[jkingsman]

I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it.

One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote:

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE ART.

Hate is an emotional word, and I suspect many people (myself included) may leap to take logical issue with an emotional position. But emotions are real, and human, and people absolutely have them about AI, and I think that's important to talk about and respect that fact.

† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

[andybak]

> replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

Please don't. That offends me much more than a very mild word ever could.

[stronglikedan]

I think it's obvious virtue signaling, but I would never let something so insignificant actually offend me. Life's too short.

[fridder]

I do wonder if a significant portion of the hate is from the AI push coming from the executive level.

[raxxorraxor]

I love to employ AI but completely understand the criticism. It does increase my productivity as a software dev.

I also think the 10 hours of random electro swing or other genres of generated music is of extremely high quality. It isn't bland music, on the contrary it is playful and varied. Example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmUSK1IjoQg&list=RDLmUSK1Ijo...

It is entertaining and a viewing experience. And yet, I still doesn't feel the same if you know it is just generated by some carefully selected prompts. Sure, that itself is a creative endeavor, but I would have preferred for AI to clean my room for me instead of slowly replacing every creative venue from writing to art to music.

I continue to play music myself, but I will never reach a level AI is able to achieve in a few minutes. Sure, this example certainly took a while to create and the result is awesome. So what do we do with all the superfluous artists now?

[lucyjojo]

did you link the right video?

it was extremely bland... dry as an oat in a flash freezer...

[_Algernon_]

>† replaced with a slightly less salacious word than the original in consideration for politeness.

1. You're on the internet. Nobody will get mad if you say "horny".

2. Bastardizing a quote is a worse outcome than you missing an opportunity to virtue signal your puritan values. Just say the original quote.

[didibus]

Hate can be emotional, but it can also have underlying rational causes.

For example, someone can feel like they already have to compete with people, and that's nature, but now they have to compete with machines too, and that's a societal choice.

[lo_zamoyski]

I'm not terribly interested in emotional reactions. This is too common of a problem: we think emoting is a substitute for reasoning. Many if not most people believe that if they feel something, then it must be true; the disagreeing party just doesn't "get it". We must learn to reason and make arguments.

I am interested in the intelligible content of the thing.

Also, AI does not reason. Human beings do.

[petralithic]

How can we be sure humans reason?

[Ferret7446]

> A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR ...

Can other humans (aka NPCs)? They seem like they do so I treat them as such, but as far as I know other humans and a sufficiently emoting AI both act equally like they feel emotions.

[oasisaimlessly]

What was the original word?

[jclulow]

"horny"

[anal_reactor]

No horny allowed, you're going to the horny jail.

[justsid]

Thank god it was censored, someone’s kid might be browsing Hacker News and would now be traumatized /s

[sam_lowry_]

I had to search and found the word "horny".

[petralithic]

I've talked to people like this and when you dig deep enough, it's a fear of the economic effects of it, not actually any strongly held belief of AI inherently not being intelligent or emotional. Similarly, and I'm speaking generally here, ask artists about coding AI and they won't care, and ask programmers about media generation AI and they also won't care. That's because AI outside their domain does not (ostensibly) threaten their livelihood.

[hofrogs]

I am not an artist, yet I care about media generation "AI", as in I resent it deeply.

[petralithic]

Like I said, I'm speaking generally. There are a few like you who do, for whatever reason, but most artists hate it because they, at the most basal level, see it as a threat, especially when it came out. You should've seen what engineers on HN said about GitHub Copilot said when that first came out too.

[Palomides]

this is a claim shockingly contrary to what every artist I know, and I myself as an amateur, believe

[petralithic]

Which artists care about coding AI like Copilot? All the ones I talked to simply do not care. Regarding economic means, I asked them whether they'd care if they lived in a post scarcity society where they could make art all day and not have to worry about their material needs being met, ie they're rich, and it turns out if that were the case, they didn't care about what people did with AI, be it image generation or code generation.

[xantronix]

As an artist, I do not dread AI's artistic capabilities from a philosophical standpoint because its apparent "humanity" is a distilled average entirely divorced from the contexts in which its stolen art inputs are provided. In this way, it is categorically devoid of meaning.

