Hey, thank you so much for your contribution to this discussion. You presented me a really challenging thought and I have appreciated grappling with it for a few days. I think you’ve really shifted some bits of my perspective, and I think I understand now.

I think there’s an ambiguity in my initial post here, and I wanted to check which of the following is the thing you read from it:

• Generative AI art is inherently limited in these ways, even in the hands of skilled artists or those with technical expertise with it; or,
• Generative AI art is inherently limited in these ways, because it will be ultimately used by souless executives who don’t respect or understand art.

Little high, little low. I’m adjusting to online discussions after not being part of them for quite a while. Had some fun conversations with my partner and I am writing again, which is great. Job hunting is such a drag though. Simply inhuman.

I’m not sure I understand your overall point here. It sounds like you’re saying that the perceived emotional connections in art are simply the result of the viewer projecting emotions onto the piece, is that correct?

You make a compelling and very interesting point here. I’m still l considering it, because it’s provoked a lot of thought for me. Once I feel like I can definitely make an argument against or in favor of your point, I’ll get back to you.

Well done, I love intelligent discussions like this so much, I really missed them when my online communities started decaying. The pursuit of truth is so much fun!

The university I went to had an unusually large art department for the state it was in, most likely because due to a ridiculous chain of events and it’s unique history, it didn’t have any sports teams at all.

I spent a lot of time there, because I had (and made) a lot of friends with the art students and enjoyed the company of weird, creative people. It was fun and beautiful and had a profound effect on how I look at art, craft and the people who make it.

I mention this because I totally disagree with you on the subject of photography. It’s incredibly intentional in an entirely distinct but fundamentally related way, since you lack control over so many aspects of it- the things you can choose become all the more significant, personal and meaningful. I remember people comparing generative art and photography and it’s really… Aggravating, honestly.

The photography student I knew did a whole project as part of her final year that was a display of nude figures that did a lot of work with background, lighting, dramatic shadow and use of color, angle and deeply considered compositions. It’s a lot of work!

I don’t mean here to imply you’re disparaging photography in any way, or that you don’t know enough about it. I can’t know that, so I’m just sharing my feelings about the subject and art form.

A lot of generative art has very similar lighting and positioning because it’s drawing on stock photographs which have a very standardized format. I think there’s a lot of different between that and the work someone who does photography as an art has to consider. Many of the people using generative art as tools lack the background skills that would allow them to use them properly as tools. Without that, it’s hard to identify what makes a piece of visual art not work, or what needs to be changed to convey a mood or idea.

In an ideal world, there would be no concern for loss of employment because no one would have to work to live. In that world, these tools would be a wonderful addition to the panoply of artistic implements modern artists enjoy.

Of course! I didn’t mean to suggest you are arguing about the soul thing. I’m sorry if that’s the impression I created, since you’ve been very clearly arguing on a very different tract that I firmly agree with.

I did close my post by saying capitalism is responsible for the problems, so I think we’re on the same page about why it’s unethical to engage with AI art.

I am interested in engaging in a discourse not about that (I am very firmly against the proliferation of AI because of the many and varied bad social implications), but I am interested in working on building better arguments against it.

I have seen multiple people across the web making the argument that AI art is bad not just because of the fact that it will put artists out of work, but because the product is, itself, lacking in some vital and unnameable human spark or soul. Which is a bad argument, since it means the argument becomes about esoteric philosophy and not the practical argument that if we do nothing art stops being professionally viable, killing many people and also crushing something beautiful and wonderful about life forever.

Rich people ruin everything, is what I want the argument to be.

So I’m really glad you’re making that argument! Thanks, honestly, it’s great to see it!

The question about if AI art is art often fixates on some weird details that I either don’t care about or I think are based on fallacious reasoning. Like, I don’t like AI art as a concept and I think it’s going to often be bad art (I’ll get into that later), but some of the arguments I see are centered in this strangely essentialist idea that AI art is worse because of an inherent lack of humanity as a central and undifferentiated concept. That it lacks an essential spark that makes it into art. I’m a materialist, I think it’s totally possible for a completely inhuman machine to make something deeply stirring and beautiful- the current trends are unlikely to reliably do that, but I don’t think there’s something magic about humans that means they have a monopoly on beauty, creativity or art.

