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Comment by fab1an | Hacker News Reader

I think most are vastly underestimating the impact of Synthetic AI media - this is at least as big as the invention of film/photography (century-level shift) and maybe as big as the invention of writing (millenia-level shift). Once you really think through the consequences of the collapse of idea and execution, you likely to tend think the latter...

What we're seeing now are toy-era seeds for what's possible - e.g. I've been making a completely Midjourney-generated "interactive" film called SALT: https://twitter.com/SALT_VERSE/status/1536799731774537733

That would have been completely impossible just a few months ago. Incredibly exciting to think what we'll be able to do just one year from now..

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Is it? I seriously doubt it.

Other than "you can't trust anything you don't see with your own eyes", what kind of shift is it? People lived like that for literally millennia before photography, audio, and video recording.

At absolute worst, we are only undoing about 150 years of development, and only "kind of" and only in certain scenarios.

Moreover, people were making convincing edits of street signs, etc. literally 20 years ago using just Photoshop. What does this really change at a fundamental level? Okay, so you can mimic voices and generate video, rather than just static images. But people have been making hoax recordings and videos for longer than we've had computers.

I think the effects of this stuff will be: 1) making it easier/cheaper to create certain forms of art and entertainment media, 2) making it easier to create hoaxes, and 3) we will eventually need to contend with challenges to IP law. That's about it. I think it will create a lot of value for a lot of people (sibling comment makes a good point about this being equivalent to CGI), but I don't see the big societal shift you're claiming that this is.

> people were making convincing edits of street signs, etc. literally 20 years ago using just Photoshop

You needed to have tools, skill, resources and time to do such things. You don't need to have that anymore. Anyone can do anything on any scale.

It's something what SpaceX did. Ofc it was possible to launch a rocket before SpaceX, but few really could afford that. Now that prices are low, that opens infinite number of new space exploration possibilities.

> You don't need to have that anymore. Anyone can do anything on any scale.

I have yet to see an example of "Synthetic AI media" that was both realistic and not immediately recognizable as being synthetically generated.

And if you think being 99% there means we're very close to 100% just remember how long it's taken self driving cars to close the gap (we actually don't know how long since they still haven't succeeded in this).

>I have yet to see an example of "Synthetic AI media" that was both realistic and not immediately recognizable as being synthetically generated.

Would you know if you had?

> I have yet to see an example of "Synthetic AI media" that was both realistic and not immediately recognizable as being synthetically generated.

Man, am I a good photographer or what

https://imgur.com/mUoY4b1

I mean, probably if you're familiar enough with squirrels something gives it away, but I'm not.

That said, I do think it does better with less realistic images right now, like

https://imgur.com/mcJsg0n and https://imgur.com/41eENUO

It also took a number of much worse images to get those ones.

Okay, but Imgur marked that second one as erotic, so for every two steps forward… haha

Lol, it didn't tell me that.

In case anyone is worried, it isn't remotely erotic or otherwise nsfw.

You're right. I guess if you can't tell the difference, that means everyone who claims to be able to tell the difference is lying!

I'm not particularly familiar with squirrels and something about that "photo" looks very off. If you showed it to me in a vacuum I'd just assume someone was trying to make a highly stylized version of something they had a photo reference for, but under no circumstances would I believe that's a real photo.

I'm not accusing anyone of lying, I'm suggesting that they might not have fully seen what this technology is capable of yet. I'm sure that I haven't. The whole point of the post we are discussing this under is the rate of progress in the space.

> I have yet to see an example of "Synthetic AI media" that was both realistic and not immediately recognizable as being synthetically generated.

Three months ago I'd probably have agreed with you. Things have changed.

> You needed to have tools, skill, resources and time to do such things.

Downloading a cracked copy of Photoshop and checking out a book from the library on how to edit photos is only somewhat more difficult than learning to use Python and write programs that generate art from some model. And only because learning anything is extremely easy today with so many free resources and help forums.

> Anyone can do anything on any scale.

I'll believe it when I see it.

> Now that prices are low, that opens infinite number of new space exploration possibilities.

Except SpaceX is still in the "crawl" phase of "crawl, walk, run", and they only got even that far because because an eccentric billionaire has staked his reputation on the problem and thrown a huge amount of money at it, without having to worry about things like "reporting to Congress" and "making sure the space program creates jobs in such-and-such voting district". And after all that effort and truly astounding engineering (the rocket lands itself back on the launch pad!!), space launches are still expensive, risky, and complicated, and will remain so into the foreseeable future (~decades).

> they only got even that far because because an eccentric billionaire has staked his reputation on the problem and thrown a huge amount of money at it

That's what Bezos did with its Blue Origin. If you check where is Blue Origin in space race, you'll quickly realize it's not enough

Edit: ah, and is space still expensive? If one of universities in my middle-sized country with no space engineering background could afford to launch cubesat via SpaceX, then yes, I think it became cheap.