As a software developer, I dread AI's capabilities to greatly accelerate the accumulation of technical debt in a codebase when used by somebody who lacks the experience to temper its outputs. I also dread AI's capabilities, at least in the short term, to separate me and others from economic opportunities.

[Palomides]

so here's the thing, artists like making the art, skipping the making leaves you with nothing

most artists I know are against AI because they feel it is anti-human, devaluing and alienating both the viewer and the creator

some can tolerate it as a tool, and some (as is long art tradition) will use it to offend or be contrarian, but these are not the common position

if I were a spherical cow in a vacuum with infinite time, and nobody around me had economic incentives to make things with it, I could, maybe, in the spirit of openness, tolerate knowing some people somewhere want to use it... but I still wouldn't want to see its output

[jclulow]

Where can I sign up for the post scarcity society? Asking for my artist friends.

[magicalist]

Sounds like you were maybe having some one-sided conversations with all the many artists you spoke to.

[footy]

I'm no artist (I even failed high school art) and I think AI media generation is a travesty.

[doctorpangloss]

> I've talked to people like this and when you dig deep enough, it's a fear of the economic effects of it

You hear what you want to hear. You think fine artists - and really, how many working fine artists do you really know? - don't have sincere, visceral feelings about stuff, that have nothing to do with money?

[petralithic]

We can talk anecdata all day. I do know fine artists, for example sculptors and painters, as well as many digital creators, as I commission pieces from them for prints in my place, and I've talked to all of them about AI out of curiosity.

[eaglelamp]

If you dig deep enough isn’t the same thing true of people like yourself? Do you truly believe that the large language models we currently have, not some fantasy AI of the distant future, are emotional and intellectual beings? Or, are you more interested in the short term economic gains of using them? Does this invalidate your beliefs? I don’t think so, most everyday beliefs are related to economic conditions.

How could a practical LLM enthusiast make a non-economic argument in favor of their use? They’re opaque usually secretive jumbles of linear algebra, how could you make a reasonable non-economic argument about something you don’t, and perhaps can’t, reason about?

[petralithic]

When did I say I believe AI to be intelligent or emotional? Of course I use it for economic factors, but I'm honest about it, not wrapping it up in some intellectual, solipsizing arguments. I'm not even sure what non-economic arguments you're talking about, my point is that at the end of the day most people care about the economic impact it might have on them, not anything about the technology itself.

[eaglelamp]

I don’t think the author is hiding his economic anxiety behind solipsism. He states plainly he doesn’t like the deskilling of work.

My point is why are your economic motivations valid while his aren’t?

[petralithic]

Who said my economic motivations are or aren't valid? My point is that people shouldn't lie, to others or to themselves, and to state their motivations plainly. While the author does do so, I am talking about other people who do hide behind solipsism, thus that is why my comment is not a top level comment about the article but a reply to a specific comment that says "one of my friends...", hence why I said "people like this" where "this" refers to their friend, not the author.

[rsoto2]

I care because it's outright theft. That's what AI companies do and what you are an accessory to.

AI is not intelligent or emotional. It's not a "strongly held belief" it simply hasn't been proven.

[petralithic]

It's as much theft as piracy is.

> AI is not intelligent or emotional.

Yes, I agree, my point is that people use arguments against these types of issues instead of stating plainly that their livelihood will be threatened. Just say it'll take your job and that's why you're mad, I don't understand why so many people try to dance around this issue and make it seem like it's some disagreement about the technology rather than economics.

[diamond559]

And most "AI" evangelists are actually stock holders.

[randcraw]

Picasso's Guernica was born of hate, his hate of war, of dehumanization for petty political ends. No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. It must forever parrot.

[petralithic]

A human might generate a piece of media using AI (either via a slot machine spin or with more advanced workflows like ComfyUI) and once they deem it looks good enough for their purpose, they might display it to represent what they want it to represent. If Guernica was AI generated but still displayed by Picasso as a statement about war, it would still be art.

