Hacker News Reader

Comment by lobstey | Hacker News Reader

But like you can write a poem to generate pictures for it. It's revolutionary for people to present differently.

A revolution is an understatement. Presenting differently is nice for now but projecting just slightly more into the future the whole concept of presenting might be over and done with.

For example: My gf spends hours dolling herself up, making poses, sometimes traveling to interesting places to get good instagram photos. The desire is to present herself as a cool and attractive person.

This all becomes meaningless with Dall E.

It seems like it's the exact same amount of meaningful or meaningless regardless of DALL•E? None of that activity you described is meaningful as-is except for the meaning that she, you, or we project onto it for her having done it. That doesn't necessarily go away. The actions and activities themselves are meaningless. What sets them apart from results produced via DALL•E is precisely that your girlfriend was the agent involved. That can still be true and that quality can still be what makes them meaningful.

For example, robotic welding is incredible, truly a spectacular thing to observe, and the results are often immaculate for certain applications. However, I still pay a premium for handmade bicycle frames because I appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into them compared to mass produced alternatives.

It was all meaningless before. We attached meaning to it all as we grew as a species, but we are not functionally different from our ancestors 10,000 years ago who were just finding their way, who could see the universe, imagine it, creating whole civilizations and fighting wars and battles over the very imaginings in their head.

What's fascinating about DALL-E is that there now exist no barriers to that primitive, but remarkable, imagination. Many people could have envisioned Michelangelo's works. You can probably do that now, if you close your eyes real tight. But Michelangelo could not have created his great works without the funding of the House of Medici.

It wasn't meaningless, there is tangible value that comes out of that activity.

> This all becomes meaningless with Dall E.

No more than it was since Photoshop.

Well, no. Your average Facebook users doesn't have the time, money or skills to really touch up the photos they post on Facebook. If you can just ask your computer or your cellphone to pose you on top of Mount Everest or flying an F-22 fighter jet or driving a Lamborghini while wearing an expensive suit and it produces 20 variants of that image in 227 milliseconds though, that completely changes the game.

The internet is going to be full of fake photos and soon full of fake video clips too. You'll basically never be able to trust someone's Tinder profile picture.

The upside, maybe, is that if the internet becomes more fake, it also becomes less interesting. Maybe it will encourage people to do more activities and things in real life, away from computers. Dating websites will probably drop in popularity because profile pictures are so manipulated that you basically have no idea what the person looks like without meeting them in person.

You know that’s already the case to a large extent right? All(?) the social media photo apps have a filter on them even those saying “no filter” because people prefer them than seeing their quirky faults.

Umm you can upload any profile photo you want, right? So how has that changed

Sounds like a win win, more people in the real world, more creativity online.

It sounds like you don’t like her.

I like her lol, we talk about social media a lot and she talks about it in this way too.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com