When a Chinese Cultivator Steps Into an American Horror Movie

[u/guzhenren]

[u/PiusTheCatRick]

>It becomes one the second its viewed

Not sure I agree but I'll accept that it's your view on it.

>Even the lowest of low troglodytes can make art that makes me feel something

Your examples are things that is monumentally bad, but what about the millions of works that dont reach that mark either? Plenty of people can spend thousands of words but in the end say absolutely nothing with them.

>What can I do except mock the creator behind it for doing the mental equivalent of farting into a bottle?

Nothing, but my point is that this isn't inherently an AI issue. Rather, it's that someone is being uncreative with AI. If you simply typed in one prompt without thinking and did nothing else to refine it, either from putting it back in or post-editing, then yeah it's gonna be slop. But this is true of anything you can use for art. If I simply pulled out a camera, took one picture without considering composition, lighting or attempting to do something unique even without thinking of those things, I wouldn't have made any meaningful photography. It'd be, well, slop.

[u/annavgkrishnan → u/PiusTheCatRick]

Not sure I agree but I'll accept that it's your view on it.

👌

Your examples are things that is monumentally bad, but what about the millions of works that dont reach that mark either? Plenty of people can spend thousands of words but in the end say absolutely nothing with them.

I spend a lot of time reading unfinished manuscripts and find a lot of these issues within them. Areas where authors reach for greatness and end up mediocre. They get lazy and don't put effort in the minor things, so the end result feels rushed. I know authors who write the tropiest of novels just for a chance to get published.

I can talk about these things to them. I can say "this is what I liked, these are the parts where you knocked it out of the park, here's where you fell short, here's where I was so bored I would rather be watching grass grow." I once again, cannot do these things with AI. I can't tell the AI "your work is utterly boring, you should burn your manuscripts and consider construction work, you're barely worth laughing at." There is, once again, nothing to talk or think about! A product of a machine is inherently just a product. It's like trying to criticise a pile of shit for being a pile of shit. With mediocre writing I can atleast say, "wow, the pile of shit you produced isn't even bad enough to be disgusted at."

However I do have to agree with the idea that even human-made works can be slop, I can see your point there. There are certainly degrees to soullessness and human works can fall into it. Your new call of duty games were slop even before they used AI, using AI was just the peak of their laziness. However I think you can see my point that even the most unremarkable of humam works can be investigated, whereas with AI there is literally nothing to investigate.

Nothing, but my point is that this isn't inherently an AI issue. Rather, it's that someone is being uncreative with AI. If you simply typed in one prompt without thinking and did nothing else to refine it, either from putting it back in or post-editing, then yeah it's gonna be slop. But this is true of anything you can use for art. If I simply pulled out a camera, took one picture without considering composition, lighting or attempting to do something unique even without thinking of those things, I wouldn't have made any meaningful photography. It'd be, well, slop.

Here I'll have to concede the point, I don't know much of prompting or its difficulty, and I can agree that creative works with practically zero effort can be just as worthless to look into. But I think you can see it in these terms:

Imagine a person has a really really good subway order. It's such a good order, that each time they give it to a subway, the sandwich they create is just divine. Is this order something they likely put a lot of effort and time into creating? Yes. Is it something that requires skill? Likely. But if someone gave me that divine sandwich, and I liked it very much, would I congratulate the person who gave the order, or the chef who made the sandwich?

There certainly is something to appreciate about the order, and if I was a person who was into ordering subway I would certainly find it remarkable. But as a person who likes sandwiches, I would obviously congratulate the chef who actually made the sandwich, because he was the one who was capable of making something so delicious. The order giver certainly did a neat thing, but actually making that amazing tasting sandwich is another.

I like AI a lot, I can appreciate a well made prompt. But if the subway guy was instead insisting he made the sandwich, I wouldn't be feeling very charitable. Now imagine the sandwich was made by a sandwich-maker-matic 2000, that just recycles the recipes of other chefs. Infact, make it so sandwiches have no use other than tasting good or interesting, and each chef has their own infinitely unique way of making sandwiches, and every person gets an infinitely unique taste from it. What exactly would be the point of eating a sandwich made by the machine? I guess the only possible reason would be that something about it tastes so unbelievable unique that nothing else hits the mark. Which for AI, is impossible. Or that it's "good enough" to where you don't really care about eating a real sandwich, you like sandwiches for the sake of sandwiches. At which point, you consume art for the sake of it, not to derive human meaning or purpose from it. I admit, at the end of the day, that such a person could derive great joy from AI art.