Tools do not dictate what art is and isn't, it is about the intent of the human using those tools. Image generators are not autonomously generating images, it is the human who is asking them for specific concepts and ideas. This is no different than performance art like a banana taped to a wall which requires no tools at all.

[fooqux]

I read what you wrote, and it seems to me you think these two things are equal:

A human using their creativity to create a painting showcasing a statement about war.

A human asking AI to create a painting showcasing a statement about war.

I do not wish to use strawmen tactics. So I'll ask if you think the above is equal and true.

[jay_kyburz]

Two people want to make a statement about war.

One person spent years painting landscapes and flowers.

The other spent years programming servers.

Is one persons statement less important than the other? Less profound or less valid?

The "statement" is the important part, the message to be communicated, not the tools used to express that idea.

[kelnos]

> Is one persons statement less important than the other? Less profound or less valid?

In my opinion, yes. But that's the entire point here: art is in the eye of the beholder. I think much much much less of AI-generated art than I do of human-generated art. Even if an artist who is well-known for his human-generated art were to use an AI to make art, I would still likely think less of that art than of their earlier work.

> The other spent years programming servers.

I will be the first to shut down people who try to say that programming isn't a creative endeavor, but to me this is not "art".

> The "statement" is the important part, the message to be communicated, not the tools used to express that idea.

I don't agree with that. Consider just regular argumentation. If I'm trying to argue a point, how I express my argument matters. The way in which I do it, the words I use, whether I am calm and collected or emotional and passionate, perhaps graphs or charts or some other sort of visual aid, all of that will influence whether or not you buy my argument.

So If art is to make a statement, each individual has to believe that the way it's presented is powerful and resonates with them. This is a personal thing, and people are going to differ in how they react.

[fooqux]

> Is one persons statement less important than the other? Less profound or less valid?

To whom?

One of my favorite quotes is "The product of your art is you." (I heard it from Brandon Sanderson, not sure if he's the original.) I have come to believe this is true on multiple levels. So in your example, I can answer "they're both equally valid and profound" assuming they put similar levels of effort, skill, and basically themselves into that work.

I think that's the part where generative art falls behind. Sure, I can generate some art of a frog, print it, and hang it on my wall. But the print next to it, that I took with my actual camera after wading through a swamp all day? That will have much more profound meaning to me.

Excellent question though. I had to think for awhile on this, and most importantly, I learned something while doing it. Thank you.

[petralithic]

Is a banana taped to a wall "art?" Your answer to that is the answer to your question.

[averagefluid]

> Your answer to that is the answer to your question.

In what logical or philosophical framework does my opinion dictate your opinion? You're not making a grand philosophical point, you're frustrating the attempts of other people to understand your point of view and either blocking them from understanding your point of view or addressing your argument in a meaningful way.

If you cannot or will not engage in the conversation it would be more efficient and more purposeful for you to say so than the "whatever you say is what I say" falseness you're expressing in the above comment.

[Jensson]

> In what logical or philosophical framework does my opinion dictate your opinion?

Because priors affect your conclusions.

For example, I don't like licorice, that makes me not like many kinds of candy. But I know that if a person likes licorice, they will have a very different view on these candies. Similarly how you define art affects how you see AI art, because its meaning is completely different to different people.

So for the example in question, I don't view a banana taped to a wall as art, but I know some other people do, and I understand why they do so, so answering that question tells us a lot about a persons priors.

[petralithic]

It is a rhetorical device that nevertheless clearly explains the various thought groups of AI art. If one requires human creation rather than mere human intent to be art, then similarly they can't consider a banana taped to a wall as art, nor AI as art either. But if one considers the former but then discounts the latter, then that's a logical hypocrisy. I am of the group that considers both as art, because both require human intention.

[saltcured]

And, is the artist the one who taped it, the one who told them to tape it, or the one who created the banana?

[petralithic]

It's the person who had the idea to do so and did so. AI doesn't do anything you don't tell it to, it is the banana creator in this case. It is still up to you to get the best looking banana you can then display it.

