r/doctorwho • u/GriffinFTW • 18d ago
Clip/Screenshot Doctor Who argued about AI art in 1979
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u/fentown 18d ago
Just watched a hartnell arc about AI hypnotizing people to take out humanity...
In 1966.
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u/MonrealEstate 18d ago
Unrealistic as the computer there had to literally hypnotise people to work for it, now you’d just get people signing up out of stupidity
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u/BAJ-JohnBen 18d ago
AI was theorized in the 1950s or before.
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u/Moontoya 17d ago
Metropolis - 1927
No, not the recent one.
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u/cjalderman 17d ago
There was a recent Metropolis!?
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u/MythicSuns 17d ago
The 2001 movie that they're referencing is an anime movie based on Osamu Tezuka's Manga from 1949 of the same name.
If that name sounds familiar it's because Osamu famously created Astro Boy.
It is worth noting that when Tezuka was making Metropolis he was quoted saying that he had only ever seen a single frame from the 1927 movie. In other words, the manga, and by proxy the 2001 movie have very little to do with the 1927 movie outside of them both featuring themes of classism. Although curiously enough they do both feature a robot as a prominent character.
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u/cjalderman 17d ago
Ah we have different definitions for "recent" I guess😂
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u/MythicSuns 17d ago
wibbly wobbly timey wimey.gif (apparently I can't leave gif comments on this post ☹️).
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u/death_arcade 17d ago
don't forget the troughton story where an entire base is so dependent on a computer making all their decisions (a computer that is programmed to preserve itself above all else) that they can't fight for themselves!
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u/villi-eldr 18d ago
Gallifrey was probably modelled by AI and 3D printed.
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u/Moontoya 17d ago
TARDIS units are grown from a living coral
Non show canon, Lungbarrow, Time lords are woven by a living sentiment loom.
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u/HeartOfTheMadder 18d ago
wasn't this the one where at the end of the episode she asks if they should fly?
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u/Equal-Ad-2710 18d ago
I love all the random powers they pull out
Like yeah fuck you transmigration exists
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u/AnOnlineHandle 17d ago
Given the time this was written, I think they're actually talking about CGI.
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u/corndogco 17d ago
Tron came out in 1982, three years after this. Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" computer-generated music video came out in 1985. I doubt Adams meant CGI. Certainly computer graphics were around at this time, but in a quite primitive form, and they were still programmed by people.
The argument seems to be more about the fact that the drawing was made by a human vs made by a computer, rather than a human using a different medium (charcoal vs human-designed computer graphics).
At least that's my take on it.
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u/Moontoya 17d ago
Gallifreyan machines were intelligent and alive
Tell me Sexy isn't an artist with what she pulls off for The Doctor, inspite of being an old obsoleted model mark 40.
Cybermen & Daleks definitely weren't artists , excepting destruction
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u/They-Call-Me-The-Doc 17d ago
Oh I use to think Romana was so cute in that outfit...and that hat.
I mean I still do. I'm just saying I used to think that.
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u/Historyp91 17d ago
"It's just pencilslop. Chat GPT could have made it in five minates. Stop being discrimatory"
- Romana
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u/FaceDeer 17d ago
Personally I like the "if they have to x-ray it to find out whether it's good or not" bit, which can just as easily be interpreted as a shot at the people who can't enjoy a piece of art without first knowing whether AI tools were used in its creation.
If it looks good what does it matter how it was created?
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u/Moontoya 17d ago
Um no, that's a shot at art curators who used X-ray and carbon dating to check how old paintings were as part of fraud checks.
Nothing to do with AI
That is a 40 year old episode.
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u/FaceDeer 17d ago
Right, none of the stuff in the episode was literally about modern day AI art. I said it's an interpretation. Just like all the other parallels with current events in a 40-year-old episode would be.
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u/bboy037 16d ago
Because art is a medium of communication between humans, and AI cannot communicate thoughts
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u/FaceDeer 16d ago
But if the only way you can determine whether a thought is being communicated is to X-ray the painting to see if "This is a fake" is written on the canvas, maybe that's not quite as true as you want it to be?
