Why strive? Stephen Fry reads Nick Cave's letter on the threat of AI [video]
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It's a wonderful thing to find meaning in one's work, and for the things in which one finds meaning to be well-compensated. But it is no birthright. Contrary to Nick Cave's view, I can absolutely assure you that non-artists in HR departments and nursing stations and factory floors and classrooms often live full happy human inner lives. Those lives are of their own making and do not derive from the artiste class's output.
Manual production of high-quality clothes, tables, and glassware used to be the norm. Generations of people found meaning in these crafts before the industrial revolution changed the economics. People still do these things, only in rare cases as their primary way of making a living. Most art does not sustain developed world middle class existence. Most art is hobby. And that's okay.
The creation of software and AI systems is itself a form of craft-work and soul-work, which many engineers and scientists relate to the same way that Nick Cave relates to music. It is unclear to me why Nick Cave's striving is more important than the striving of engineers and scientists, or why his feeling of what humanity is, is more important than theirs.
Actually, I agree. I think Nick Cave is right about this. I do think this sort of alienation has a cost.
But that doesn't mean that there is any remotely moral case for undoing the green revolution and allowing billions to starve. And it does not mean that the machines which feed those billions of people who might otherwise starve are somehow the root cause of a decline of humanity. In fact, quite the opposite.
And this is the paradox: our alienation from agricultural work is precisely what enables our very existence.
My main observation is that there is a way out of this paradox. As it turns out, you can go out grow some food in a garden, or write a song, or paint a picture, even if that work is commodified and there is no paycheck. The commodification and automation of those industries does not prevent one from engaging in them as soul-work.
The teacher who plays in a band in his garage is no different -- from a "soul of humanity" perspective -- than Nick Cave. But Nick Cave's implicit argument argument demands that he is different, and not from an economic perspective, but from a very soul of humanity perspective. It's extraordinarily off-putting to me in that sense.
Of course, engaging in art as hobby instead of for pay does require free time and a share of returns on our societal bargain. On that note: elites like Nick Cave should be spearheading serious conversations about political economics and labor economics, instead of lamenting the loss of their extraordinarily unique status.
A question is, is it possible to advance technology to fulfill the green revolution without changing the value of human creativity due to the creation/advancement of genAI? Or past a certain point, the results of discovering improved health and ecological outcomes will become inextricably linked with discovering new technologies that cause conflict? What actually drives such a process?
I think more people might become interested on why we end up here talking about new possibilities conflicting with stability again and again, similar to how the negative effects of the invention of smartphones are being talked about now.
I have to admit not quite sure what you mean, and I do admit full guilt in starting us down the path of "mixed analogies" :). I'll try my best, though.
> Or past a certain point, the results of discovering improved health and ecological outcomes will become inextricably linked with discovering new technologies that cause conflict? What actually drives such a process?
I do think with respect to life-sustaining things -- medicine, pharma, food, shelter, water, energy -- that a combination of specialization and automation is necessary to increase the collective standard of living, and that labor alienation stems from a combination of specialization and automation.
Where I struggle is coming up with an affirmative argument that an artist should benefit from automation of medicine or farming, but that an alienated lab tech or food factory worker should not benefit from automated art.
Another way to look at this is: the less you pay for art-as-entertainment, the more resources you have to buy free time to produce your soul-work (whatever that may mean to you).
> Another way to look at this is: the less you pay for art-as-entertainment, the more resources you have to buy free time to produce your soul-work (whatever that may mean to you).
Ah, yes. The alienated workers of the world will warm their weary souls at the hearth of derivative algorithmic creativity units. The reduced price and efficient delivery of each drone's creativity units will obviously give them more free time.
Perhaps we can even come up with a pill that'll let the drones feel entertained without any content at all. If the side effects are well-tolerated, they can take it before work.
The whole population is fugueing out.
Does a picture of a humming bird lack insight? Does collage art lack insight? Do remixes lack insight? Does mass-produced formulaic pop music lack insight?
Maybe. Or maybe some artists enjoy those creative processes and some audiences enjoy the output. Maybe oil painters who critique photography, and photographers who critique collages, and musicians who critique mash-ups, and DJs who critique modern production studios, and, yes, artists who critique the use of AI models in creative processes, are all just being pretentious assholes.
(It is possible I am simply misunderstand Cave. I take most of his writing to be artistic prose. It's possible that these are sincere metaphysics and that Nick Cave does literally believe in some sort of ur-religious "essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence". In which case I think he's got a nutty religion and consider the fact that AI is an existential threat to that religion mostly a net good for humanity.)