[aspaviento]

And let's not forget that people call "art" to more things than the popular masterpieces. A guy sold an invisible sculpture¹ clamming it was art. If things like this can be called art, whatever AI makes can be called art too.

1: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-artist-auctioned-o...

[bonoboTP]

"What is or isn't art" didn't simply become a topic because people like to philosophize about the meaning of words. Over the 20th century the art world took fascination with the subversive, transgressive, the postmodern, rejecting authority and standards of beauty that were deemed limiting and oppressive etc. One direct contributing component was photography. Skill of realistic depiction became deemphasized, with mass production, plastic etc., the focus became abstract ideas. It was also a protest against the system that brought the two world wars.

It was considered "anti-art" at the time, but basically took over the elite art world itself and the overall movement had huge impact on what is considered art today, on performance art, sculptures, architecture that looks intentionally upsetting etc.

It's not useful to try to think of the sides as "expansive definitionists" who consider pretty much anything art just because, and "restrictive definitionists" who only consider classic masterpieces art. The divide is much more specific and has intellectual foundation and history to it.

The same motivations that led to the expansive definition in the personally transgressive, radical and subversive sense today logically and coherently oppose the pictures and texts generated in huge centralized profit-oriented companies via mechanization. Presumably if AI was more of a distributed hacker-ethos-driven thing that shows the middle finger to Disney copyrightism, they may be pro-AI.

[petralithic]

By this same logic, AI will also become accepted as art in 50 years. And by the way, no one who's serious about AI "art" uses commercial generators, they use local AI with workflow managers like ComfyUI. They are not just typing into a box like Midjourney. Therefore these are the hackers who're showing the middle finger to Disney, they dislike copyright as much as anyone.

[bonoboTP]

That's right, and a lot of stuff is being conflated and the "debate" is mostly on the level of soundbites and emotional vibes. Many have strong opinions who have never tried the models or seen someone skilled using them (easy to find YouTube streams), combining LoRAs, ControlNets, etc.

I generally find the specific debate around "whether it's art" super boring. People have squeezed all the juice out of "what even is art" decades before the banana taped to a wall. Duchamp's Fountain, Manzoni's Artist's Shit, John Cage's 4′33″, the Red Square by Malevich, Jackson Pollock etc.

I simply don't care if it's art. It's not an inherently prestigious label to me given this history.

[AlotOfReading]

This is a debate that existed long before LLMs with things like action painting. If I give you a Jackson Pollock and a piece from someone who randomly splattered paint on a canvas until it looked like Jackson Pollock, are they the same?

[petralithic]

Same in what sense? That is the real question, and perhaps not even the important one when it comes to art. Because, if the Pollock is more "important," there is an implication that it's better because it's by a more famous person, while art should be able to come from anywhere and anyone.

[AlotOfReading]

The same in whatever sense you want to compare the art rather than the creators. Pollocks try to convey the action and emotion of the creation process. Our hypothetical copycat lacks that higher level meaning, even though they've created an otherwise similar physical product.

As an aside:

    ...art should be able to come from anywhere and anyone.

is an immensely political view (and one I happen to agree with). It's not a view shared by all artists, or their art. Ancient art in particular often assumes that the highest forms of art require divine inspiration that isn't accessible to everyone. It's common for epic poetry to invoke muses as a callback to this assumption, nominally to show the author's humility. John Milton's Paradise Lost does this (and reframes the muse within a Christian hierarchy at the same time), although it doesn't come off as remotely humble.

[petralithic]

It depends what the copycat was thinking, maybe they wanted to follow in Pollock's footsteps, maybe they wanted to showcase the point you're making, whether a copycat is as good as the real thing and therefore also considered art, perhaps even as important (apprentices often copied their masters, such as da Vinci's), maybe they are just creating it because it looks good. If there's no other reasoning, then I'd still say they're the same, because how can one say they're not art too? Even as an observer of the art, what if I like the copycat more? These are all open questions to the philosophy of art and I'm glad it's accessible today to everyone rather than only to the historically abled.

