Imperfect

superhuman ai systems

Thanks to Evan developing Scour, its Popular Posts page clued me into Vlad's art. Glad to see both of them having published posts after several quiet months. Vlad's post raises good questions to boot:

why create anything at all if people will likely not appreciate, understand, or even condemn it? Why bother if your efforts will drown in an endless ocean of information?

You can create for whatever probability that people can "appreciate, understand, or even condemn it". Vlad says as such:

And even if only one person sees it and can truly appreciate the creation, the effort was not in vain.

Yet, even if nobody else sees and truly appreciates your creation, you can create for your own sake. For example: how many private journal entries have you or people you know written?

It's your choice to create, but abstaining drowns you by default. Not only would you drown "in an endless ocean of information", but also in your own ocean of information. You can float above the waves for your own sake, others' sake, or even both in tandem with each other.

Vlad continues, juxtaposing the exploration of authorly "human" intent with the constant "artificial" feel of AI output:

I always try to understand what the author was trying to convey with their idea, imagination, and execution. What emotion did they want to evoke, what did they want to inspire, how did they want to make the viewer feel a flutter in their chest from what they saw? It's a shame that not everyone tries to think about this, especially in this day and age.

These reflections are especially poignant today, as the internet is flooded with debates about artificial intelligence. I really liked a question from Imperfect:

Have you ever found an image initially thought to be good and made without AI, which was later confirmed as AI-generated?

Did your perception change after learning about its origin?

And I think, yes - the perception changes, and rightly so. Content created by AI may look human, but it will always feel artificial. There is no story behind it, none of the emotions and experiences that the author poured into the painting, the music, the video, or the text.

An aside: Feel free to read the context for my questions above in how ai art communicates.

You can often deem that art and its communication are "artificial", but I suspect that isn't guaranteed.

People, including myself, can be so unfamiliar with how generative AI works and how much more realistic it can become. With that in mind, how consistently will you be able to receive or emerge confirmation that an image "initially thought to be good and made without AI" is actually AI-generated? Even if your truthful answer has been "always", how long will that hold against time and technological development marching on? With most answers being more nuanced, I don't see how it follows that "content created by AI may look human, but it will always feel artificial".

It's a more extensive reprise of my opening statement from autogeneration is human:

Like Melvin, I can resume listening to podcasts. Unlike him, I can tolerate them being voiced by, edited with, or created through generative AI. Yes, he's right that AI art can be "easily identifiable", as I hint at in multimodal ai laziness. However, how many false negatives go unnoticed? Seeing so much AI-generated content in your surroundings doesn't mean your detection rate is as high as you think.

On that note, even a perfect detection rate doesn't guarantee that every perception toward once handmade art goes sour.

As for "content created by AI", I'm not as keen to that phrasing as "content created with AI". I feel like the former's abdication of responsibility betrays how human and creative both intention and involvement with AI is. Stories, emotions, and experiences inform not only system inputs, but re-generation, manual editing, and constantly gauging fulfillment with the product. Fellow humans involve their essence via research and development, training data distilled from human art, and otherwise. With how much humanity the emergent technology condenses into a package usable by even consumer hardware, does it deserve an interpretation as being superhuman?

Vlad clarifies his position:

I'm not against AI as a tool, but I am against it replacing the creator.

Fear of creative replacement can be met with striving for augmentation as illustrated in Ashlyn's AI Helped Me Be a Better Volunteer:

This is what excites me about AI. Not the "robots are taking our jobs" stuff. This: AI helping me do my thing better. Helping me volunteer. Helping me show up for my community.

Adaptation does double duty: assuaging that fear and working to defuse moral panics:

While technology does makes progress at the expense of some people, I believe collective human ingenuity still finds a way to create a surplus. Whether it's acknowledging that bank teller numbers increased after ATMs rolled out, or that photography and new niches within the field increased in popularity through the advent of the smartphone, we can be optimistic about our growth with technology.

Sam presents both possibilities to end In defense of AI slop?:

I’ve said this more than once: if I can’t top the work of AI authors, I can either get better or hang it up. The same goes for music, art, or any other creative endeavor. Get better or make a niche for yourself. Good luck.

Want to reach out? Connect with me however you prefer: