[noch]

> a Metaverse consisting of infinite procedural slop sounds about as appealing as reading infinite LLM generated books

Take a look at the ImgnAI gallery (https://app.imgnai.com/) and tell me: can you paint better and more imaginatively than that? Do you know anyone in your immediate vicinity who can?

Read this satirical speech by Claude, in French https://x.com/pmarca/status/1881869448275177764) and in English (https://x.com/pmarca/status/1881869651329913047) and tell me: can you write fiction more entertaining or imaginative than that? Is there someone in your vicinity who can?

Perhaps that's mundane, so is there someone in your vicinity who can reason about a topic in mathematics/physics as well as this: https://x.com/hsu_steve/status/1881696226669916408 ?

Probably your answer is "yes, obviously!" to all the above.

My point: deep learning works and the era of slop ended ages ago except that some people are still living in the past or with some cartoon image of the state of the art.

> "Cost to zero" implies drinking directly from the AI firehose with no human in the loop

No. It means the marginal cost of production tends towards 0. If you can think it, then you can make it instantly and iterate a billion times to refine your idea with as much effort as it took to generate a single concept.

Your fixation on "content without a human directing them" is bizarre and counterproductive. Why is "no human in the loop" a prerequisite for productivity? Your fixation on that is confounding your reasoning.

[Philpax]

> Take a look at the ImgnAI gallery (https://app.imgnai.com/) and tell me: can you paint better and more imaginatively than that?

So while I generally agree with you, I think this was a bad example to use: a lot of these are slop, with the kind of AI sheen we've come to glaze over. I'd say less than 20% are actually artistically impressive / engaging / thought-provoking.

[esperent]

This is a better AI gallery (I sorted all images on the site by top from this year).

https://civitai.com/images

There's still plenty of slop in there, and it would be a better gallery of if there was a way to filter out anime girls. But it's definitely higher than 20% interesting to me.

The closest similar community of human made art is this:

https://www.deviantart.com/

Although unfortunately they've decided to allow AI art there too so it makes comparison harder. Also, I couldn't figure out how to get the equivalent list (top/year). But I'd say I find around the same amount interesting. Most human made art is slop too.

[dtn]

I think you fundamentally misunderstand what people use "slop" to describe.

> Most human made art is slop too.

I'm assuming you're using the term "slop" to describe low-quality, unpolished works, or works where the artist has been too ambitious with their skill level.

Let me put it this way:

Every piece of art that is made, is a series of decisions. The artist uses their lived experience, their tastes and their values to create something that's meaningful to them. Art doesn't need to have a high-level of technical expertise to be meaningful to others. It's fundamentally about communication from artists to their audience. To this point, I don't believe there's such a thing as "bad art" (all works have something to say about the artist!).

In contrast, when you prompt an image generator, you're handing over the majority of the decisions to the algorithm. You can put in your subject matter, poses, even add styles, but how much is really being communicated here? Undoubtedly it would require a high level of technical skill to render similarly by hand, but that's missing the forest for the trees- what is the image saying? There's a reason why most "good" AI-generated images generally have a lot of human curation and editing.

Here's an example of some "slop" from the AI Art Turing Test (https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/how-did-you-do-on-the-ai-ar...) from a while back: https://i.imgur.com/RAMFKP1.jpeg There's definitely a high level of technical expertise that a human would require to paint something like this. But it's very clearly AI-generated. Can you figure out why?

---

As a side note, here's a human-made piece that I appreciate a lot. https://i.imgur.com/AZiiZj1.jpeg The longer you explore it, the more the story unfolds, it's quite lovely. On the other hand, when I focus on the details in AI-generated works, there's not much else to see.

[esperent]

> I think you fundamentally misunderstand what people use "slop" to describe.

I don't think I do, actually. It's not a term with a technical definition, but in simple terms it means art that is obviously AI, because it has the sheen, weird hands, inconsistencies, weird framing or thematic elements that are hard to describe without an art degree but which we instinctively know is wrong, or is just plain bad.

I used the term slop to describe bad humans art too, but I meant something subtly different. It's a term that has been used to describe bad work of all kinds from humans since long before there was AI.

In this case, it's art from humans who are learning what makes good art. You say there's no bad art, and it's a valid viewpoint, but I'd say bad art is when the artist has a clear goal in their mind, but they lack the skills to realize it. Nonetheless, they share it for feedback and approval anyway, and by doing that on a site like DeviantArt they learn and grow as artists. But meanwhile, to me or anyone else who is visiting that site to find "good", meaningful art made by skilled artists, this is slop. Human slop, not AI slop.

[noch]

> here's a human-made piece that I appreciate a lot

I like your art. I'm glad you made it. What I like most is that it's fun to look at and think about which is what you say you intended. I hope I get to see more of your art.

> To this point, I don't believe there's such a thing as "bad art" (all works have something to say about the artist!).

As a classically trained oil painter, I know for sure there is bad art especially because I've made more than enough bad art for one lifetime.

Bad art begins with a lack of craftsmanship and is exemplified by a poor use of materials/media and forms, or a lack of knowledge of those forms (e.g. poor anatomical knowledge, misunderstanding the laws of perspective), or an overly literal representation of forms (a photograph is better at being literal, for example).

> Here's an example of some "slop" from the AI Art Turing Test […] But it's very clearly AI-generated. Can you figure out why?

It's only "clearly AI-generated" because we know that AI is capable of generating art. If you saw this without that context you wouldn't immediately say "AI!" Instead, you'd give it a normal critique that you'd give a student or colleague: I'd say:

- there's too much repetition of large forms.

