Hacker News Reader

Comment by Daishiman | Hacker News Reader

> P.S., I think the current trend is a wakeup call to us software engineers. We thought we were doing highly creative work, but in reality we spend a lot of time doing the basic job of knowledge workers: retrieving knowledge and interpolating some basic and highly predictable variations. Unfortunately, the current AI is really good at replacing this type of work.

Most of the waking hours of most creative work have this type of drudgery. Professional painters and designers spend most of their time replicating ideas that are well fleshed-out. Musicians spend most of their time rehearsing existing compositions.

There is a point to be made that these repetitive tasks are a prerequisite to come up with creative ideas.

View on HN

I disagree. AI have shown to most capable in what we consider creative jobs. Music creation, voice acting, text/story writing, art creation, video creation and more.

If you mean create as in literally, sure. But not in being creative. AI can't solve novel problems yet. The person you're replying to obviously means being creative not literally creating something.

What is the qualifier for this? Didn't one of the models recently create a "novel" algorithm for a math problem? I'm not sure this holds water anymore.

"After a couple of million suggestions and a few dozen repetitions of the overall process"

How much of it is brute force?

Are we maybe moving the goalposts here? How much of human creativity is brute force?

Marble sculptures, that's what I came up with.

No, we're trying to have a conversation.

You can't say AI is creating something new but that it isn't being creative with clearly explaining why you think that's the case. AI is creating novel solution to problems humans haven't cracked in centuries. I don't see anything more creative than this.

> AI is creating novel solution to problems humans haven't cracked in centuries

Really?

Yes, really. Just yesterday google announced their AI was able to improve on human SotA algorithms in 25% of the cases fed into it. One of them was 4x4 complex matrix multiply. Which had pretty huge pressure to be improved.

I'm skeptical. I wouldn't call brute-force creating, not really. And Google obviously has an interest in promoting AI.

Not to say it's not impressive and good.

> AI have shown to most capable in what we consider creative jobs

no it creates shit thats close enough for people who are in a rush and dont care.

ie, you need artwork for shit on temu, boom job done.

You want to make a poster for a bake sale, boom job done.

Need some free music that sounds close enough to be swifty, but not enough to get sued, great.

But as an expression of creativity, most people cant get it to do that.

Its currently slightly more configurable clipart.

> AI creates novel algorithms beating thousands of googlers.

Random HNer on an AI post one day later

> Its currently slightly more configurable clipart.

It's so ridiculous at this point that I can just laugh about this.

Comparing music and algorithms is nonsense.

AI music is disposable generic soulless trash, even if it is technically correct, in accordance with the rules and conventions of music theory. AI generates Muzak. Totally generic and derivative.

There is no AI equivalent to Kurt Cobain, or James Brown, or Tori Amos.

There is no AI equivalent to Kurt Cobain or any other artists because 99% of what they are is not at all about their musical skill but all about marketing. There are thousands of musicians just as skilled if not more than Kurt Cobain or James Brown yet who don't have their fame. I also have no doubt an AI will outperform most musicians in short order in the foreseeable future. The step from making no music at all, to making acceptable music is gigantic compared to making acceptable music to making great music.

Two people from different backgrounds have differing opinions on different systems.

This just in, the response was also to an entirely different context.

> rowanG077: Holy shit look how different the opinions are! LOL HN is so wild.

Serious deja vu to the late 70’s and early 80’s when “real musicians” said exactly the same thing about synthesizers and drum machines.

The difference, of course, being that synthesizers and drum machines are instruments that require actual skill and talent and can be used to express the unique musical style of an artist, whereas AI requires neither skill nor talent, and it cannot generate anything with actual artistic direction, intent or innovation, much less a unique creative style.

AI is never going to give the world a modern Kraftwerk or Silver Apples or Brian Eno. The best an AI "artist" can do is have the machine mimic them.

Still the same thing. The argument then was that synths weren’t “real instruments” and that sequencers meant people weren’t “real musicians”.

AI relies on prompting. In the hands of a skilled artist it is just another tool. In the hands of an amateur hack, it is no different than giving a drum kit to a 4 year old.

The tool is not the art. It never was.

Those are instruments played and sequenced by humans. Meaningless comparison.

Look, in the hands of a skilled artist, generative fill is really useful.

In the same way that the synth is superstitious is banging.

Sampling, when in the hands of a legend is also spectacular, see the prodigy and a break down of the samples they used. (or any half decent hiphop band)

Then you get akon who just sped up a single sample put a beat on it and shat out some halfarsed shit.

They were right in many cases. You can choose to pick out the small percentage of musicians who were successful there or you can recognize the many that were never known.

You can do the same for photography.

People keep lowering expectations or demands on quality because things get easier and humans always prefer the easy option.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com