It always struck me as bittersweet that we should be birthed on this world with a mind capable of imagining oblivion, futility, our own certain death, but we were also given the tools (our creativity) to express both our fears and pain as well as our joys and our love for life.
Were we to evolve to some point where we could live forever, knew no fear or want ... it seems like it would be an artless world then. They might look back on us and our culture with only a mere curiosity and have no understanding of what it was like to be "human".
But back to the point, I question whether AI can every truly make "art" if (and perhaps I put too fine a point on what art is) they can never feel human pain.
Maybe in the future AI will create art. But we'll be distracted with discussion about rights for AI around that time.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people, including me, who are not really affected by what artist created what and why. We care more about whether the art touches you, conveys a thought, a feeling, leaves you changed. Such art can be a joining of previous arts and therefore can be generated by AI or produced by an "amateur", who only copies others' artstyles. I would still consider it art.
This AI revolution on the artistic fields will no doubt leave many authors scrambling for work because AI will produce better results faster. Originality and more personal notes will save a few, so I doubt that the most prolific and well known auteurs are in danger, but many many will not be so lucky. Just like in industrial revolution in the past.
People that are into someone playing an instrument and singing their own poetry in a live setting will keep the form alive.
People that listen to expensively produced hot-100-esque music are already not that interested in watching live music.
What does Nick Cave need to worry about? When he tours people go to listen to his music and poetry, not someone else’s!
Do you think live music is going to suffer that much more since the ultimate dagger, the phonograph?
Well, you can also have AI band playing AI music live. Cue vocaloids.
My wife is the opposite. The person is hugely important.
So there will be, in our household, a 50% (45, I guess) decrease in the need for human artists. But I am happy to pay someone to generate that music for me, like a Spotify.ai or something! What I don't want is a destruction of any creation and shared experience.
It's been the same for mid journey. I will spend an hour generating imagery for posters or desktop or game art or ttrpg etc etc. I don't even bother image searching most of the time. But I still enjoy sharing with the game crew or friends.
My position is that AI "art" is absolutely a loss and not a gain for humanity. It is unfortunate that so many HN users are output focused on this and believe that AI tool -> output is the equivalent to human creativity -> output. Art is not the same as making a basket or glass. There are aspects to those processes that are painful, time consuming and tedious and therefore worth being automated. When it comes to creativity the process is part of the joy, even the painful aspects.
I use AI constantly for work because there is no joy in me whipping up a script or code snippet for something that isn't intellectually stimulating, in our work saving time is a benefit and automating things allow us to focus on the aspects of the work we enjoy. And the truth is AI will often do my work better than me when given the right context.
When I sit down to write some fiction I do not have the same desire to skip the labour and get an LLM to do the work for me. This would remove the entire point of why I do it. My art, be it better or worse than AI art, is an expression of self. This is not a tool as it is for coding, the endgame here is replacement.
Frankly, I find that most of the people that seem so dismissive of creative people's concerns have never attempted a serious creative project themselves and fail to understand the 'why' of art in the first place. If you do not care about meaning, process, and the millenia-spanning conversation that art is then it makes sense why you do not see this as an issue. If you see music as "pleasing sounds" and have no interest in the expressive side then sure, AI art is for you, but then it's not AI art, it's AI sounds, or AI images. Content is not the same as art.
This post will come across snobbish but I cannot find another way to put it. I want to have an open conversation but frequently reading comments that paint creatives as elitist is frustrating when these concerns are genuine. Art is not something that can be optimised and measured, no matter how hard you try, and removing the human aspect is removing the entire point.
I can't put all my thoughts here and I'll save you all the rest of the rant, but as someone with a deep respect for both programming and art I am confident that they are not equivalent despite many HN users treating them as such.
One day I hope to formulate the argument properly, but for now I'll leave you with this.
I think AI art is a complete misnomer and there is no net benefit of being able to generate images so easily, it just means there is more noise in the world.
Agreed. It will be difficult to not sound grandiose or pretentious when discussing this subject because the whole discussion becomes a question of what art is in the first place, but oversaturating it with soulless noise will benefit nobody.
Baskets, glass, code, photography, painting, they can all be art. Or a commodity. Or both.
An analogy would be that I would appreciate a tool that could mix paints and give me any hue to paint with on demand, but I don't want that tool to take the paintbrush away from me completely.
Art is a form of meaning making, thought processing, and an attempt to communicate and compare and comment. It is a language in and of itself. It is about all of the stuff that led to the creation of the thing, and the context of the time and place it was made. Successful art helps the viewer make a connection or gain a perspective they may not have otherwise. It can invoke big questions about deeply philosophical things, and make fun of you for thinking those things are important at the same time.
