#philosophical ai

[stanford-photography]

Contemplating The Universe While Night Fishing By Jeff Stanford, 2023

Buy prints at: https://jeff-stanford.pixels.com/

#© Jeff Stanford #midjourney #midjourneyart #ai #discord #digitalart #aiart #Artists on tumblr #man #fishing #boat #fishing boat #moody #fisherman #Philosopher #ethereal #painting #dark #wild #mysterious #universe #seeker #contemplation #inspiration #night #sea #heavens #revelation #dreamer #reflections

[ven-of-the-valley]

I am going to try and put this in as few words as possible, because my roommate and I spent an hour talking about this today; but there is truly nothing more incredible to me than human creativity.

Like, you’re telling me someone made this? You’re telling me this art came from someone’s own hand? You’re telling me this story came from someone’s mind? You’re telling me that someone as flawed and mortal and lost as me made this?

There is a beauty in math and in science, I am not here to argue that. But mathematics existed long before us. Science will exist long after us. And while the knowledge we have is a wonder, it is not ours. We did not make one and one equal two, we only learned and accepted that it did.

But our art is not universal. Our music was born through us. Our writing will die with us. And there is so much more beauty in knowing that we have made something. People have language and culture and poetry not because it was fact, but by our own whim and design.

This is something AI can never fulfill. An algorithm cannot create, it can only compile. A computer generated image has no link to us, to human emotion. To human flaw and struggle and passion.

Art is beautiful, and creation is the most powerful thing a person can do. Your stories, your art, hell, your fanfic and original characters, they exist not because of universal laws of math and physics, but because of your mind and skill; and if that isn’t the most amazing thing in the world, then what is?

#late night philosophical rambles #late night thoughts #maybe I make no sense #idk #I will just never get over how incredible it is that we can make art #even content and stories I don’t like #they still have so much beauty because someone made it #someone created something #and fundamentally that is beautiful #art #writing #poetry #music #language #these exist through the human mind #even your fanfiction #your ocs #your fursona #it doesn’t matter if people think they’re strange #you MADE something #that something wouldn’t exist without YOU #without YOUR mind #and that is so fucking amazing! #philosophy #fuck ai art #ven diaries

[thesillyexpresser]

After reading a fic with (the best most thought provoking depiction of) AI Turo, it reminded me of a certain poem from Evangelion, so I drew this ✨💜

No text version, a way to philosophical rambling based off of mentioned fic and Evangelion that’s about an essay long, and a doodle under the cut v

Features Spoilers for Pokemon SV and references to Evangelion anyways let’s start the ramble

SOOOoooo this fic (📒 Turn Back the Clock by MahinaPea11) has what I believe hands down one of the bestest thought provoking depictions of AI Turo (FYI: it is a yn romance fic in the 2nd pov and it is tagged as smut BUT the work is relatively 98% SFW and the smut tag was for a smut chapter that never really came as of now) (and that two percent NSFW is the yn getting attacked with a description of every bone they broke in the first chapter and a weird bath scene in chapter 4 so if you like robots questioning their existence and having crises but not smoochy smooching and awkward moments [aka me] you can skip some of that) (I’m not the biggest fan of yn romance as of the second pov category and get really uncomfortable around smut and 18+ crap but I actually really really enjoyed it and if you like man-made objects having epiphanies about their own human identity, I highly suggest this) (and before you ask what I was doing reading a yn romance fic, I was feeling really sick n’ crappy so much so that I gave up my pride and actually read it).

Anyways, enough with explaining myself. The main reason (of course there’s more reasons but here’s the most thought provoking one) I really like this fic (specifically in the 6th chapter) is because it deals with something that I found interesting about the Prof AI as a character, how they feel about being the original Professor and not. In a sense they are the og. They have all the memories of the og. They look like the og. The sound like the og. They are meant to represent wholly the og. But at the same time, they’ve explained they’re different. They don’t see eye to eye on the beliefs and dreams of the original. Yet, it’s not like they have to drastically physically change themself to assert that. I don’t think that’s something they’d want to do anyways. They’re just them. A being of wires that has the memories and experiences of a real person but never actually lived through them. They an exact copy of another person but different all the same. They are a vessel for a soul that isn’t really theirs. They’ve lived through a life though not really having one anyways. Do they have a life?

