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Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

To me it had, in a way, the opposite effect - I started appreciating non-AI content more.

Good art has something that is difficult to reproduce if one isn't already an artist who is just using AI as a medium - it's intentionality.

Take for example Floor796[0]. Every little detail counts and while you could use AI to generate single characters or even the whole thing, you'd inevitably find details which have no reason to be there. You could then remove them manually or modify your prompt or input image so that those you know about won't appear, but AI being AI will keep sneaking in new ones.

The longer your prompt, the more intentional everything becomes, effectively making it the art piece.

[0] https://floor796.com/

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I don’t think it’s intentionality.

It’s style.

A lot of people regard technical measures as the signal of quality. The most realistic painting, the most expensive purse, the most technical flip on a skateboard, the most well drawn AI art.

It’s a cheap way to judge quality because you don’t have to understand what makes something good.

AI is really showing this divide.

If there's anything more tragic than wealth without taste, it is technique without vision

And what makes a style good (as objectively as it can get, anyways)? Why would it be the defining factor of what makes art good?

But then some people recognize that technical excellence is not the most important thing, and extend that to assuming that technique does not matter at all. And so we get this constant drip feed of absolutely terrible conceptual art (with an AI-generated artist statement, can't leave that out!) in every single local art scene.

AI might actually help in this regard. Where you may have someone who has good taste, and can create a unique style, but lacks the skill to execute on the technique. Kind of like a song writer that can't play an instrument, but can hum a tune to the band, and articulate subtle changes they want.

Of course, current AI is not even close to that yet, but decoupling creativity from technical ability could actually be a good thing in the long run. Though to be honest, I am generally pessimistic on it.

Yeah, but you have to realize we are on the losing side of this war. The armies of bullshit now have an incredible advantage that actual art can never have. At least in the past, there was some equilibrium. Bullshit was cheaper to make than art (or any other quality product), but now it has become infinitely cheaper to produce, and much more expensive for us to separate from the bullshit.

Think about this for a moment - it takes a company of 8 people to make 3000 podcast episodes a week. It would take far more than 8 people to listen to that many podcasts. How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff? What happens when it's 30,000 episodes per week? 300,000. What possible hope does art and craft have against an army that is effectively infinite.

We can hope that the cream will rise to the top, but I am not optimistic. I genuinely believe we are watching the end of art and human creativity as it is absolutely drowned is mass slop.

tl;dr - we're fucked.

>How can we possibly hope to separate the wheat from the chaff?

Categorize, curate, and share. The war is only for your attention. I have favorite creators now, and they would cease to be favorite if they suddenly started sloppin' it up. The best of them recommended cool things made by other people, who in turn recommended more things, and so on.

If instead you peddle bullshit, it won't take long to be identified as a bullshit vendor, even if you have 1000x the bullshit of the next leading brand.

Not everyone will get the message especially if you mainly consume algorithmic feeds - we all seem to have that relative who thinks you would enjoy being sent an AI Jesus image every other week.

The simple answer is every single AI podcast is the chaff. Everything this company makes can just be ignored.

All they need to do is keep changing the creator tags. They won't give up without a fight. Are you willing to give up all new content creators?

Already the way I find out about new podcasts is from recommendations from people I know, positive reviews, or from them being associated with a podcast I listen to. For now all of those have meant I haven't been exposed to any AI ones.

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