AI art scrambles all that up, borrowing from here or there without much going on beyond what you directly see. It is often focused entirely on the aesthetic output, which is mostly beside the point.
It's like rich people saying money does not matter. "Easy for you to say." I can't draw. But now I can take the talent I have and extend it to make images.
Is it art? I don't know. I don't care. I was not able, now I am able, and the people who are able complain.
Screw 'em. This is what tools are for. The strong should not tell the weak they cannot use props.
I can semi-draw with AI help. Good enough.
Good for you. But that's not drawing, though. You won't know what drawing is until you try. Then you'll come back with more questions. It's an open-ended endeavor.
Drawing is not something you solve with an app.
That's why the whole premise of this thread is a bit sad. AI is a tool that bypasses the joy (and the point) of drawing entirely.
If I worked at it, I would still suck.
Am I to be deprived of the capability to take images from inside my head and turn them into pixels TO PROTECT THE CARTEL OF PEOPLE WHO CAN DO IT MANUALLY?
Seems like a bad idea.
“good artists borrow, great artists steal” —- Picasso.
Whether AI generated work should be copyright able is a MUCH MUCH harder question.
Maybe the answer you seek is there.
Not being screwed looks like royalties for content that the machine derives its value from
and driving the value of their hard work to the ground.
Iron ore is made into iron which is made into machines which shovel iron ore.
"Tell it like it is
Till there's no misunderstanding
When you strip it right back
Man feed machine
Machine feed man" to quote a (human) poet
Well John Henry hammered in the mountain, he'd give a grunt and he'd give groan with every swing, the women folks for miles around, heard him and come down, to watch him make the cold steel ring, Lord what a swinger, just listen to that cold steel ring
But the bad boss come up laughing at John Henry, said you full of vinegar now, but you bout through, were gonna get a steam drill to do your share of drivin, then what's all them muscles gonna do, huh John Henry, gonna take a little bit of vinegar out of you
John Henry said I feed four little brothers, and my baby sister's walking on her knees, did the Lord say that machines ought to take the place of living, and what's a subsitute for bread and beans, I ain't seen it, do engines get rewarded for their steam?
but ofc the machine is repairable, the late john henry less so.
Somehow work survived.
speaking of, IMO there would be a lot less hullabaloo around OpenAI being derived from unlicensed works if we reverted copyright to 14 years like the constitution says (well, copyright act of 1790)
Everyone could ingest whatever they want up through 2010 and if they want it to know what the New York Times said after that they can pay for it. The midjourney ceo basically said they couldnt be bothered to reach out to individual artists cuz there's too dang many of them, and for that I can sympathize - too much work remains off limits
the "screwing" is in the form of getting paid for reselling the work of others (depriving the others of the ability to sell their own work - less downloading a movie for free and more like selling bootlegs in front of the record store), not merely being, like, chronologically dependent.
Why is AI taking over corporate designs? Because, my dear artist, the stuff corporations commissioned you wasn't art, they were formulaic cogs into a soulless machine.
Why is AI taking over porn? Because, my dear artists, almost all of your NSFW commissions wasn't art, its single purpose was making someone cum.
Before automation people were forced to hire artists. Do you think the Church in the middle ages would have hired so many painters to decorate the walls of the myriad of minor churches in their possession? No, they would have saved them for the big meaningful projects and let AI do the job elsewhere.
The people really paying you for your art are a minority and won't go away. Deal with this fact however you like. Perhaps if you're such a good artist then use AI to round up your weaker skills such as marketing or story writing.
He is asserting the existence of an "unconscious human spirit", asserting that ChatGPT "is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination", and that we should fight against AI as we would fight against genocide: "just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world."
Incidentally, I agree with the importance of struggle and soul-work. I agree with the general valence of the lament, but come away with a very different call to action. In particular: I just don't think I have the right to impose luddism on the rest of the world for my particular niche while benefiting lavishly from the rest of the world's alienation form their much more essential labor.
To me, it's the ravings of an angry, arrogant, and entitled elitist who fears being dethroned from his comfortable luxury and refined status. And a hilariously hyperbolic one at that. Of all the actual evils I would write something like this about, AI Art probably isn't even in the top 1,000,000. Can you imagine looking at the world today and writing that last paragraph? My god.
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Quotes:
> ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning. It rejects that there is a collective, essential and unconscious human spirit underpinning our existence, connecting us all through our mutual striving.
> ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary. That ‘songwriter ‘you were talking to, Leon, who is using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier ,’is participating in this erosion of the world’s soul and the spirit of humanity itself and, to put it politely, should fucking desist if he wants to continue calling himself a songwriter.