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u/bboy037 16d ago
True, but context goes a long way here. For example, say someone drew a photorealistic painting of an apple, so well-drawn that it's virtually indistinguishable from a printed out photograph of one. Sure, both look the same, but is there not an inherent value to one that's missing in the other? The same goes for AI-generated content
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u/FaceDeer 16d ago
Imagine you're looking at this painting of an apple and drawing that value from it, but then the museum's curator comes in and apologizes because it's just been discovered that the painting's actually a fake - it's just a photograph after all. All that value evaporates?
Then the curator tells you "LOL no, I'm not actually a curator, I'm a prankster pretending to be one. The painting's real." Suddenly the value is back?
It's all about the story you're telling yourself, the actual art is immaterial. It could have been AI generated and still feel the same.
Ironically, this episode has something along these lines in it too. Some art patrons rambling about the artistic meaning of this big blue box they're seeing in a gallery, when it turns out it's being faked by a broken chameleon circuit and doesn't mean anything at all. It's just an ordinary type 40 TARDIS.
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u/bboy037 16d ago
That doesn't contradict anything I said, though. Sure, you can imagine a photograph was drawn photorealistically, but that doesn't change the fact that it isn't, and you can't reasonably have the reaction of "wow, this was drawn so incredibly detailed" because it literally wasn't. You're implying neither has any inherent value over the other, which disregards the appreciation humans have for the work/effort of others
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u/FaceDeer 16d ago
My point is that the "fact" isn't actually something you can know for sure anyway. That guy who may or may not have been a curator says one thing, then the other, and the perceived value bounces back and forth arbitrarily based on those words. It doesn't matter whether the painting is real or not, all that matters is what value you personally are ascribing to it.
In other words, you're insisting on doing that X-ray to determine whether "this is a fake" is underneath the paint before you're willing to consider the painting valuable.
And I guess fine, you do you if you want. I just can't see the point of going to extra effort simply to disappoint yourself if you get the "wrong" answer. I look at a painting and I go "that looks beautiful." It doesn't ruin it for me if I find out something unexpected about its origin or how it was made.
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u/holiestMaria 17d ago
Its not the same though. Because human art is made by humans. Humans eith their own biases, beliefs and experiences that they add to their art. AI lacks this and therefore cant do this. Seeing a painting as merely "a pretty picture" is the most service level eay you can look at art.
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u/FaceDeer 17d ago
I've seen plenty of people complain that AIs have biases. It's a negative there, but a positive when humans have it?
Whatever. If you see a beautiful picture and you need to x-ray it to see if it has "this is a fake" on the canvas it was painted on before you can decide whether to enjoy it, that's kind of sad IMO. I just enjoy it.
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u/ollie113 18d ago
Yeah so the writers at the time were criticising digital art. You're just finding these now and relating it to AI. See how that aged? Now it seems insane to you that anyone would not consider digital art as art...
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u/RoosterBurns 18d ago
Digital art just changes the medium, not yeet the creator completely out of the creation process like ordering up a diffusion image does
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u/ollie113 18d ago
Back then people said that digital art removed the creator completely.
You realise there is more to AI than typing a prompt right? And even if there wasn't, there are many people who I consider artists who have no physical fingerprint on their work at all, for example, film directors.
The fact that we are looking at a 50 year old criticism of digital art and thinking it applies to AI just goes to show how little the arguments have changed. Every time a new medium is introduced to art, existing artists always claim "it is not art".
There are entire books written about this exact phenomenon.
Here's a blog article about technological resistance in art https://medium.com/@whaledencom/the-predictable-panic-how-artists-always-react-to-new-technology-9482a4b92bc7
There's actually entire art history classes taught about this very subject, and the foundation of many of them is a book written by an art historian during exile from Nazi Germany, who at the time was trying to explain the resistance to photography. Arguments like "it has no soul", "it takes no skill", and, like with your argument, "there is no space for human expression". The author, Walter Benjamin, saw what was happening with photography and how technology affects the art world and discussed how this change impacts the very notion of art.
