Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiggyJohnson | Hacker News Reader

This is related to my pet favorite question of who is doing the art if an artist uses AI (e.g. [input image] <text to image AI> -> Photoshop painting/masking -> AI Upscaler -> Crop and Print to Physical Medium?

I think I feel like an artist, but part of the production of this art feels like curation, and not precisely the practice of art. The eye for composition feels similarly artistic, but the inability of envisioning the final product at the early stages (pre-AI steps) of the work is very weird, and might be the bright red line. I don’t know how I feel yet.

I have a project titled “Is This Art?” currently showing at a local coffee shop - avoiding the issue.

View on HN

I'm no artist but I've had an idea for a minor art project and please feel free to steal this. It's called "I pay rent therefore I am."

Basically, a neural network is set up in a public space. The artificial neurons are literally shown as Christmas lights. This neural network has a few little gadgets it can control to entertain you. Let's say, a puppet, an electronic keyboard, a pen plotter. But, the installation is not here for your entertainment. You have to pay the neural network if you want to be entertained. There's a small interface where you can make an offer, and it can either accept or counter offer, and then you can either accept or counter offer, until either one of you says "I'm walking away from this" or until there's an agreement and you insert cash. Behind the scenes, the neural network is learning how to optimize the objective function "make money", quietly figuring out which entertaining things it is good at and which are most profitable. In other words, just like us, the neural network is motivated by its need to pay rent.

Cut the artist out of the equation completely and have the artwork work for itself. If the machine has full creative control, and can even say no to you, does it have free will?

I wouldn't. I wouldn't say a human trapped in the same situation has free will either . If it could perform a variety of tasks and chooses what it performs while sustaining itself but not optimizing purely for profit and a bunch of those talk and agree to create an unemployment insurance which includes limits on self cloning i would say they have free will.

whats the diff between me giving it the objective "make money" and evolution giving us the objective "make copies"?

Because we can choose not to, if an AI is designed to maximize an objective it will maximize that objective. The moment we make a human with a singular objective which they pursue above all else he is no longer free either.

Optimization for one objective eliminates all degrees of freedom in a system but for different (global?) minima one of which can be picked.

But, despite all the degrees of freedom of choice, you cannot ignore the most basic objective function that nature has handed us: stay alive. You can't really choose not to buy food and pay rent.

Arguably, at least from an evolutionary perspective, all other choices and wants are in service of this objective (albeit in very indirect and abstract ways).

Was Duchamp the artist or the factory worker who produced the urinal? Sometimes the curation is the art.

I have a handful of abstract urinals to remind me of exactly this perspective. It’s a very strong position on the question, as I see it. That’s a long winded way of saying: precisely, glad you mentioned Duchamp’s urinal.

I do think the answer to the question of what is art has something to do with using a human mind to create a shareable experience (incl. visual representation or tangible object). I believe the gardens at the historic plantation houses near me are art, but probably less so my neighbors dual flowerbed / produce garden. If the output of the process is entirely functional, I don’t think it’s art.

clarifying this would require more words and thoughts than I can come up with at this moment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com