[bonoboTP]

Pollock was a part of a coherent intellectual movement across all of art. You can't productively discuss whether it's art without focusing on that. He didn't just wake up one day and think to himself that it would be fun to throw paint on the canvas like this and then people looked and wondered if that's art or not.

It was the intellectual statement conveyed through that medium that made him famous.

[belorn]

Art is not art. Art is the thought manifested into something which convey the thought. If an artist is using an AI to manifest a thought, then that can be art.

Similar, music is not music, but rather the thought of an musician manifested is what we call music. This is why silence can be music, but silence without the thought is not.

Images generated through an AI that lacks the human thought is not art. It can look like art, have similarities to art, but it is no more art than silence is music. Same goes to music and text generated by AI.

People can inject defective thoughts into the process like "what generates me most money" or "how can I avoid doing any thinking", in which case the output of the AI will reflect that.

[joquarky]

What about musical synthesizers? Can they be used to create art?

[teddyh]

Cavemen probably once had the same argument about whether musical instruments could be considered “music”; something previously only possible by singing.

Obviously, the answer is yes; musical instruments, including synthesizers, can be music and art.

[s1mplicissimus]

Agreed, tools do not dictate what art is and isn't - but using those tools for art doesn't relieve them from being ethically justified.

If generating the piece costs half a rain forest or requires tons of soul crushing badly paid work by others, it might be well worth considering what is the general framework the artist operates in.

Using more resources to achieve subpar outcomes is not generally something considered artful. Doing a lot with little is.

[petralithic]

There are tons of examples of art that take much more energy than what an AI does, such as an architectural monument. It is not necessarily the case that "Using more resources to achieve subpar outcomes is not generally something considered artful. Doing a lot with little is." as not all artists will agree and even those that do might not follow it. For example, certain pigments in painting could be highly unethically sourced but people still used them and some still do, such as mummy brown, Indian yellow, or ivory black, all from living organisms.

[s1mplicissimus]

You are mixing up what artists do and what is considered artful. Not everything artists do is artful, even by their own standard.

> It is not necessarily the case that "Using more resources to achieve subpar outcomes is not generally something considered artful. Doing a lot with little is." as not all artists will agree and even those that do might not follow it. For example, certain pigments in painting could be highly unethically sourced but people still used them and some still do, such as mummy brown, Indian yellow, or ivory black, all from living organisms.

I put forward the proposition "Using more resources to achieve subpar outcomes is not generally something considered artful. Doing a lot with little is." - yet you argue "but there are exceptions" - i know that, hence my usage of the term "generally". I'll be glad to learn how my proposition is wrong, but not inclined to defend your strawman

[petralithic]

It's more that I reject your premise of "Using more resources to achieve subpar outcomes is not generally something considered artful. Doing a lot with little is." because there is no backing behind that statement except your opinion and so I provided counter examples, but I did not need to do so because your statement has no rationale itself and can thus not need to be heeded.

[perching_aix]

To honor the "spirit" of OP's post:

I looked up Picasso's Guernica now out of curiosity. I don't understand what's so great about this artwork. Or why it would represent any of the things you mention. It just looks like deranged pencilwork. It also comes across as aggressively pretentious.

What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?

[pegasus]

Since you seem to have no problem dishing it, I hope you can eat it as well, so here you go. It's your comment that can be rightly described as pretentious. First of all, "aggressive" doesn't make sense as a modifier to "pretentious" - you were probably influenced to pick this word because of the subject and the feeling of the mural, then self-indulgently left it in, no doubt imagining yourself an innate art critic taking poetic license. Second, the way you italicized artwork. Thirdly, and mostly, because even though you just "looked up Guernica now out of curiosity", you imagine your uninformed opinion worthy of consideration to someone else out there. It's not.

[perching_aix]

Yes. I consider these to be trivial attributes of what I wrote.

It was basically all part of the point: I don't appreciate the position taken in the blogpost in the OP, as it is willfully dishonest (its author not only admits, but even flaunts this).