Did Bezos stake his reputation on Blue Origin? I think it'd be a lot less embarrassing for him if Blue Origin folded than it would be for Musk if SpaceX folded.

> Python

Most people using those models aren't writing Python code. Check out https://www.reddit.com/r/dalle2/, https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/, https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/, https://www.reddit.com/r/bigsleep/ etc

I expect that once the technology matures, a smaller and smaller niche of users will be doing any kind of programming

> Downloading a cracked copy of Photoshop and checking out a book from the library on how to edit photos is only somewhat more difficult than learning to use Python and write programs that generate art from some model.

How much practice would one need after doing that, before they're able to match the quality of some of the AI generated art? Not all of the AI generated artwork is perfect, but some of the art would take the average person years of practice to be able to match. Some art requires more than a cracked copy of Photoshop and a weekend of reading a book you borrowed from a library. You may be surprised to find that some people spend years honing their craft.

"opens infinite number of new space exploration possibilities"

In practice, "infinite" translates mainly to a handful of hyper-competitive guys checking off "went to space" off their achievements list. There is a very good reason for that: space is very inhospitable, much more inhospitable than Antarctica. Nothing much has happened in Antarctica for 100 years beyond the occasional hyper-competitive athlete and a few research stations. Perhaps a natural resource gold rush might liven up the place for a few decades, until exhaustion and falling back to inhospitable status, dotted with the rare ghost town remains.

Something similar happens in the "creative" space: the Internet unleashed a massive tidal wave of "content", yet the vast vast majority of it is rather trite and devoid of any (spiritual) meaning. Personally, I'm much more inclined to stick with the classics than even 20 years ago, simply because it's not worth my time wading through the deluge of poor quality "content" out there. To wrap up the analogy, I'd rather inhabit a nutritionally rich environment, than getting lost in the the vast, but mostly empty, expanse of the Internet.

Even if the vast majority of content on the internet is "rather trite and devoid of meaning", there's so much out there that even if just 0.05% of it is any good then that's a vast amount of new high quality content to enjoy and learn from.

I would take today's internet-fuelled media landscape over the landscape of 20 years ago in a heart beat.

I am fairly torn on this topic. The statement is mostly an admission that I'm too weak to not personally waste too much time on trite Internet content.

The question I often ask myself: is spending time with this content, while entertaining in the short term, perhaps via the novelty factor, also nourishing in the long term? The answer is, sadly, much more frequently NO than in the time of printed books.

The best I can hope is to be able to use Internet as an encyclopedia for laser-focused lookups. Sadly, I am too often caught in browsing random content only loosely related to the original lookup topic.

I see your point, and I raise you SoundCloud rap, tiktok, and virality.

A lot of the “trite” internet creations have gone on to become absolutely massive songs or artists.

I wouldn't say "a lot". A handful at most.

New music is funneled through the internet now, and that’s how things get launched. The old mode is dying.

Nothing happens in Antarctica because the world powers signed a treaty in 1959 causing that to happen[1]. If it was open land that was allowed inhabited and owned by people forming new governments, I would bet you would see settlements sprout up there quite quickly. In space you might be able to set up new sovereign entities. That is one major reason people will want to go there.

[1] https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/antarct/anttrty.jsp

Photoshop has always existed. Yet we haven't lost the era of not trusting pictures. What is new?

I think we're making the folly of comparing AI generated art to human generated art from the 90s. Humans have "advanced" much further with the advancements now that DALL-E is nowhere close to.

https://youtu.be/iKBs9l8jS6Q

And even earlier than Photoshop or computers. The concern over this reminds me of the era shortly after the development of photography where it was discovered that doing things like multiple exposure allowed the creation of "trick" photographs where you could combine images to create pictures of giants towering over buildings or tiny people playing in teacups. Society managed not to be falsely convinced of the existence of such beings despite the worry that people wouldn't be able to tell fact from fiction in them.

I think your perspective is really sharp and hits the important points. I think you might be right but I also think we are witnessing a sort of merger between an internet history and physical history. It’s playing out in a lot of ways but mostly through the impact of social media on civil discourse. We are watching technology collide with the real world.

It just feels to me like the internet has arrived in a way that can best be expressed in an Adam Curtis documentary.

Being able to just make a mental storyboard of ideas, and have that be trivially easy to turn into a finished product will transform who can express, and how they will express ideas and stories and art. Now you can do images. Will we also be able to do voice actors, video, 3d Assets, and even story beats and dialogue? It seems quite possible. Everyone just became, or is becoming, a director with 1000 cast members, concept artists, and crew at their disposal.

Not to mention being able to generate movies from a script and a few key frames. This tech is a revolution for opening up creativity.

Ever see the movie "Fantasic Planet"?

This isn't just drawing. It's the start of telling a computer you want something and it making it. Not just pictures, anything. Phyiscal things, computational things,...

Hey computer make me a sandwich, a desk, a computer virus, a paperclip, a gun, a bomb, a little brother.

