As the proud second assistant screenwriter of Netflix's 'Chop Kick Panda', I am mortally wounded by your words, Jeff. This is my livelihood here, man. Why should only actual talent (+nepo-babies) get to work in Hollywood? Hack rights now! Hack rights now! I-I mean... don't make me go back to being a barista, please sir. I've got this great idea for a Star Trek spinoff: The Baby Picard Show, starring Pedro Pascal as Papa Picard to an adorable little Jean-Luc puppet...
Yeah. This is spot on. These people freaking the fuck out over ai are the same people who freaked out over a cloned sheep. The same people who probably freaked out over the printing press. And the same type of person that freaked out over the plough.
The part I don’t like is the whole complaining that ai is “looking at pictures and using them as a base and not paying the creators!!”
That one blows my mind. Because like you said. That’s what a hack does. But it’s also, and this is important, what EVERYONE DOES. Stephen King doesn’t owe HP Lovecraft a penny of royalties for inspiring him. In the same way outside of the initial cost a musician doesn’t owe lifetime royalties to Martin guitar. Relying on past art to inform your current art is called “how it’s always been done”.
This is kind of true, but looking at the output of visual art has changed my position on the issue a lot. The AIs are occasionally caught including artists' watermarks/signatures/etc in their output, which is not something a human does unless that human is going looking for legal trouble. Humans are capable of taking ideas and inspiration from a work while having some concept of when they've crossed the line into "art theft". The AI does not even have the concept of what to avoid.
Or to put that in terms of written work: Even the dumbest student actively trying to plagiarize knows better than to purposefully leave in the original byline from the article they grabbed off the Web to pass off as their own essay.
I’d challenge that that kind of plagiarism happens far more in actually literature then you’re giving credit. It doesn’t necessarily happen in “publishing”. When an author or artist has people checking for that kind of stuff. But in the street level? Or the college paper level? Or the 50 person follower blog level. Or even the self published Amazon’s kdp angle. I’m willing to bet it happens more than we realize.
Now obviously that’s not leaving in watermarks. But that’s just because ai just thinks a water or artist mark is just part of the design. And you know what? It is technically part of the design.
I’m not trying to say there is absolutely no grey area. But I think the grey area people are worried about is much much smaller than they think. No one is going to realistically monetize something stable diffusion makes if “Stephen Rodriguez” is emblazoned across the bottom right corner. They’ll just have it make something new and remove that kind of stuff. Much like in the process of drafting and rewriting a book that your favorite author inspired you knight have lifted some literary ticks. But you’ll change them during the process.
Then again.... I want to be full disclosure here. I am the kind of person that vehemently hates current IP laws. I think they are far far too strict. With copyrights lasting far far too long. To me Mickey Mouse should have hit public domain by the 70s. At the LATEST. And every Beatles song should have been public domain by the 90s. So I am a bit of an outside in that thought process.
While I broadly agree that current IP law overreaches, if your argument is that plagiarism is more common than I might think, I don't see this as a persuasive reason to think it's okay, a form of creativity, or that we should let the machines do it too.
“I asked ChatGPT to summarize the Trump indictment in the style of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and it gave me a script — pasted in full in this footnote”
At first I thought Jeff was trying to comfort us with the idea that only those who aren't creative and talented have to worry about AI taking our jobs. Then I remembered that, by objective scoring, only 17.6% of us, by objective measure, rise above hackery and, of those 17.6%, 81.6% suffer from imposter syndrome. That means less than 3.4% of us will be comforted by this article leaving 96.6% of us rocking slowly at our desks as the tears flow freely. Nice work, Jeff.
I definitely ran into the "cannot create novel images" problem when I used Substack's built-in image generator to illustrate my latest short story. Turns out a passenger steam engine train made out of giant earthworm parts don't have a whole lot of visual references to pull from.
Ironically because I have become used to illustrating my posts with the image search and generator tools, since I couldn't get the right images, itade me consider hiring an illustrator, which wouldn't have crossed my mind before. If I had the money I would have done it, just because I wanted it.
Which kind of shows one way generative algorithms might increase art jobs, by raising the level of design and illustration needs from even simple self published fantasy stuff. Or by companies wanting to ingest and train generative algorithms on a mass of custom designed world building for new cinematic universes or something.
That said, Netflix dropping its price because it's content is cheaper? Never gonna happen. Netflix cheapened rentals by undercutting the price of how rentals were delivered. The only thing that would cheapen streaming services generally would cheaper and more convenient film and video distribution putting the streaming services out of business. Good luck inventing that.
