[stephen_cagle]

Just to be clear, I'm visualizing the usage of world models that can consistently render visual and interactive renderings of a specified world. I think interacting with them will be markedly different than interacting with many text based LLMs (though I don't know, I have never had direct access to one).

I don't think these will create "artist" in any sense, but I do think it will lower the barrier dramatically for people creating games. Most people will interact with it like Lieutenant Barclay interacting with the holodeck, doing little more than wish fulfillment. But I think a few people will be able to interact with it in ways that create art.

In no way am I implying that the net net of AI will be good for humanity as a whole (I think that is too big a question), but I do think the power of World Models will probably result in a far more people being able to say "I have created a game".

I honestly don't have anything useful to say about what LLMs are doing to many human fields. I can understand how frustrating it must feel to see LLMs demonstrate superhuman "skill" (I don't really think they are skilled) at orders of magnitude less cost than a good artist. It isn't just that they don't seem to innovate (only permute), it is that they will literally take even the tiniest bit of creativity and novelty and immediately fine tune and create derivative works on any idea at scale. I can see how that might really demotivate any desire to push the boundaries of art for any human being.

[DrewADesign]

Sorry I probably conflated LLMs and diffusion models, et al in what I wrote, but there’s no real difference in art.

Artists make thousands of tiny decisions when creating art— many of them unconscious. It’s true across mediums— e.g. digital art, oil painting, collage, sculpture, and architecture photography— and even realms, like music, visual art, and animation. Learning to make art is a process of learning to make those conscious and unconscious decisions to create something that communicates what you want it to, using the subtle visual language developed by everything from your personality, to your physical capability and limitations, your cognitive capability and limitations, your experience, taste, likes, available tools and media, environment, inspiration, etc. etc. etc.

AI simultaneously makes it harder to make those decisions and imbue your work with your artistic perspective while supplanting it with the amalgamated decisions of other artists. Novices love AI because they don’t have to learn how to make those artistic judgements, or the craft of implementing them… unfortunately, learning that stuff is learning art. Using AI to generate very specific images can be a difficult, deep, and creative process, but it is fundamentally different than creating art— it is art direction. The skills to do it are fundamentally different. It’s not an incremental change like physical media to digital media, which requires the same exact underlying set of cognitive skills and processes even if the logistics were different.

You could definitely consider a meaningfully curated collection of images other people (or machines) generated to be ‘art,’ but no matter how closely an art director micromanaged an artist making an individual piece, it is still, fundamentally, the artist’s low-level sensibility, experience, and perspective on the micro level that made that piece what it was. If that art director put their name on that artist’s piece, they’d justifiably be run out of town with pitchforks.

But AI does not make learning art more accessible to people. They make it nearly free to commission art from a computer. This isn’t a purely philosophical distinction — it would be like someone saying they’re an experienced driver because they use Waymo cars. Even if they get a new ride every block to make sure they take the exact route they want to take, that doesn’t mean they’re driving. Even if you could tell the Waymo to speed up, slow down, or change lanes, you’re still back-seat driving at best. It’s just a different thing. And if you’re banking on more Waymo cars making it easier for people to get in cars, and increasing the number of car trips to increase the number of experienced drivers in the world, that’s a fundamentally flawed way of reasoning about it.