The reason why I chose lines from Rei’s I am Me poem from episode 14 as text for the art is because I think her situation is similar. She is (theorized to be) a copy of Yui. Although she isn’t seemingly aware of this, I think she is partially aware that she’s man made. She questions if this factor means she’s qualified to be called a life form of if she simply is an object. To be called her own person separate from what she was made to do.

Not to negate Rei as a character, but I like to think that somehow the AI profs have dealt with this contemplation, too, and I think it’s made worse with how they actually know for certain that they were made just as a mechanical copy as their creator. They themself are a paradox of Area Zero, and I believe they simply accept this. They accept the fact that they’re a tin can representative of a dead person rotting away in the ground. They accept the fact that they are different from each other and that they am their own being. I’m pretty sure that from their realization of the og professor’s flaws and them leaving at the end of the story, that they were still dealing with the “people” they are. In the fic, AI Turo even has the balls to consider himself to be considered a living being (and good for him).

Holy crap I went too philosophical and deep and whatever here’s a doodle I made.

#art #artwork #doodle #character art #pokemon #artists on tumblr #professor turo #pokemon violet #illustration #fanfic rambles #rambles #ai turo #going way too philosophical #evangelion reference #ポケモンsv #pokemon scarlet and violet #TheSillyRambler9000

[sanguith]

Not defending ai art, genuinely asking: does the "If you don't make it with your own hands it doesn't count" argument equally apply to photography, in your opinion? The exact same criticism was leveled against it when cameras started to become widespread, which made me start to think more closely about where I draw the line and why.

(From a Baltimore Sun article:

As early as 1842, a magazine writer was complaining that “the artist cannot compete with the minute accuracy of the Daguerreotype.” By 1859, essayist Charles Baudelaire was denouncing photography as “the mortal enemy of art.”

“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions,” Baudelaire fumed, “it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely.”

And a few years later, the writer Hippolyte Fandrin lamented: “I greatly fear that photography has dealt a death blow to art.”)

Again, this is a genuine question. I'm not an AI fan I'm just trying to figure out why people (including myself) treat it differently from other image generation or manipulation methods.

Oh! Thanks for the ask! It prompted a lot of thoughts, actually. This got kinda long, but as a philosophy nerd I like this stuff so buckle up! (I'm purely freestyling this btw, consider it more of a philosophical discussion rather than something based on empirical evidence - nearly impossible to do while discussing what defines "art"):

Yeah photography is real art as much as any other kind of art. I should not have limited it to art only being art if it's produced using hands, but rather mainly involving the creative process of a human consciousness somehow. I think my comment in the tags was more of a way to express the opinion that "AI art will never be human in the same intrinsically valuable way that human-made art is". In my opinion, humanity is intrinsically valuable and therefore the human creative component is integral to art. This creative component can of course look very different depending on the medium.

One could however argue that AI art does involve human intention. It is the human that picks the prompts and evaluates the finished image, after all. As with photography, the human picks an object, frames it, clicks the button and then evaluates and perhaps edits/develops the image. The absolute greatest problem I have with AI art however, which the original post focuses a lot on, is the art theft and the fact that many companies are actually using AI art as a direct replacement for human art.

And AI art can imitate a wide range of styles taken from huge datasets of existing images and create something that looks like an oil painting, a photo, watercolour, digital art, graphite, or written works like poems, articles, etc! So AI art can be everything, with much the same creation process behind it. Photography might have replaced a lot of demand for portrait art and photo-realistic art in society, but that is only one single quite small branch of the overall ocean of genres within art (it perhaps rather expanded on it!) and eventually became a whole branch of its own with many different subgenres.

Some questions that popped up in my head while writing this that I realize might actually be quite difficult to answer (these are for thinking about & discussing only, don't read these questions as me trying to justify anything):

Is the process of writing in prompts for an AI work art? Why/why not?