"It was only a passing fancy" - looks like the song- and novel-writing machines of Nineteen-Eighty-Four are upon us.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but from my viewpoint in technology-land, Jeff's supposition that AI cannot be creative feels about right. That's because at its heart it remains algorithmic (recipe-based) processing of huge amounts of data.
But to make a counter-argument, creativity might just be another name for taking the risk of getting things wrong. Which is why so few new ideas are any good. Perhaps the earlier iterations of generative AI (the ones that tended to gravitate to extreme political positions) have a greater chance of being creative than the current generation of AI models which could just be a bunch of conformists.
Putting this in British terms, what is the AI equivalent of some nutter in a shed?
Existing generative text AI like chatGPT is capable of being a lot more creative than it is. It's trained in two steps. The first step, deep learning, teaches it how to write. The second step, reinforcement learning with human feedback, teaches it to give responses that humans find "helpful and harmless". If you remove the second step, you get a bot that's better at creative writing but worse at answering questions. Bing was kind of crazy for a week because Microsoft skimped on the second step.
I think I could get my copy of Stable Diffusion to make at least some off those images you mentioned happen. However, that's because I'm a maladjusted freak who has actually learned the esoterica of using a large language model. A task made simpler, at least, by a best-in-class GUI designed by a 4channer whose previous claim to fame was making mods that added egregious racism to a game already infamous for allowing you to run a colony of crack cocaine manufacturing cannibals.
It would also involve prompts that would more closely resemble an incantation than any form of human communication, and there's a good chance the time it would take me to tweak that prompt to get the desired result would be more than the time it would take you to just photoshop the damn thing.
Current incantations created a cross between a cake wreck and regrettable foods. It is obsessed with adding a snout. Perhaps it is concerned the creation needs nostrils to breath. The googly eyes are definitely a challenge.
Particularly enjoyed the slice of ham with a grafted on pig snout jauntily sporting black plastic eye wear with three slightly desiccated green olives delicately perched on each lens. This masterpiece is presented on a skimpy paper plate with a ketchup and mustard design upon a neon green jungle colored tablecloth surrounded by overly shiny potatoes and a partial gas mask.
As the proud second assistant screenwriter of Netflix's 'Chop Kick Panda', I am mortally wounded by your words, Jeff. This is my livelihood here, man. Why should only actual talent (+nepo-babies) get to work in Hollywood? Hack rights now! Hack rights now! I-I mean... don't make me go back to being a barista, please sir. I've got this great idea for a Star Trek spinoff: The Baby Picard Show, starring Pedro Pascal as Papa Picard to an adorable little Jean-Luc puppet...
I would watch that!
Yeah. This is spot on. These people freaking the fuck out over ai are the same people who freaked out over a cloned sheep. The same people who probably freaked out over the printing press. And the same type of person that freaked out over the plough.
The part I don’t like is the whole complaining that ai is “looking at pictures and using them as a base and not paying the creators!!”
That one blows my mind. Because like you said. That’s what a hack does. But it’s also, and this is important, what EVERYONE DOES. Stephen King doesn’t owe HP Lovecraft a penny of royalties for inspiring him. In the same way outside of the initial cost a musician doesn’t owe lifetime royalties to Martin guitar. Relying on past art to inform your current art is called “how it’s always been done”.
This is kind of true, but looking at the output of visual art has changed my position on the issue a lot. The AIs are occasionally caught including artists' watermarks/signatures/etc in their output, which is not something a human does unless that human is going looking for legal trouble. Humans are capable of taking ideas and inspiration from a work while having some concept of when they've crossed the line into "art theft". The AI does not even have the concept of what to avoid.
Or to put that in terms of written work: Even the dumbest student actively trying to plagiarize knows better than to purposefully leave in the original byline from the article they grabbed off the Web to pass off as their own essay.
I’d challenge that that kind of plagiarism happens far more in actually literature then you’re giving credit. It doesn’t necessarily happen in “publishing”. When an author or artist has people checking for that kind of stuff. But in the street level? Or the college paper level? Or the 50 person follower blog level. Or even the self published Amazon’s kdp angle. I’m willing to bet it happens more than we realize.
Now obviously that’s not leaving in watermarks. But that’s just because ai just thinks a water or artist mark is just part of the design. And you know what? It is technically part of the design.
I’m not trying to say there is absolutely no grey area. But I think the grey area people are worried about is much much smaller than they think. No one is going to realistically monetize something stable diffusion makes if “Stephen Rodriguez” is emblazoned across the bottom right corner. They’ll just have it make something new and remove that kind of stuff. Much like in the process of drafting and rewriting a book that your favorite author inspired you knight have lifted some literary ticks. But you’ll change them during the process.
