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Comment by DrSiemer | Hacker News Reader

So tired of pointing that there is something in between "marketeer story tellers" and "real artists".

Bots in the Hall, Neural Viz, GossipGoblin, even Joel Havers animations. All made with genAI and all undeniably creative works, that could not have been created, at least not in that time frame, by a single person without it.

I love Matt's work and often agree with him, but the "no heart" take is just too harsh.

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People being able to express their imaginations in a more clear manner always seems like a net positive to me. You can use it without heart and for the exact wrong reasons for sure.

The keyboard example is telling because that's basically what a bunch of our favorite musicians now do. The drum track for that song you're listening to? That's a piece of software not drums.

And plenty of people complain about "overtuned" music with robotic drums and overcorrected vocals that drain all the imperfections out of the sound.

(Here's a musician's take on it: https://youtu.be/BDJF4lR3_eg?si=kKJVF2hqSd-TOEzX)

"Being able to express your imagination more clearly" is fine for what it is but that's not how people use it. His point about the least talented kinds of people using it to pretend to art is dead accurate. People think it's snobbishness about art being this superior untouchable thing, and that is absolutely not it. You see the same thing with people going on about how SWEs will be obsolete, too, because something something code generation.

Making anything worthwhile involves thinking and choices and experience, and that sort of person consider that too hard and boring and just want something that looks worthwhile.

The idea that you can't both use AI heavily and use thinking, make choices, and use experience is the part I think I disagree with. People sometimes use AI to make thoughtless slop, that doesn't mean everyone does.

I think we're going to come into contact with brilliant projects that people have spent years making and there would just be no way they could've done them without AI. It will be a human thinking it through making thousands of choices just like the OP said about Jurassic Park. You can and basically have to guide the AI like crazy to get any output worthwhile.

Exactly this. In the early days of image generation I once spent about 9 hours carefully remastering a generated image until I was happy with the result.

Are those hours completely without value, because I used genAI during most of them? It involved a LOT of consideration and a few pretty tough choices. But because I didn't do my 10.000 hours, and it's sad for those that did, I'm not allowed to create this way?

Whatever, I'm still putting it on my wall. It means more to me than most "legit" art does.

Indeed. I think the issue is so much of what people see is just the 'slop', which can be produced in such volume by people who really don't care much for the outcome. It distorts the perception of it a lot.

(similarly with the comment about 'it's about as hard as using google'. Yeah, if you're trying about as hard as googling something then the result is probably not going to be very interesting, but that's more effort than went into most AI generated images that you'll see on the internet)

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