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Comment by pitchlatte | Hacker News Reader

AI is merely exposing an already existing tendency. the creative output of the average non professional will always tend to the mean. it’s a tautology, that’s what the mean is. professional artists are treasured most of all for their _taste_, which tends to be novel and deliberate. the input of good taste into the Gaussian cloud of the average pulls it into new directions. the idea is in fact to improve the mean, that’s artistic education on a societal scale.

on the subject of AI, though: it definitely aggravates this trend.

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To echo your point—the “from the dawn of existence, up to this moment” framing seems to me a fairly familiar way for amateurs to reach for gravitas, in wedding speeches in particular, and especially between partners both of a certain social milieu…

I wonder how much creativity matters for this type of work.

I’m reminded of iPhoto’s little chintzy auto-generated reminiscence movies. Nobody confuses those “Ken Burns Effect” auto-slideshows with, well, Ken Burns’ work—much less art or creativity—but I still find myself moved to see my memories all hookered up in that format sometimes.

I think for something like this, creativity is actually a detriment. You're not going to win an award for an extra-special video, you don't really want to draw attention away from the couple towards your clever editing you know?

I think this is the case more often than people want to admit. A lot of genres demand the expected and often demand even the cliche and you better have damn good reasons for straying from it. Usually it takes a lot more skill than most people have to successfully deviate from genre expectations in a way that doesn't make things worse.

If you're making a wedding video, you better stick to the genre expectations unless you're the next Scorcese.

I don't really like describing it as "taste", but I'll roll with it. (I dislike it because it's sort of an elite-coded rich person phrase in my experience. Also, everyone THINKS they have taste.)

The thing about taste is that it's not something that's in-built, it's something you develop. Through working on things and failing. I don't think you can develop good taste by hitting regen a bunch or extra-special prompting.

No, it's built-in. Some people just have it. Take a room full of people, give them the same training, a few might stand out and get better, most will hit a ceiling, some will clearly have no ability at all.

People who have native abilities and persistence are the ones who get labelled talented.

You may be right that AI gen doesn't count as persistence. It's too early to tell on that. But I'm fairly sure that there's a difference between people who click regen robotically and people who review, steer, criticise, think, and then hit regen, with a very deliberate aim in mind.

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