For a while now I've wondered which topic would force me to create a HN account and it turns out it is AI art.
My position is that AI "art" is absolutely a loss and not a gain for humanity. It is unfortunate that so many HN users are output focused on this and believe that AI tool -> output is the equivalent to human creativity -> output. Art is not the same as making a basket or glass. There are aspects to those processes that are painful, time consuming and tedious and therefore worth being automated. When it comes to creativity the process is part of the joy, even the painful aspects.
I use AI constantly for work because there is no joy in me whipping up a script or code snippet for something that isn't intellectually stimulating, in our work saving time is a benefit and automating things allow us to focus on the aspects of the work we enjoy. And the truth is AI will often do my work better than me when given the right context.
When I sit down to write some fiction I do not have the same desire to skip the labour and get an LLM to do the work for me. This would remove the entire point of why I do it. My art, be it better or worse than AI art, is an expression of self. This is not a tool as it is for coding, the endgame here is replacement.
Frankly, I find that most of the people that seem so dismissive of creative people's concerns have never attempted a serious creative project themselves and fail to understand the 'why' of art in the first place. If you do not care about meaning, process, and the millenia-spanning conversation that art is then it makes sense why you do not see this as an issue. If you see music as "pleasing sounds" and have no interest in the expressive side then sure, AI art is for you, but then it's not AI art, it's AI sounds, or AI images. Content is not the same as art.
This post will come across snobbish but I cannot find another way to put it. I want to have an open conversation but frequently reading comments that paint creatives as elitist is frustrating when these concerns are genuine. Art is not something that can be optimised and measured, no matter how hard you try, and removing the human aspect is removing the entire point.
I can't put all my thoughts here and I'll save you all the rest of the rant, but as someone with a deep respect for both programming and art I am confident that they are not equivalent despite many HN users treating them as such.
One day I hope to formulate the argument properly, but for now I'll leave you with this.
I also just created an account to reply to you. I too feel strongly the same - that AI images are not art just because they look like art.
Art is a form of meaning making, thought processing, and an attempt to communicate and compare and comment. It is a language in and of itself. It is about all of the stuff that led to the creation of the thing, and the context of the time and place it was made. Successful art helps the viewer make a connection or gain a perspective they may not have otherwise. It can invoke big questions about deeply philosophical things, and make fun of you for thinking those things are important at the same time.
AI art scrambles all that up, borrowing from here or there without much going on beyond what you directly see. It is often focused entirely on the aesthetic output, which is mostly beside the point.
I feel very strongly about this too. True art is a struggle to bring it into reality - you have to almost expand the space of possibility. It's easy to make derivative work, all the arguments about artists just interpolating other people's work are very weak - some artists do that, but good ones are truly original, even if they steal. It sounds a bit grandiose, but art can cut through the human experience to reveal some kind of truth. AI cannot do that because it does not understand the world or what it is to be human.
I think AI art is a complete misnomer and there is no net benefit of being able to generate images so easily, it just means there is more noise in the world.
I think AI art is a complete misnomer and there is no net benefit of being able to generate images so easily, it just means there is more noise in the world
Agreed. It will be difficult to not sound grandiose or pretentious when discussing this subject because the whole discussion becomes a question of what art is in the first place, but oversaturating it with soulless noise will benefit nobody.
I encourage you to consider why you would put programming in a separate category from "art". You seem just as output focused about code as those who motivated you to create a HN account.
Baskets, glass, code, photography, painting, they can all be art. Or a commodity. Or both.
This is a fair response but I do address it when I say we can automate the tedious and boilerplate parts of programming so we can focus on the aspects we enjoy i.e. the big picture stuff that intellectually stimulates us and allows us to be artistic when writing software.
An analogy would be that I would appreciate a tool that could mix paints and give me any hue to paint with on demand, but I don't want that tool to take the paintbrush away from me completely.
My position is that AI "art" is absolutely a loss and not a gain for humanity. It is unfortunate that so many HN users are output focused on this and believe that AI tool -> output is the equivalent to human creativity -> output. Art is not the same as making a basket or glass. There are aspects to those processes that are painful, time consuming and tedious and therefore worth being automated. When it comes to creativity the process is part of the joy, even the painful aspects.
I use AI constantly for work because there is no joy in me whipping up a script or code snippet for something that isn't intellectually stimulating, in our work saving time is a benefit and automating things allow us to focus on the aspects of the work we enjoy. And the truth is AI will often do my work better than me when given the right context.
When I sit down to write some fiction I do not have the same desire to skip the labour and get an LLM to do the work for me. This would remove the entire point of why I do it. My art, be it better or worse than AI art, is an expression of self. This is not a tool as it is for coding, the endgame here is replacement.
Frankly, I find that most of the people that seem so dismissive of creative people's concerns have never attempted a serious creative project themselves and fail to understand the 'why' of art in the first place. If you do not care about meaning, process, and the millenia-spanning conversation that art is then it makes sense why you do not see this as an issue. If you see music as "pleasing sounds" and have no interest in the expressive side then sure, AI art is for you, but then it's not AI art, it's AI sounds, or AI images. Content is not the same as art.
This post will come across snobbish but I cannot find another way to put it. I want to have an open conversation but frequently reading comments that paint creatives as elitist is frustrating when these concerns are genuine. Art is not something that can be optimised and measured, no matter how hard you try, and removing the human aspect is removing the entire point.
I can't put all my thoughts here and I'll save you all the rest of the rant, but as someone with a deep respect for both programming and art I am confident that they are not equivalent despite many HN users treating them as such.
One day I hope to formulate the argument properly, but for now I'll leave you with this.