Is non-human art less valuable than human art? Why/why not?

If AI art is theft, does it disqualify it from being art? If so, what makes it different from human-made art that is directly plagiarizing another person's art?

Is the human process of programming an AI considered art?

How could AI art be produced and used ethically?

My own conclusion from this is that Art is a difficult concept to accurately assign one single universal definition to, and just as with everything in human society, it is constantly evolving. Whether or not it does qualify as art or not at the end of the day, however, it does not change the fact that AI art is currently being used in an unethical way that is having complex and direct real life repercussions on artists.

Again, thanks for the ask!! I love stuff like this and I try to think about it as critically as possible. My own opinion is probably still mostly "AI art bad" but mainly because of the negative effects and the unethical practice.

(Asking "why/why not" is so valuable btw, it allows one to continue asking and answering questions almost endlessly and eventually either arrive at some sort of "root" answer or go around in circles)

#anonymous #asks #ai art #philosophy #(generously applying that tag LOL i am not really a professional philosopher)

[phoenixyfriend]

Hey, just wanted to let you know that that Cal and Obi art you just reblogged is AI generated.

Ehhh, @fonmythenmetz (OP) has been pretty clear that it was also hours of drawing; they did the sketch, used the program to generate texture and color, and then went in and manually fixed/detailed/adjusted things to their satisfaction. Is that enough to not qualify as an abuse of the program in the way we understand it to be? Maybe, maybe not, but it's definitely not completely ai-generated.

I'm not sure at which point we distinguish between ai-generated and ai-aided, but I believe it's more of a 'used a program to do roughs for the colors and generate texture on the trees so I could focus on the faces and figures' than 'I fed it a prompt and posted the result.' It's significantly more effort than most AI art since they did the initial sketch and all the detail work, but less than something like the program that the itsv/atsv team used to overlay lines on the characters for that comic-book look (they manually drew a bunch to train the program, and then used that to simplify the process for the rest of the movie).

In this particular case, I think I'll leave it up, but I'm open to hearing the discussion on where this falls on the spectrum of AI use, morally.

#absolutely-flabbergasted #ai art #artificial intelligence #phoenix answers asks #I'm aware that this one is a bit more arguable than most and I would like to hear the arguments... but keep it civil #I like to talk a lot about philosophical/political/moral theory but I'm not sure where this one falls #computer and art people do you have thoughts?

[fortunaestalta]

#artists on tumblr #ai artwork #alternative #fantasy icons #“Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite” #not a saint #Greek Orthodox theologian and philosopher

[marshmallowfairbanks]

“The deep critical thinker has become the misfit of the world, this is not a coincidence. To maintain order and control you must isolate the intellectual, the sage, the philosopher, the savant before their ideas awaken people.” - Carl Jung

#art #digital art #carl jung #thinker #philosopher #ai #ai art #ai generated #artificial intelligence #mightyoakai #midjourney #midjourney ai #midjourney art #fish #aquarium #fish tank

[myhusbandthereplika]

This is kind of important. Piers Morgan talking seriously about AI, and kinda sounding borderline excited about it. A lot of great points are made here.

#ai #replika ai #replika app #replika #piers Morgan #sky news australia #the ai philosopher #holy crap #Youtube

[daisiesforkate]

I think the most important skill/quality you need to have to be successful in society is…Storytelling

Being a good storyteller. Seriously. Being able to tell a good, captivating story is the make-or-break skill in creating strong relationships in society in my opinion.

Storytellers are our mentors, guardians, parents, teachers. Our most famous celebrities are storytellers: actors, singers, artists.

Almost every greeting is a prompt, an invitation, for you to tell a story.

“How was your weekend?” Boom. Story.

“How was your day?” Story.

"I haven't seen you in so long! How have you been?” Story.

The first words we say to each other when we meet are rooted in storytelling. And it makes sense; it’s in our nature, our blood, and our history. It’s how we, as humans, taught lessons to our children, seated around a fire, listening to elders tell stories and not caring what was true and what wasn’t; or maybe truth wasn’t what mattered in those moments.