However, I think a lot of AI art is going to end up being bad. This is especially true of corporate art, and less so for individuals (especially those who already have an art background). Part of the problem is that AI art will always lack the intense level of intentionality that human-made art has, simply by the way it’s currently constructed. A probabilistic algorithm that’s correlating words to shapes will always lack the kind of intention in small detail that a human artist making the same piece has, because there’s no reason for the small details other than either probabilistic weight or random element. I can look at a painting someone made and ask them why they picked the colors they did. I can ask why they chose the lighting, the angle, the individual elements. I can ask them why they decided to use certain techniques and not others, I can ask them about movements that they were trying to draw inspiration from or emotions they were trying to communicate.

The reasons are personal and build on the beauty of art as a tool for communication in a deep, emotional and intimate way. A piece of AI art using the current technology can’t have that, not because of some essential nature, but just because of how it works. The lighting exists as it does because it is the most common way to light things with that prompt. The colors are the most likely colors for the prompt. The facial expressions are the most common ones for that prompt. The prompt is the only thing that really derives from human intention, the only thing you can really ask about, because asking, “Hey, why did you make the shoes in this blue? Is it about the modern movement towards dull, uninteresting colors in interior decoration, because they contrast a lot with the way the rest of the scene is set up,” will only ever give you the fact that the algorithm chose that.

Sure, you can make the prompts more and more detailed to pack more and more intention in there, but there are small, individual elements of visual art that you can’t dictate by writing even to a human artist. The intentionality lost means a loss of the emotional connection. It means that instead of someone speaking to you, the only thing you can reliably read from AI art is what you are like. It’s only what you think.

I’m not a visual artist, but I am a writer, and I have similar problems with LLMs as writing tools because of it. When I do proper writing, I put so much effort and focus into individual word choices. The way I phrase things transforms the meaning and impact of sentences, the same information can be conveyed so many ways to completely different focus and intended mood.

A LLM prompt can’t convey that level of intentionality, because if it did, you would just be writing it directly.

I don’t think this makes AI art (or AI writing) inherently immoral, but I do think it means it’s often going to be worse as an effective tool of deep, emotional connection.

I think AI art/writing is bad because of capitalism, which isn’t an inherent factor. If we lived in fully-automated gay luxury space communism, I would have already spent years training an LLM as a next-generation oracle for tabletop-roleplaying games I like. They’re great for things like that, but alas, giving them money is potentially funding the recession of arts as a profession.

I am really enjoying it. The resource management is pretty gentle by default, so I’m probably going to start a new run on harder settings, but the basic mechanics are very enjoyable. The system for rooms in your magic school is actually quite interesting- whenever you make a room, it gets some tags based on how it’s shaped and where it’s located. For example, rooms can have the “Skewed” tag if one wall of the room is higher than the other, or a room can have the “Silent” tag if there are no adjacent work-rooms or class-rooms. Different room designations require different tags on the room and room designations are useful and carry significant bonuses. Currently, I’m grappling with the fact that it’s hard for me to find a good spot to put certain things I need now, so I may have to build an wizard tower that’s disconnected from my central school simply to have the control to make a set of rooms with the correct qualities.

Which I find very exciting, interesting and fun! The little meeple also pick up personality quirks and traits over time that cause them to have a higher Conviction (the equivalent of Mood or Morale in most colony sims) when they’re met, or a lower Conviction when they aren’t. For example, several of my wizards have relationships where they prefer to sleep in the same room as a specific other wizard, while another one may want to eat in the same dining room as another one, or a wizard may deeply dislike doing a particular task, or love being outside. I often find the “personalities” assigned to the pawns in colony sim games either overwhelming in detail or irrelevant. This strikes an interesting balance, because they pick them up over time and each of them is simply a thing that you can try to do for a small (but relevant) bonus, or strategically avoid by meeting other needs.

The basic loop for gameplay consists of taking in new students; using your staff to take care of upkeep, food and teaching; graduating or hiring the student once they are fully trained; and then getting new students. You expand your school and gain progressively more options to make better and better students, eventually upgrading their magical powers or advancing them to higher tier students called “Apprentices” who can do more useful work and have higher magical stats. The eventual goal is to cultivate a good student base and then retire staff members who are less useful and replace them with better iterations of themselves, gradually expanding the total number over time.

It feels pretty good- you get strongly rewarded for teaching students and having someone leave by graduation or retirement gives you very useful rewards that will help with long-term progression and strength.

