30 Replies to “Puny Humans”

  1. Not to worry, humans are sure to win at underwater embroidery; and I’m certain thousands of young people have Masters Degrees in that critical discipline.

    1. With “underwater embroidery” you actually create something. With “social justice” in its many forms, all you learn is to destroy things made by others.

      Does this comment qualify as a “pissing match”? Will it pass the censors?

          1. That makes me happy.

            We have just engaged in debt transference in a dollar amount somewhere between $500 billion, and $1 trillion, saddling every American citizen with an (estimated) debt burden of $2,503. A debt which they did not personally incur.

            That makes me sad.

            ps. The 7×57 nom de plume is great. I bet 90% of the audience has no idea to what you refer.

            I’m a 280 Ackley Improved.

      2. This site belongs to Kate. It’s her risk, reputation, and right to set and enforce standards.

        If the enforcement of her standards bothers you then vote with your fingers and use another site.

        I, for one, love NOT reading slag, flames, and insults. So a huge thank you to Kate, Francisco, and Robert.

      3. I had to relieve myself just now, and it was so dark, I had to use a pissing match. Am I safe from this brutal censorship of which you speak?

  2. I was just communicating with a bunch of my dead relatives back in London UK from around the birth of the 20th century. Cockney blacksmiths and buggy whip makers the lot!
    They’re still fuming about the automobile and the disruptance of their livelihoods.

    At that point I always quote the master scribe Bob Dylan with a referal to his song, ‘The Times They Are A Changin’ .

    On a serious note though, it is sad in that we as a species are losing our collective soul through technology run a muck.

    Such is our lot in life.

  3. AI art is to the print media as autotune is to the musical arts. It’s graffiti … it’s not art.

    2. Autotune is a tool, Kenji. Just like a sequencer or a synthesizer. Some use it well, some not so much.

      Remember when Hatsuni Miku was going to put all the singers out of work?

      Remember when Moog was going to put all the instrument makers out of business?

      Remember when “sample and hold” was going to end music as we knew it?

      I remember ALL that stuff. You can find news articles decrying the newfangled Moog synthesizers when “Switched On Bach” came out in 1968.

      1. Those are all electronic instruments which are fair game. Yeah I remember when the moog syn. came out … and various eastern instruments … sitar, … or the Kinks playing with overamped dirty playback … and I even remember (ha ha) The Beach Boys using a theramin for Good Vibrations …

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CelV7EbuV-A

        But a human voice is something different. A human voice is like an artists brush strokes … very HUMAN and individualistic. And like the Bell Curve of life … some people have sweet, beautiful voices … and some people have voices that can’t carry a tune or a tone. Electronically processing the voice is like putting a coat of paint on rotted wood. It doesn’t begin to fix the problem. People who are blessed with uniquely beautiful voices don’t want them muddied and electronically processed. Quite the opposite … they want sweet condensing microphones that deliver the truest possible analog sound … every detail.

    3. Given the crap being churned out by humans and labelled “art”, this is a distinct improvement. As for modern “musical arts” are we talking rap or grime?
      Lets face it there has been no modern painting, music, architecture, poetry etc produced within the last half-century.

    4. The picture looks patriarchal, sexist, racist and high carbon emitting. Perhaps meat barbecue.

      I like it.

  5. When you have a category like digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography don’t be surprised when someone takes it to the next level.
    Someday an out of control robot will vomit paint on a canvass and it’ll win the “Jackson Pollock”

    You had to know this was coming.

  6. Funny that this AI assisted piece opted to harken back to the days of classical art. Doctors, Chairs, and Professors must be seething as they seek to protect their socialist post-modern art funding.

  7. I like the picture. It’ll be a matter of time when someone copies it by hand. The creator of this piece does have an imagination.

  8. IIRC most AI art is Lovecraftian stuff. The guy who got that piece out of one stated that he spent months refining his prompt in order to get it that good. To me, that means a human still made it.

  9. I’m supposed to be upset that some artists might lose some paychecks? Let all those artists that have purchased a no robot built car speak their piece, the rest can STFU. (I’m not against automation, just against hypocrisy)

  10. Of note is that the artist who produced the piece spent 80 hours (that’s eight-zero) making the piece. He could have painted it faster.

    AI is a tool, no different than any other tool. All the running around with hair afire is media BS. They’re just lying to get outrage clicks, same as always.

    I see this same argument in woodworking all the time, where lots of guys claim that CNC machines produce “soulless” furniture. The previous generation argued that planers and tablesaws produce “soulless” furniture, and only by using hand tools can true holiness be achieved.

    At some point, probably pretty soon, some clever b@st@rd will join Dall-E and a CNC machine to make AI-generated furniture. Which will immediately be pronounced “soulless” by the holy hand tool set.

    Hand tools, in my considerable experience, are awesome. You can do things with a hammer and chisel that no machine can replicate. You can do many things -faster- than a machine can be set up to do them.

    Where the machine excels is in doing the same operation over and over again, and in precision. There’s nothing holy about hand-planing 500 board feet of hardwood for a week. You want to see the limitations of hand tools, look at an antique. No two boards the same size, everything done to “close-enough” tolerances, anything out of sight inside or on the back looks like it was made by chimps. Because they didn’t have the TIME to do it to a better standard.

    I’ll never give up my jointer, planer, tablesaw and shaper. Those machines mean I can do the work of a whole joiner’s shop by myself. Leaving me with the time and energy for hand-cut dovetails and surface carving.

    This AI-art thing is the same. After the initial novelty wears off you’ll be able to spot AI art at 100 yards. It’ll show up in places where they were too cheap to hire a painter, just like CNC stuff, and it will be obvious.

    1. …and on the bright side, boardroom & waiting-room art could end up looking considerably better.

      Humour aside, I’m looking forward to having an AI drawing-assistant handle the parts that I’m simply not talented or patient enough to do myself without wasting creative time and energy on what would be a poorer output, and a poorer match to the images in my mind.

      Book covers, advertising, and such…

  12. I can’t wait till people are making AI art while their cars drive them around town doing errands.

  13. About ten years ago some acquaintances who fancied themselves “artists” were livid at the rise of things like Fiverr and similar services where you could contract for perfectly adequate commercial art from people in the third world, for a fraction of what a local artist would charge.

    Boo-hoo, I said. In IT we’ve been dealing with this crap for decades. Outsourcing to third-world sh*tholes happens all the time. You know how we keep our jobs? By not being so sh*t at them that we can be replaced by some H1-B rando who watched a dozen hours of YouTube videos.

    They bitched the same way when Photoshop tutorials made it easy for anyone to create graphics, and when filters made it easy to touch up photos, and digital SLRs became so good even an amateur could take pro-quality shots.

    I’m tired of listening to artists who think they’re engaged in some loftier pursuit than providing a product for money turning around and complaining that they’re not getting enough money.

  14. I like the piece. If AI wanted to screw with our minds it would produce a fully white piece of canvas.

  15. I use DALLE2 a lot for making imagery for posters, invitations and for work stuff as well as just for fun. It’s great. Graphic and digital artists are definitely going to have to recreate themselves and fast.

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