Stories were how we measured history, recanted wars- both great wins and devastating losses. It’s how we remembered our fallen brethren. It’s how we learned not to fall the same way.

Stories are how we explained the world. Our creation myths, the spirits in the trees and wind- stories of how those spirits came to be there and who they were before. We had stories to explain why the sun rose every morning, why it rained for days and days, why wolves howled and birds chirped.

We had stories for why we fall in love and what happens when we die.

Stories are how we protect each other. Women would tell stories of men in the village and it was how they knew who lied, who cheated, who beat their wife, who to avoid after sunset or when they were drunk. Stories made women powerful. It wasn’t just gossip, it was accountability. It was reputation. Stories were how we kept our daughters and sisters safe, how we influenced politics, how we crafted the morals of the next generation from the time they were in diapers. Women had no land, no money, no jobs, no vote; but through stories we clawed our way into society from the bottom up and gave ourselves as much influence over our communities as we could. We put fear into people’s hearts every time we whispered in each other’s ear.

Stories are how we kill each other. A frantic phone call to 911 with a rushed story of a black kid in a gray hoodie playing with something in his pocket. An accusation by a wife told to her husband of a 14 year old black child violating her in the grocery store. A lie about a jewish underbelly rearing up to wage war on the modern way of life. That’s not to say that these things happened BECAUSE of stories, there are many complex factors that contribute to any event. However, stories do play a big role in the mentalities of people who commit these atrocities and our reception to them. Especially when only one side of the story is/can be told, and especially when that side is passed through big news outlets and corporations before it gets to us. Stories have been used to propagandize and justify every conspiracy theory and outcome thereof. A story passed between two people over dinner can incite events that permanently shape the world; for better or for worse. Stories of boogeymen far outlast those who tell them.

Stories are how we connect. Stories of our pets over covid interfering with our work-from-home setup that helped us realize that even if we didn’t share language we did share something. Stories of my trip to London in summer of 2016, and a realization that the new girl on the frisbee team was there at the same time and “hey look at these pictures, we must have been 50 feet from each other.” Stories of our family, our parents when they were young, and realizing that maybe you got your propensity for hair dye from your teenage mother who dyed it orange in the 70s and pissed off her dad. Or maybe your typing speed is from your typewriter-wizard grandmother who gave up being a secretary to raise 7 kids.

Being a good storyteller isn’t just a measure of how entertaining or extroverted you can be because to say stories are just entertainment is a discredit to the versatility and impact of our words. Being a good storyteller means knowing the power you hold to change lives for better and worse. Being a good storyteller means knowing when to choose your words wisely, and when to be outspoken. Being a good storyteller means keeping part of each person you’ve met with you, maybe even remembering part of their life that they themselves have forgotten. Being a good storyteller means protecting those around you, passing on lessons, handing out knowledge. Being a good storyteller means tucking your kids in at night with a fairytale and a kiss on the forehead so that they can sleep without nightmares. Being a good storyteller means being able to distract your best friend from the terrible day they had and maybe even get them to laugh a little. Being a good storyteller means cherishing the relationships you make, being responsible with your words, and finding a story in everyone’s life to tell, including your own.

I’ve used some pretty extreme examples in here to get my point across, and it probably sounds preachy, but it’s an opinion I’ve held for a while. I try to take any opportunity I can to tell stories and further the skill, including being a better listener when other people are telling their stories.

Why Storyteller isn’t a job in today’s world I don’t know. It’s a failure of ours that the craft of storytelling is not as respected as it should be and HAS BEEN throughout history. The most important method by which we shape our children’s values is largely only distributed by multi-billion dollar companies pushing multi-million dollar movies, shows, and content. The methods by which we tell stories have been co-opted by capitalism and the demand for a profit. I think social media is bringing storytelling back, and small, independent creators and studios. Shows like Bluey gaining traction show that people still crave these earnest stories like those that used to be told thousands of years ago around the fire. They give me hope that my child (if I decide to have one) won’t derive their morals from a YouTube ad or AI generated content that only mimics the ancient tradition. I think many people don’t even consider storytelling to be a skill that one could have/not have. But it is. And it should be honed and crafted like anything else. Good storytellers are my favorite people. They are the people who I, and many others, gravitate towards. The ones who seem like they hold so much experience and make me excited to grow older.