- there's an unpleasant hierarchy of values and not enough separation of values.

- The portrait of the human is the focus of the image yet it has been lost in the other forms.

- The composition can improve with more breathing room in the foreground or background which are too busy.

- Here look at this Frazetta!

However, my rudimentary list could just as easily be turned into prompts to be used to refine the image and experiment with variations. And, perhaps you'd consider that to be a human making decisions?

[dtn]

> I like your art. I'm glad you made it. What I like most is that it's fun to look at and think about which is what you say you intended. I hope I get to see more of your art.

Just to be clear, it's not my art.

[noch]

> There's still plenty of slop in there, and it would be a better gallery […]

Thanks for sharing your better AI gallery. It's awesome to see.

Your reply clarifies my point even better: I shared a gallery, you evaluated it and shared an even better gallery! Undoubtedly someone else will look at yours today or next year, and say, as you said, "You missed a slop! Here's a better gallery".

My point fundamentally is about basic capability of the average and even above average person. As a classically trained amateur painter, I frequently ask myself: "Can I paint a nude figure better than what you've called slop?" As I mathematician I ask: "Can I reason better than this model?"

[chii]

> fixation on that is confounding your reasoning.

it is a fixation based on the desire that they themselves shouldn't be rendered economically useless in the future. Then the reasoning come about post-facto from that desire, rather than from any base principle of logic.

Most, if not all, that are somewhat against the advent of AI are like the above in some way or another.

[torginus]

Wow, AI can write an argument that's bad on purpose! That totally proves the AI is a master writer.

Now show me the AI write something that's actually good on purpose.

[noch]

> Now show me the AI write something that's actually good on purpose

The average human can't even write a 3000 word short story that is good "on purpose" even if they tried.

I know because I've participated in many writing workshops.

The real question is: can you?

> AI can write an argument that's bad on purpose

Are you able to recognise good writing? How do I know? For all I know you're the most incompetent reader and writer on the planet. But your skills are irrelevant.

What's relevant is that deep learning is more skilled than the average person. If you're not aware of this you're either a luddite or confused about the state of the art.

[torginus]

The 'strawmanning your opponent' technique is a non-argument, and is effortless to pull off. Surrounding your argument with tons of purple prose (which Claude is good at) does not change that.

Writing a good argument requires 3 things: be logical, be compelling and likeable, and have a solid reputation. It does not require purple prose.

As for good writing, I'm pretty sure Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy qualifies, which was written with a rather small vocabulary and pedestrian prose, yet is universally praised.

Tbf, I do think Claude Sonnet and SD are impressive, and I think they can aid humans in producing compelling content, but they are not on the level of amateur fiction writers.

Besides, surpassing most humans in an area where most humans are unskilled is not a feat, not even AI companies flex on that.

[noch]

> Writing a good argument requires 3 things: be logical, be compelling and likeable, and have a solid reputation. It does not require purple prose.

That's a common misconception that young writers have. Their prose is first purple and overwrought, then they overcorrect and try to be Hemmingway, then they master the craft and discover that form follows function.

As such, the "purpleness" of prose is not an indictment of any sort except if the style doesn't serve the substance. So yes, purple prose is sometimes required and can be used correctly, just ask James Joyce or Hitchens or remember that first sentence in Lolita, for example.

Furthermore, almost every piece of writing you've probably enjoyed went through an editor or several professional editors. You'd be shocked to read early or even late drafts.

(Also, a having "solid reputation" has f' all to do with whether you can construct a good argument. Wanting that as a prerequisite is what the cool kids used to call "appeal to authority". Anyway ...)

But wtf are we even talking about now?

> Besides, surpassing most humans in an area where most humans are unskilled is not a feat, not even AI companies flex on that.

I don't care what "AI companies flex". What I care about, as a programmer, and as an artist, and as a writer who won a tiny prize in my even tinier and insignificant niche on the planet, is what tools we can build for the average person and what tools I have access to.

If I have a robot that is 50% stronger than me or 10x better read than the average human or 20% better than the average mathematician, that's a huge victory. So yes, surpassing the average human is a feat.

But it's not merely the average human who has been surpassed: the average mathematician (skilled in mathematics) and the average artists (skilled in art) and the average writer, have all been surpassed. That is my testable claim. Play with the tools, and see for yourself.

[nice_byte]

> can you paint better and more imaginatively than that?

the fact that you are seriously asking this question says a lot about your taste.

[noch]

> the fact that you are seriously asking this question says a lot about your taste.

Non sequitur. My sense taste or lack of it, is irrelevant.

Questions about "taste" don't matter when the average person doesn't have the craft to produce what they claim they are competent to judge especially when we're talking about such low hanging fruit as: "write a short story", "write an essay", "analyse this math problem", "draw an anatomically accurate portrait or nude figure", "paint this still life", "sketch this landscape".

Are you able to make the distinction between taste and craftsmanship?

Then after you are done signalling whatever it is you think you're signalling by vaguely gesturing at your undoubtedly superior sense of taste, perhaps we can talk like adults about what I asked?

[longtimelistnr]

Frankly i think you cannot get past your own delusion about AI and no argument will change your mind. No one can make you appreciate art properly and I can only hope one day you will.

[noch]

> No one can make you appreciate art properly and I can only hope one day you will.

Lmao.

Refer to my other comment for more context, for whatever that is worth (talking with strangers who are eager to judge everyone but themselves is always weird but unavoidable online): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42790853