Take a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/ if you want to see what midjourney is capable of. Some of them are extremely impressive [1][2][3][4]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/x0kv8s/testp_ju...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/wz1am0/homer_si...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/x10som/the_amou...

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/midjourney/comments/x12nqz/robert_d...

As big as the invention of CGI

Still, humans use art to communicate intent, and we still consider AIs to be 'things' , no agency or intent. Being an artist just became a lot harder, because no amount of technical prowess can make you stand out. It s all about the narrative now

Art has always been about more than technical prowess; it's fundamentally an exploration of new ways to tickle neurons.

For more practical purposes like product design, anyone will tell you that actually drawing stuff is akin to typing in code, it can take a while but it's not the hard part

> we still consider AIs to be 'things'

Do we, though? You and I do, sure. Most people here will, probably. But at least one counter-example was on display a few weeks ago, the guy from Google that told the press that their text completion engine was "alive" and "had agency".

From my friends I talked about this (which are not in IT), most believed him. YMMV, but I seriously believe a good chunk of the population thinks we already have thinking A(G)I. I don't think there is a "we" here, anymore. :/

Do you think you 'll see an AI in jail anytime soon? If not, then it's nowhere nearly "a good chunk of the population"

Do we see pets in jail? No, but most people wouldn't say they are things (even though, in German law, they literally are), they are more or less intelligent beings with agency.

I don't see the correlation, to be honest. A good chunk (but still a minority) of the people believing something doesn't automatically change the law, anyway, does it? :/

pets do get euthanized/ muzzled if they are found 'guilty' against humans because we do think they have agency . Sometimes we blame the owner for things they could have done, but there are cases where it's beyond their control. For the same reason we don't jail kids but sometimes they do get punishment. We do thing kids and pets have agency, but not full agency.

At the current stage i don't think there is any AI that can be punished, or anyone that would credibly claim that an AI must be punished. Its maker will always be punished instead.

Well true but i think that chunk is quite small. It's one thing to nonchalantly say "this is alive" and a very different thing when you have to deal with the consequences.

> It's one thing to nonchalantly say "this is alive" and a very different thing when you have to deal with the consequences.

Yeah, fully agreed! Chatbots and "creative" ML systems are in the weird spot where they can't physically kill or hurt people, like e.g. a self-driving car, and perform tasks that "feel" like they need intelligence.

It's also absolutely quite possible that the "chunk" is way smaller than I think, I'm just blindly extrapolating from my social bubble :D

> toy-era seeds

I think what we have is a toy and will remain a toy, just like Eliza was 60 years ago. Academically fascinating, and given the constraints of the era, genuinely remarkable, but still a long way from really being useful.

I'm already getting bored of seeing 95% amazing 5% wtf AI generated images, I can't fathom how anyone else remains excited about this stuff so long. My slack is filled with impressive-but-not-quite-right images of all sorts of outrageous scenarios.

But that's the catch. These diffusion models are stuck creating wacky or surreal images because those contexts are essential allowing you to easily ignore how much these generates miss the mark.

Synthetic AI media won't even been as disruptive as photoshop, let alone the creation of written language.

No matter what happens, it sure is thrilling to witness this debate. You might be right, you might be wrong.

Personally I think a line can now be drawn that starts at the first cave drawing and ends in 2022. Something has fundamentally shifted, a true paradigm shift before our eyes.

This thought occurred to me recently while skimming the formulaic and indistinguishable programming on Netflix. It won't be long before a GPT-3 script is fed to an image generator and out comes the components of a movie or TV show. The product will undoubtedly need some human curation and voice acting, but the possibility of a one-person production studio is on the horizon.

And it will probably suck just as bad as any of the low-effort formulaic movie or music that humans like to produce.

It makes me wonder if all these musician’s catalogs that have been purchased as a whole lately are even more powerful than before. Owning a piece of every bit of media that contains a slice of David Bowie for example would be extremely valuable.

Consider the gaming world’s concept of “whales”. Customers willing to spend disproportionately enormous amounts of money in game. Can you sell these whales a unique, personalized David Bowie album that is about, I don’t know, maybe the customer’s own life story?

You're right, it's already on Show HN right now.

Agreed, it really does not seem far off now to imagine a world where I can request artifacts like

"This episode of Law & Order, but if Jerry Orbach never left the show"

"Final Fantasy VII as an FPS taking place in the Call of Duty universe"

"A 3D printable part that will enable automatic firing mode for {a given firearm}"

All without AGI!

> I've been making a completely Midjourney-generated "interactive" film called SALT

I stumbled over Midjourney the other day through these music videos[1][2] generated by Midjourney from the songs lyrics, and I immediately thought we're not far away from this being viable for a cartoon-like film.

Interesting times ahead.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bulNXhYXgFI

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVj_AEhpVbA

It doesn't bring anything new, just enhanced on top of what already exists, not even close to photography or film.

Doubt it - but it will become another great tool for artists to use.

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