This is why I remarked that I'm following in its spirit. All the points you list out are issues I also have in general with discourse like the blogpost, and with derivative discourse spawned by it. I was expecting people to react badly, specifically in order to demonstrate why. Even felt a bit bad about italicizing artwork, and felt it was a bit on the nose in hindsight. Wouldn't quite call it a flamebait, but in a sense I guess it was one.

In the end though, I got some reasonable discussion out of it, a bit to my surprise. Still kind of processing whether this was an exception to my conjectured rule, or how else I should wrestle with it. I ended up restoring a bit of "faith in humanity" for myself, rather than confirming my resignations.

This isn't to say I don't believe or didn't mean what I said though, to be clear. I just presented it in a way I consider malicious (the way the blogpost is written). You seem to consider so too and have reacted now in kind - although it doesn't read like along this same idea. But then maybe I'm just falling for my own trap at this point.

[pegasus]

I see, you were playing "Picasso hater" to OP's "AI hater". Well played, in this case, but you could have just written what you just have above, it would have prevented some confusion and misdirection. Yes, OP is unreasonable and arrogant and thus ends up going totally overboard, even though there is some truth in his complaints (pinpointing better what that is would be a worthwhile conversation to have). In my book, being a hater is not something to flaunt, but rather something to look into. Deep enough understanding inevitably softens that hate if not all the way into appreciation, at least into tolerance. It's the same with Picasso's work: once the missing historical, emotional and artistic context is perceived, the value of the work will become self-evident as well.

[perching_aix]

Well yeah, I could have done that, but then outcome would have been impacted. Apologies for pulling a fast one on you like this.

[didibus]

I'm not an art historian, but I think Picasso invented an entire art style.

When you use AI, you might now prompt "in the style of Picasso".

[kelnos]

You not thinking it's great just means you personally don't like it. Which is fine.

> What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?

Because Guernica was made by a human who was passionate about something, and poured that passion into his work. Even if you don't "get it", I hope you can at least acknowledge that truth.

To put another way, on one hand we have:

1. Deranged pencilwork created by someone who created it with purpose, to express a feeling he had about something.

2. Deranged pencilwork created by a probabilistic algorithm, that doesn't mean anything to anyone.

Even if we look at it in these sorts of terms, #1 is still orders of magnitude "better" to me.

[jacquesm]

That a human made it to express their feelings.

[perching_aix]

What do I care? Can't even tell what feelings are supposedly being expressed there.

[mm263]

Why do you care to connect with another human? Try to feel his emotions, what he tried to express? If you see no value in that, there's no discussion to have, honestly. For most people I know there's value in connecting with others and emphasizing with their emotions

[petralithic]

But they just said they don't get what emotions are meant to be expressed, so how can they try to feel his emotions?

[slipperydippery]

To put this in very-online terms: this is a skill issue.

Your life will be richer if you learn to take more things in, and to appreciate them. And it may require actual learning! And practice!

[jacquesm]

That goes for all art. It either stirs you or it doesn't. I find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tjstsWoQiw to be one of the most beautiful pieces ever recorded, others can't listen to it and think it is bland and a terrible recording.

You can't argue about taste.

[bonoboTP]

I don't think this is just taste. The painting was made in a specific historic context and commemorates the bombing of Guernica. Without knowing that context, it may be appreciated as a disembodied visual artifact, but that's not how art really works or ever worked. An influential artpiece usually states something relevant to the historic moment and intellectual Zeitgeist of the time.

You may like the music of Zombie by The Cranberries, but I'd say it belongs to the complete appreciation of it to know that it's about the Irish Troubles, and for that you need some background knowledge.

You may like to smoke weed to Bob Marley songs, but without knowing something about the African slave trade, you won't get the significance of tracks like 400 years.

For Guernica you also have to understand Picasso's fascination with primitive art, prehistoric cave art, children's drawings and abstraction, the historic moment when photography took over the role of realistic depiction, freeing painters to express themselves more in terms of emotional impressions and abstractions.

[perching_aix]

But then why wouldn't AI generated art be able to stir me? Why is a human being in the loop so important as to be supposedly essential?

[averagefluid]

> What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?

