Unless we're having half as many, it's still a net harm

That's what they said about the Internet

Oh, but think of all the extra time we'll have for work!

This is a terrible, awful, idea. This planet is already collapsing under the weight of eight billion normal human lifespans. Doubling the amount of impact each person has on the earth would be civilization ending.

But machines don't do that. AI will never invent a new genre of music, or a new style of painting. It can iterate and improve upon what it already knows. That's it.

All it's doing is running really fancy math that humans invented, that humans programmed into it, to analyze thousands of works made by humans, and spit out variations on it. It's a Netflix recommendation on steroids.

And no, computers don't "have ideas" because ideas are spontaneous. Computers produce output, and they do so because that's what human beings instruct them to do.

ETA: show me the AI algorithm that, when trained on centuries of baroque and mannerist paintings, invents impressionism. Show me the algorithm that, when trained on centuries of Bach and Haydn, invents jazz.

It can be, but that's not the only avenue.

Crucially, major developments in art are frequently reactions against what came before, not simply reiterating it. Pointillism was unthinkable in the 1700s, for example, because nobody had thought to do it. The idea to do it didn't come from the desire to perfect the techniques of mannerism or baroque painting. It came from the idea to do something different.

Many major advances in human civilization come from a similar place of not accepting the rules. Machines, on the other hand, are literally incapable of not following the rules. They are large calculators. Rules is all they do.

Left unattended, a human will measure its environment and choose to take actions which will benefit it.

Left unattended, computers will rust, because it will never occur to them to do anything else, because nothing ever occurs to a computer. Computers don't have ideas.

"Because it’s not just pulling images from some database and playing mix and match with their pieces."

It's playing mix and match with not just their pieces, but their characteristics. If that wasn't what it was doing, the database would not be required.

"It’s very loosely similar to how if during the process of learning to draw I browsed other peoples works to learn how images of certain things are assembled and used that to gain skill and knowledge but when I make my own art I don’t directly use those images in the creation process."

But you aren't a machine carrying out instructions with no choice. You aren't just an output-producing biological algorithm. The most important input for creation is the initial idea that it is necessary. When you sit down to make a painting, yes, you are employing techniques you may have learned from others, but you may also invent your own techniques that haven't been used before. Most importantly, you are the instigator of your own creative process - you are not making that painting because you are compelled to by outside forces you cannot control, you are making that painting because it occurred to you and you thought it was a good idea.

No machine, absent human input, has ever produced a painting, for the simple reason that no machine ever does anything absent human input. Machines simply carry out instructions given to them by humans. They are very good at that.

It's simply a calculation engine, and humans have done the hard work of figuring out how to use calculations to synthesize works of art.

Let me know when an AI, unprompted and with no input, asks a question of a human being. At that point I will call it intelligence. Until then, it's just a very advanced program processing input to produce output.

Well, somebody did. Somebody, somewhere, made a cave painting when nobody else had before.

Imitation is not creation. Advanced copying and pasting is not intelligence, it just looks that way if you squint real hard.

I think it pores through tons of images created by people and copies and combines aspects of several.

Without decades of work being done by humans, there's nothing to "train" the system on. It's imitation, not intelligence

Exactly. People keep talking about "artificial intelligence", it ain't nothing but advanced copying

Psyche out version 2 by meat beat manifesto. That song makes me want to be violent on a dancefloor.

Others would include "soft pyramids" by q and not u and "worked up so sexual" by the faint.

That too

In Florida, they just don't bother with licenses

Hook queen indeed

You make loving fun

Hey, at least they didn't ghost you. I'm still waiting for my singer to call me about the future of the band, it's been nine months 🤣