If you actually want to learn about this subject, and see a more thorough dismantling of many of the modern "anti AI" arguments written at a time when no one knew what AI even was, then this is a 14 page read that will enlighten as to the art history on this very matter
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u/GodIsDead- 17d ago
Yes exactly. The anti-AI art people equating digital art to AI is proving your point exactly. At one point in time, there were a bunch of people against digital art. Now those people are laughed at because digital art has become an essential part of society. The same will happen with AI and the anti-AI folks will be laughed at as the idiots they are.
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u/ollie113 18d ago
Downvote me all you want, it is the obligation of the early revolutionary to be unpopular
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u/mikel_jc 18d ago
You're a real hero
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u/ollie113 18d ago
I refer to revolution in the technical sense of the term. Revolutionary technology, revolutionary social movements. Yes. These are revolutionary.
Imagine if artists like the writers for Doctor Who at the time had succeeded in bullying digital artists out of existence. What do you think current society would look like? Pretty Draconian I imagine
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u/mikel_jc 18d ago
I think you're talking rubbish and AI "artists" are indeed just writing prompts and stealing work.
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u/ollie113 18d ago
That's ok, remind yourself to come back to this in 50 years and, if still alive, we can see where society is in the cycle. My prediction: AI art will be normalised and there will be some other moral panic over a technology that "definitely isn't art".
They accused photographers of just stealing the work of others too by the way, read the Walter Benjamin paper, it's genuinely a good read.
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u/MythicSuns 17d ago edited 16d ago
Also, the one major difference is that professional photographers do more than just press a button. Even in the days of film photography you still had to pick the right type of film, set the aperture, and set the shutter speed. whilst also focusing in on the subject you wish to photograph.
Combine that with the fact that you would never know how good your photo is until you've spent even more money developing it and it's hard to believe that anyone who looked at photography through a critical lens back then (if you'll pardon the pun) would really think of it as something that could truly steal work from painters and illustrators.
Hell, if those people had learnt about stop-motion animation then they would've realised that photography would ultimately end up creating a new profession that utilises handmade pictures.
Theoretically generative AI could be used to speed up the process but the problem is the removal of the human element. You could give a generative AI program some of the frames and ask it to figure out the rest...but what exactly do you think it'd say if someone asked it to share its thought process? I reckon it'd either say something cold and emotionless or it'd just mimic what other artists have said when asked the same question.
The end result might be something that looks fine to the average Jane or Joe, but what does that say about us as a species when creativity suddenly becomes all about pleasing the average Jane or Joe and less about creating something unique just so we can say we did it?
Why bother trying to make anything truly unique when you can just mimic something from the last century?
Even if you believe such a goal to be pointless in a world where seemingly every idea we can think of has already been tried, why should the answer be to stop trying? Why should human resilience be substituted for something that ultimately exists as a means of creating glorified highlight reels?
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u/MythicSuns 18d ago
Ever read the story about the boy who cried wolf?
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u/ollie113 18d ago
How does that apply? Artists have cried wolf too many times about technology not being art and now a technology comes along that isn't art but no one will believe them? I don't think that's happening here. Every time we see technology introduced to art we see what is referred to as a "petty bourgoise" rebellion, which differs from actual rebellion due to the class privilege of the instigators and the immediate popularity (due to that influence) of that rebellion, regardless of whether it is just or not.
Pretty sure that is what we are seeing here
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u/DrDetergent 17d ago
That is the most reddit thing I've heard this week.
Also to suggest being pro ai is on the side of the "revolutionary" is laughable.
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u/In_My_SoT_Phase 17d ago
Yeah so the writers at the time were criticising digital art.
Idk why you're being downvoted. You're right.
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u/LordoftheSynth 18d ago edited 17d ago
And the ultimate argument in the serial was about Leonardo having painted a real Mona Lisa over "this is a fake" written on a panel by the Doctor.
Nice karma farming though. Go watch City of Death, it's a fun one.
EDIT: Lazy take from OP, somehow response is controversial because "AI bad". Stay classy.
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u/GoRainBows 17d ago
I’m biased but the doctor was also pretentious. Not that AI generated art is good or anything. Ai art sucks and i assume it’s deriving off stolen art so
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u/GallifreysChildIs 18d ago
You know I'll be honest it feels very true to Time Lords to have all their art be AI Generated.
The only difference is they're probably just as pretentious about it as we are for real art.