Then again.... I want to be full disclosure here. I am the kind of person that vehemently hates current IP laws. I think they are far far too strict. With copyrights lasting far far too long. To me Mickey Mouse should have hit public domain by the 70s. At the LATEST. And every Beatles song should have been public domain by the 90s. So I am a bit of an outside in that thought process.
While I broadly agree that current IP law overreaches, if your argument is that plagiarism is more common than I might think, I don't see this as a persuasive reason to think it's okay, a form of creativity, or that we should let the machines do it too.
“I asked ChatGPT to summarize the Trump indictment in the style of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and it gave me a script — pasted in full in this footnote”
Needs more Adam Driver.
At first I thought Jeff was trying to comfort us with the idea that only those who aren't creative and talented have to worry about AI taking our jobs. Then I remembered that, by objective scoring, only 17.6% of us, by objective measure, rise above hackery and, of those 17.6%, 81.6% suffer from imposter syndrome. That means less than 3.4% of us will be comforted by this article leaving 96.6% of us rocking slowly at our desks as the tears flow freely. Nice work, Jeff.
Tip: Daniel Tiger was written by an abacus
Well, at least your attempt with last week tonight proves that AI has no ability to write humor. At least not yet. amirite?
What happened to the podcast? Run out of ways to mangle TCW's name?
I definitely ran into the "cannot create novel images" problem when I used Substack's built-in image generator to illustrate my latest short story. Turns out a passenger steam engine train made out of giant earthworm parts don't have a whole lot of visual references to pull from.
Ironically because I have become used to illustrating my posts with the image search and generator tools, since I couldn't get the right images, itade me consider hiring an illustrator, which wouldn't have crossed my mind before. If I had the money I would have done it, just because I wanted it.
Which kind of shows one way generative algorithms might increase art jobs, by raising the level of design and illustration needs from even simple self published fantasy stuff. Or by companies wanting to ingest and train generative algorithms on a mass of custom designed world building for new cinematic universes or something.
That said, Netflix dropping its price because it's content is cheaper? Never gonna happen. Netflix cheapened rentals by undercutting the price of how rentals were delivered. The only thing that would cheapen streaming services generally would cheaper and more convenient film and video distribution putting the streaming services out of business. Good luck inventing that.
"We already have technology that does a lot of the artistic grunt-work: We have drum machines..."
You just gained a drummer-enemy, buster. A still-a-reader drummer enemy, but, YEAH.
"It was only a passing fancy" - looks like the song- and novel-writing machines of Nineteen-Eighty-Four are upon us.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying things, but from my viewpoint in technology-land, Jeff's supposition that AI cannot be creative feels about right. That's because at its heart it remains algorithmic (recipe-based) processing of huge amounts of data.
But to make a counter-argument, creativity might just be another name for taking the risk of getting things wrong. Which is why so few new ideas are any good. Perhaps the earlier iterations of generative AI (the ones that tended to gravitate to extreme political positions) have a greater chance of being creative than the current generation of AI models which could just be a bunch of conformists.
Putting this in British terms, what is the AI equivalent of some nutter in a shed?
Existing generative text AI like chatGPT is capable of being a lot more creative than it is. It's trained in two steps. The first step, deep learning, teaches it how to write. The second step, reinforcement learning with human feedback, teaches it to give responses that humans find "helpful and harmless". If you remove the second step, you get a bot that's better at creative writing but worse at answering questions. Bing was kind of crazy for a week because Microsoft skimped on the second step.
I think I could get my copy of Stable Diffusion to make at least some off those images you mentioned happen. However, that's because I'm a maladjusted freak who has actually learned the esoterica of using a large language model. A task made simpler, at least, by a best-in-class GUI designed by a 4channer whose previous claim to fame was making mods that added egregious racism to a game already infamous for allowing you to run a colony of crack cocaine manufacturing cannibals.
It would also involve prompts that would more closely resemble an incantation than any form of human communication, and there's a good chance the time it would take me to tweak that prompt to get the desired result would be more than the time it would take you to just photoshop the damn thing.
Current incantations created a cross between a cake wreck and regrettable foods. It is obsessed with adding a snout. Perhaps it is concerned the creation needs nostrils to breath. The googly eyes are definitely a challenge.
Particularly enjoyed the slice of ham with a grafted on pig snout jauntily sporting black plastic eye wear with three slightly desiccated green olives delicately perched on each lens. This masterpiece is presented on a skimpy paper plate with a ketchup and mustard design upon a neon green jungle colored tablecloth surrounded by overly shiny potatoes and a partial gas mask.