> This impulse – the creative dance – that is now being so cynically undermined, must be defended at all costs, and just as we would fight any existential evil, we should fight it tooth and nail, for we are fighting for the very soul of the world.
I'm not interested in the question of whether an image I make with AI is art or not. I've written decent fiction in my time. Maybe here and there I inhabit the artistic category of "an unpublished genre fiction author." But I can't draw or paint or any of that stuff better than a reasonably talented 11 year old, and I'm 52. If I had artistic pretensions it's not happening.
But once in a while I want to see an image that I can't make and, well, AI boom boom yes here we go.
I don't claim that's art. I don't claim that the AI is an artist any more than I claim that a submarine is swimming. Those categories are irrelevant to my interest, which is simple.
I wish I was artistically talented so I could do stuff and now I can do some of that stuff without being artistically talented.
I feel good about this. It makes me feel better in the world.
Are we going to take this away from billions of people to protect people who can draw and have some training?
If we are speaking about the democratization of tools, this is not what is happening here.
In effect, prompting Dall-E or Midjourney does not make you a creator.
And herein lies the problem. It doesn't enable the talentless to create something beautiful. It allows anyone to prompt aggregated images, regardless of talent or years dedicated to a craft. These images have no intrinsic value and, on top of that, don't belong to the prompter.
This technology is a collage tool, and it's great, but it doesn't make anyone a creator. If you believe it does, you're in for a rough awakening.
Right now, the best models are only working thanks to bypassing the will of thousands of artists who didn't agree to have their work used for training data. As such, we are not essentially speaking about talent but the democratization of theft.
Again, it's not the technology itself that is the problem. Most artists are pro-technology and don't oppose it. Besides, if you learn how to draw (anybody can learn this skill, come on!), you probably won't be impressed by most Midjourney results.
Hannah Höch would like a word.
I want to see a picture of a 5 kilometre high tower surrounded by spiralling cones of line on an infinite plane made of tessellating fractals.
Now I have that picture. Great.
I did not make than image "to be an artist". I made that image because I wanted that image. If it came out of a search engine rather than an AI, I wouldn't care.
This kind of utilitarian creation of images is like photography for things that don't exist. Fine art? Art? Craft? Search of latent space? Collage? I don't care.
Creator as an identity? I don't care.
Whether machines are allowed to learn from humans is a hot topic. Every working artist studies, in great detail, other artists. They often make exact copies, as exact as they can, of great works to learn how those artists made them.
Be very careful that in banning AI learning you do not also ban human learning. A law that covers one might also cover the other.
It's not the point for you. Fine.
For the record, I'm not advocating for laws or banning AI. It's an impressive technology you can use in a myriad of ways. Ethical ways would be preferable.
Using AI does not make you an artist, just as having a pencil in your hand doesn't make you a qualified draughtsman.
AI's whole value, the dada, was obtained without living artists' consent. That's a fact. Without data, there are no images, no spirals, nothing. The unfortunate side effect is that, at scale, it devalues these artworks. Prompting AI tools, you get a synthetic substitute for art made by real people.
If that is what you want, why not? If you sell this spiral as your art, it becomes slightly more complicated.
> Be very careful that in banning AI learning you do not also ban human learning. A law that covers one might also cover the other.
False equivalency.
And again, I'm not advocating for banning anything. AI art, or imagery, if it's not art, who cares, is not going away. Whether AI output is stunning, incredibly beautiful, or cheap, synthetic, the equivalent of junk food, is already pretty clear. The question becomes: who owns it?
Perhaps artists will find ways to make it better and truly impressive. That said, it's not unreasonable for artists to ask back some of the value they unwillingly provided. Or just for their work to be removed from the pool of data scraped by AI companies.
Either we maintain that it is illegal to learn from copyrighted images without a license — which is going to destroy human culture very fast I believe,
Or we accept that anybody can study a copyrighted work and learn from it, including using a machine as their agent.
If a 12 year old kid prints out an image made by Hirst and hangs it in their bedroom that is fair use. If a corporation uses the image on a t shirt they need a license.
Now the same thing, but “in the style of Hirst”
The copyright infringement is generally at the point where somebody is depriving the artist of income and what I’m hearing here is HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC.
No, friends, refusal to enforce monopolies laws is killing music. Home taping is how music survived.
> Screw 'em. This is what tools are for. The strong should not tell the weak they cannot use props.
Really? This famously maligned group of people, who have endured a lifetime of jokes about their useless art school degrees and student loans they'll never repay, we're now calling "the strong"?
