Comment by IIAOPSW | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IIAOPSW | Hacker News Reader

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What is the "intent" behind a piece of classical music? Within this highly limited domain, the generative art is already indiscernible from the squishy meat art. Emily Howell passed her Turing test close to three decades ago.

What is the intent behind abstract art? What is the intent behind the tilings found in Islamic art, or in the spirals on Myan pyramids, or any of the countless splattering of paint on canvas with no discernible figures in them?

What does it mean to have intent? Does it relate to having an objective function? Lots of algorithms have those.

What if I started up some instances of a program in the cloud and gave them the same objective function as us: make enough money to pay their own rent. If the program took some art jobs on fivver, would it not be making art with the intent of paying the bills? When we say a human makes art with intent, and you follow the chain of reasons for why they made what they made and did what they did, do you not eventually reach the evolutionary prime directive of furthering their genetics? What do we have that this hypothetical "self employed algorithm" doesn't?

> What is the "intent" behind a piece of classical music?

Depends on which one. Vivaldi's "The four seasons" intends to capture the "spirit" of each season. Beethoven's "Eroica" was (at first) intended as a tribute to Napoleon.

> What is the intent behind abstract art?

Depends on the piece. Some are intended to evoke feelings. Others are comments on art itself - Kelly's "Blue panel" is supposedly there to challenge our ideas of what art is, while Jackson Pollock's art is intended as a rebellion against the art ideas of his time.

> What is the intent behind the tilings found in Islamic art

If my copy of "Habibi" is to be believed, to praise God while looking pretty. More generally, "looking pretty" is a common intent in art.

> What does it mean to have intent? Does it relate to having an objective function? (...) What do we have that this hypothetical "self employed algorithm" doesn't?"

It is superficially about objective functions, but I would argue that the issue is intrinsically related to what free will is. Does your fivver algorithm have the choice not to make art? Can it say "screw this, I'll become a lawyer"?

> When we say a human makes art with intent, (...) do you not eventually reach the evolutionary prime directive of furthering their genetics?

Artists without children would disagree.

> What is the "intent" behind a piece of classical music? Within this highly limited domain

Classical music is highly limited? Is this a joke?

> Classical music is highly limited?

Yeah? It is music for one, not sculpture, not painted glass, not artistic arrangement of galaxies or grass skirts weaved by self replicating robots. And then the category is further limited by the fact that not all music is classical music. Rythmic thumping of girrafe legs can be music, but is not classical music. Rap is music but not classical music, and so on. Obviously it is limited.

> Is this a joke?

Perhaps you feel that way because while classical music is a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of all possible art forms it also contains a wast space of possible expressions. Something can be limited while also amazingly rich in itself, there is nothing wrong with that.

Did Emily Howell actually pass a turing test? It's sounds very "generated" to me.

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