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Comment by bnop | Hacker News Reader

Taking the time and effort out of something is exactly what strips it of its beauty

Beauty is not just an “idea” that someone has and needs to get out onto a medium

It is a process and journey that a person undergoes to get said idea onto said medium

That journey often plays out very differently than the person expects. Things change, the art is different from the idea, and the person learns and grows

Our modern society is so obsessed with results, competition, and efficiency that we no longer see the truth: the journey is to be enjoyed, and from enjoying the journey, comes beauty

I encourage you to meditate on why our society is so sick and depressed right now, and extrapolate to how we got here, before assuming this will be a good thing for society

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I saw a quote earlier this week that I'll copy here:

> I considered renting out sound stages, flying to exotic desert locations, getting a scuba team to shoot the underwater scenes in an aquarium, commissioning custom-made Teletubbies costumes, hiring SAG actors, building dozens of miniature sets, and spending my life savings on making this video. But using AI just seems slightly easier.

Making short films with AI is still incredibly effortful. If you're being careful and diligent, it takes days to "shoot" and edit the entire shot list for a 5-7 minute short.

Would you say that the creators of today's animated TV shows, in mechanizing production with Toon Boom Studio, have stripped the beauty away? I still found "Bojack Horseman" to be a salient dramedy.

Would you say that Pixar, in using motion capture and algorithms to simulate light, physics, and movement, is cutting away the journey?

This is a new adventure and new level of abstraction we're embarking upon.

I'm already thinking about the next way points: real time mocapped improv for D&D campaigns and live community theater fantasy and science fiction productions.

These are tools that bring us to new places, that enable us to tell new stories. Previously you'd have to win Disney budget approval to tell a story matching your vision - now you don't.

But I will still be entertained. Expedient AI expression can touch most people the same way a low effort meme or an off the cuff whitticism.

Art is not effort. Art is not labour. Beauty is not suffering. Art =/= craft. Art is communication.

If someone wants to suffer long the endurance journey to becaome skilled at a craft we can still respect/appreciate it the same way a sprinter spends 10 years training to run real fast, in the mean time most of us will use a vehicle to get somewhere faster.

What we're going to lose is a bunch of interesting behind the scene videos because no one is going to watch someone prompt for an hour wondering why can't I do that, but rather why didn't I do that.

Proliferating tools for creation is net good in the same sense that teaching masses to write is net good. It's strange people are opposing lowering the barrier to entry to visual communication. That's what art ultimately is, communication. Once difficult, soon ubiquituous.

So landscapes are not beautiful?

You think landscapes are created in an instant?

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