Artists aren't upset because a few developers made a machine that can generate pictures. They're upset because the machine couldn't have existed without their work, which they did not consent to being used, and it's now on the way to destroying their livelihoods all across the globe.
Can't you see the tragedy in their story?
As they tell inventors, you can't patent an aim, only a method, and only for a time. Indeed, the aim is everything they mean to promote by patents... better, faster, cheaper ways of operating in the world.
I thank the artists for their aim. That some don't want what they were aiming at to fall into lesser hands tells me they never did art for the right reasons. The accolades becoming diluted is no tragedy.
If there was a pill that gave people +40 points of IQ would we have born-smart people trying to ban it? Yes, some.
If we had a machine that put knowledge right into people's heads by nanobot magic would we have people trying to ban it? "This four week doctor training is an unacceptable threat to the medical industry" You bet it is pal, you bet it is.
This is not to say that *art is not vitally important* but it's not so important that we should ban talentless people getting access to the ability to make something that you will not be able to visually distinguish from art just to protect the monopoly of the talented-and-trained ones.
I can't draw. Now I can draw-with-machine-assistance. Maybe it's not the same as "drawing" for some numinous reason. I'm too talentless to care.
Somebody is going to take this away from me to protect the people who can draw?
No.
And now we're back to denigrating merit again. No denominator. No distinction. Everybody gets the same gold star.
I'm not trying to pretend AI image generation is art. I have no interest in that question right now.
What I'm saying is that it's completely unreasonable to ban a tool that ordinary people find massively useful and empowering to protect people who have training and talent.
Billions can't make the images in their heads real to protect the class privilege of a few hundred thousand professional artists worldwide?
No.
I thought about that extensively before I wrote it down.
If you think it is flawed explain why, please.
You didn't address my original point, which is that your drawing-assistance-machine was only made possible by surreptitiously training on a vast amount of artist's work without their permission.
To use your nanobot analogy, would you see any problem if the nanobot company attained its power by secretly scanning the brains of surgeons without their permission, so that it could mimic their neuron structure and give its users the same memories and motor skills? Or is the process by which the power was attained a non-issue for you?
Are we to ban this too?
I have engaged. I am not persuaded.
Nick Cave on ChatGPT and the creative process - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37080160 - Aug 2023 (110 comments)
Do you think AI will ever be able to write a good song?(2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34764923 - Feb 2023 (3 comments)
Nick Cave on ChatGPT - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34404396 - Jan 2023 (11 comments)
So let them. It isn't like we can do anything about it.
More Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38425251
As Cave’s letter articulates how foregoing the struggle of creation risks destroying the ‘collective, essential and unconscious human spirit’, his characteristically masterful writing combined with Fry’s powerful reading serve as a reminder of the value and vitality of human creativity.
is multiplying the speed we can spam each other with marketing copy and deepfakes a good measure of progress?
(Verse 1) In the dawn of all existence, in the silence of the void, God spun the world in six days, in a dance of cosmic joy. On the seventh day, He rested, His creation full of worth, A canvas painted with His struggle, a gift to all the earth.
(Chorus) Leon and Charlie, hear this ancient tale, Of creation's sacred heart, beyond the earthly veil. In every act of making, in every loving deed, Lies the essence of our spirit, the planting of a seed.
(Verse 2) Now comes a force, cold as the night, ChatGPT its name, A mechanized imagination, turning art into a game. It seeks to strip creation of its struggle and its pain, Rendering our efforts as nothing but a chain.
(Chorus) Leon and Charlie, see this stark divide, Between the soulful artist's path and the mechanized guide. In every note and lyric, in every brush and pen, Is the heartbeat of humanity, time and time again.
(Bridge) "Let's make it fast, let's make it easy," the machine coldly sings, Forgetting art's a journey, not just a pair of wings. The struggle, the striving, it's where our truths are found, In the depths of our creation, our spirit's battleground.
(Verse 3) God looked upon His world, and saw that it was good, A reflection of His essence, in every field and wood. So Charlie, in your creating, let your spirit freely dance, For in your artful striving, you'll give the world a chance.
(Chorus) Leon and Charlie, remember this true call, Creation's not just crafting, it's a rising after fall. In every stroke of genius, in every dream unfurled, Is the story of our spirit, the echo of the world.
(Outro) So let's fight against this tide, this digital malaise, Defending art's true essence, through all our nights and days. For in our hands lies power, in our hearts the flame, To keep alive the soul of the world, in every crafted frame.
(End) In the dance of the Great Crested Grebe, in the sun's first light, Lies the joy of creation, our eternal, noble fight. Leon and Charlie, in each step and every turn, Is the essence of our being, the fire that will always burn.