the process is a whole other philosophical debate…
It’s akin to getting somebody else to do it for you. Map out the workflow of hiring an artist to produce art for you. Then, map out the workflow of using an LLM to produce it for you. It’s the same workflow.
You’re not wrong. But the exact same point could be made about mapping the workflow of 3D printing a custom part to having a machinist prototype it for you.
In both cases, you tell the machine what you want, and it executes it more or less faithfully depending on how well you describe the thing. There is a direct parallel to the 3D printed “art” and copy/paste gizmos slopping up marketplaces–but we rightfully don’t claim that the affordability and accessibility of 3D printers is a problem.
IMO you need to work to become an artist, seeing alone is a skill you need to work on for example, so no newbie will be helped with prompting AI images, how on earth could they?
That philosophical debate doesn’t matter here, because with AI both the process and the output are worse than useless