I enjoy the architectural system for the depth that the tags and room requirements have, which will naturally create interesting structures and break up a monotonous optimal uniformity. You are encouraged to have specialized, oddly shaped, and carefully positioned rooms. The game has systems for checking structural stability, which makes upgrades that enhance that or give you additional structural options interesting and exciting.

I haven’t even gotten all the features of the game yet, despite playing for several days, so I’m excited about its long-term potential. My next run will definitely focus on the dark magic of the game, which allows you to make adorable quilted undead minions to do various manual labor tasks for you.

The combat the game has is instanced, turn-based and pleasant. There are options to prepare for fights that offer interesting strategic choices, and the tactical decisions available are distinct, useful and purposefully minimal. My most talented combat-wizards only have a handful of spells (3-4) and they each have a use-case. The game has complete information about fights before you commit to them, allowing you to prepare carefully and strongly favoring good strategy over luck.

So, yeah, highly recommend. Love it, kind of surprised no one told me about it until now, since I’ve been aching for a colony management or survival game focused on wizards for ever.

I’m also playing Mind Over Magic, a magical school colony sim game by the people who did Don’t Starve (IIRC).

That really sucks. I’ve been the mediator friend for a lot of friendship networks and sometimes it’s so exhausting to feel like the only thing keeping people and relationships together. 🫂

It sounds like some of your friends have a lot of self-loathing and they should work on that. While you can encourage them, it’s important to know that it’s not your job to help everyone around you love themselves. They have to do that work, because otherwise it won’t actuallyheal.

It’s a lot to put on other people, and all to often people don’t even realize they’re doing it. Sometimes I think people feel like other people will just only engage at a level they’re comfortable with, not realizing there are people out there who will treat it as a duty or responsibility to deal with anything a friend presents them.

Because my medley of neurodivergence and trauma will always tell me to help a friend, at any cost. I have to work hard to not do that.

Don’t forget to take time for yourself.

I totally understand that frustrated creativity feeling. It’s like a restless swarm of moths pushing at the edges of my brain to get out! To make something! Like part of me will die if I don’t!

It’s been a while since I messed around with clay. I took a ceramics class in college and my mom had a phase with oven-baked modeling clay- I just haven’t had the spoons, but maybe it would be fun.

Wasn’t able to refill my Adderall for several days, got it today. Lot of walking through fog, but it’s been weirdly positive. I was able to have some very useful conversations.

Now I have to catch up on things that fell on the wayside during the fog days.

Did not expect the government situation to deteriorate so fast, tho.

Trying to balance gathering online resources and personal stuff. Working on being a more positive influence in discussions I have online, which is draining.

Those are only conflicting statements if you believe that the market will not embrace worse products. It totally will so long as you have a group of people who lack the critical analysis skills to compare the products and arrive at the conclusion that the new one is worse.

It doesn’t help that the potential drivers of this action are massive conglomerates, so if a sweeping change comes from the top-down and is paired with a lot of propaganda (Marketing) then people will have no choice but to accept it as the standard.

I think that a lot of criticism about the actual quality of AI art is mixed, though. I feel like it has flaws, but I’ve seen arguments about flaws I don’t think are actually real problems with the technical quality.

Hey, I wanted to say I’m sorry for using ambiguous language there. My time studying history has profoundly affected me, so I tend to use “Opinion” to mean “What’s your understanding and reasoned analysis of X thing?”

The alternate implications slipped my mind when I posted. My bad!

I wanted to say thanks for sharing your thoughts and I think we’re actually on the same page with regards to current AI technology. I do recognize that a lot of people are interested in using it, and that they will continue to highly value the functionality it has. My objections to it are, of course, related to secondary concerns and problematic social issues- which I think you understand based on your post.

Hey! Are you up to talking about your opinions on the value of current AI technology? I’m personally opposed due to how our society has chosen to organize itself, but I think the basic concept is interesting.

Bill proposed by Senator Cassidy, and cosponsored by Cruz and Loeffler, what a surprise. Link to Bill

Fighting hypervilgilance that wants me to keep track of all the new everywhere all the time, since I know that I’m as safe as I can be in the US and if something big happens I have lots of channels of information to find out about it. Just need to focus on my life and the little joys I can have, like making a cup of tea and enjoying this absurd song I heard that’s kind of a dance club remix of a synthetic voice reading PR stuff about queer people? It’s honestly great.