I think this is a fantastic question. Full disclosure, Guernica is one of my personal favorites and I initially felt pretty poorly about this particular string of words. But the implied question, "So what?", is literally what separates art from x. I don't think that there's a direct answer to this, but I'll do my best to articulate my feelings towards it.

When I was much younger and first learning how to play guitar, I heard that Eric Clapton was a guitarist that a lot of other guitarists looked up to. I decided to listen to his works and initially dismissed them. To my ears he sounded like a worse, more basic, more derivative version than the artists I was listening to at the time and I wondered how he could even be in the same conversations as other, more modern artists. It was later that I realized I had the arrow of causality wrong. He wasn't revered because he was the best or had taken the artform to the furthest reaches or would be successful today. He was revered because he exposed so many people to a new way of expressing themselves that they likely wouldn't have known about otherwise and certainly wouldn't have invented themselves.

This analogy applies directly to Picasso, I think. You mention you felt the piece was "aggressively pretentious". Where do you think that pretense comes from? There is a whole history to the deconstruction of art in the visual medium and a whole backlash to that deconstruction and a whole response to that and that's your cultural inheritance when you view pieces like this. You don't have to even be aware of this to know that it's affecting how you feel about the piece. I think one facet of "so what?" is that this piece has existed for long enough to generate discussion about its own worth and value and at the very least is spawning literally this post.

The fact that one could find the work with one word and have a discussion about it is also pretty incredible. I don't think a model generated output is that widely known. I do think that sort of cultural reach is a facet of "so what".

There are more answers to "so what?", but to answer your question directly, "what makes it any better", I think an argument could be made that it's not. "Better" when applied to art doesn't have any particular meaning in my mind. What makes it more culturally relevant, more widely known, more widely loved, more important, and more gratifying to study each have dozens of answers, and I think that's more interesting.

[DyslexicAtheist]

nazis held the same believe.

[perching_aix]

> nazis held the same believe.

Along with being against any form of animal cruelty.

They were also pretty obsessed with spiritualistic quackery.

Are we giving each other fun facts or what? Surely one does not need to go all the way to the nazis to find a Picasso hater? Or are you just following the footsteps of the blogpost author too?

[jibal]

Fallacy of affirming the consequent.

"Nazis ate food ... ugh to food!"

[dragonwriter]

> No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work.

Neither will a paintbrush.

The tool does need to, though.

[exoverito]

Needless to say, most humans are unoriginal parrots too, one need only look at the prevalence of memetic desire. Few are capable of artistic genius like Picasso.

One technical definition of empathy is understanding what someone else is feeling. In war you must empathize with your enemy in order to understand their perspective and predict what they will do next. This cognitive empathy is basically theory of mind, which has been demonstrated in GPT4.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01882-z

If we do not assume biological substrate is special, then it's possible that AIs will one day have qualia and be able to fully empathize and experience the feelings of another.

It could be possible that new AI architectures with continuously updating weights, memory modules, evolving value functions, and self-reflection, could one day produce truly original perspectives. It's still unknown if they will truly feel anything, but it's also technically unknowable if anyone else really experiences qualia, as described in the thought experiment of p-zombies.

[freehorse]

> it's possible that AIs will one day have qualia

As the article says, then we can discuss about it that day. "One day AI will have qualia" is no argument in discussing about AI nowadays.

[andybak]

The same Picasso that was notorious for churning them out towards the end of his career?

I'm being slightly flippant but I do think this is a motte and bailey argument.

Not even painting is a Guernica nor does it need to be.

And not every aesthetically pleasing object is art. (And finally - art doesn't even have to be aesthetically pleasing. And actually finally "art" has a multitude of contradictory meanings)

[jondwillis]

We must unironically give the computer pain sensors. :( don’t hurt me mr. Basilisk, I’m just parroting someone else’s idea.

[kelseyfrog]

> No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war

My computer does. What evidence would change your mind?

[saint_yossarian]

What evidence convinced you?

[kelseyfrog]

I performed an "Affective Turing Test" with null results.

[racl101]

Monkey's paw closes.

Now, just like you can with Studio Ghibli art, you can generate new images in the style of Guernica.