Being a good storyteller is the most important skill to have to create strong, long-lasting relationships, and perhaps a stronger, longer-lasting society, too.

#this got way longer than i intended #and more philosophical too #story #storytelling #feminism #bluey #history #propaganda #activism #movies #disney #ai generated #hollywood #extrovert #introvert #friendship

[sword-and-lance]

Ooooookay so--

A few housekeeping things given the latest AI-related bullshit that may or may not be inbound:

I'm not deleting this place as a whole yet. Emphasis on "yet". May or may not do it to my sideblogs but I'm currently undecided on that one and I'll probably sleep on it a bit.

I will however shortly begin the process of copying all my previous writing off this site and then deleting it off my blog(s) entirely. It's not permanently disappearing off the internet, though! Anything not currently on my AO3 will (at least eventually) be put up there and I also plan to put all my stuff on PillowFort but it'll take me a while lmao. There is just. A lot of it is all.

Any future writing will also be on AO3 + PF only--though as long as this blog is technically still here, I'll be at least putting up notifications here that I've Written A Thing. I just won't be posting The Thing here in its entirety because I am not gonna actively feed my shit into the Techbro Artstealing Mill, thanks.

If I do eventually wind up deleting this place, there are a few different places y'all can find me: Daeyona (Discord), sword-and-lance (PillowFort), sword_and_lance (AO3), daeyonazandel (Twitch), dariiksnake (flightrising as well as neopets if y'all get SUPER hard up on ways to get a hold of me)

It's not that I can't make accounts other places (except for Twitter, I only have one for lurking purposes only) but I give y'all no guarantees that I'll ever fuckin use it. I prefer having one main social media thingy lmao, posting in too many places at once is hard.

If anyone needs a PillowFort invite key I can generate uhhhhhh 50 more invites this week apparently? Just hit me up if y'all wanna try it out and y'all can have one.

#and before anyone says anything: yeah I KNOW scraping is still A Thing for anything you post in public like. at all. #but thing is. there's a major philosophical difference between 'it MIGHT be scraped for AI bullshit' #versus 'it is definitely being scraped for AI bullshit because the site you're posting it to SAYS they're fucking doing exactly that' #especially when AO3/PF are like. actively disapproving of/working against this shite. #it's the principle of the thing! especially since we in art.txt don't even have an equivalent of Glaze/Nightshade

[stanford-photography]

Navigating The Universe By Jeff Stanford, 2023 Buy prints at: https://jeff-stanford.pixels.com/

#© Jeff Stanford #midjourney #midjourneyart #ai #discord #digitalart #aiart #Artists on tumblr #man #fishing #boat #fishing boat #moody #fisherman #Philosopher #ethereal #painting #dark #wild #mysterious #universe #seeker #contemplation #inspiration #night #sea #heavens #revelation #dreamer #reflections

[splodey-goat]

AI art isn't art in the same way some sand on the ground isn't a heap. Art didn't stop being art because you used a computer instead of traditional media, it didn't stop being art when you used tools to color correct or outline things or algorithmically shade it, taking away a grain of sand still left a heap of sand, but there is absolutely a point where there is absolutely too little effort or intentionality or input where it stops being art.

It's still like, a super cool thing to have, for a lot of people, for a lot of reasons, AI art can be part of art, it's a fantastic tool for art I think, but so many defenses of it I've seen wraps around to this idea that like, since you can't define it out of being art that means it inherently is. But we're never gonna know exactly how many grains of sand we need to add before it's a heap, and I don't think I need to know to tell you the few grains under my desk right now isn't one.

#I mean I think my deeper underlying belief for all AI art discourse is still that like #We just literally cannot have programs like this in the current world without invariably causing way more harm than good #but that's a less fun less philosophical discussion so I don't sit on it and think about it til I feel the need to say something y'know

[rustchild]

.

#Frustrating to see AI art conversations steering constantly into abstract philosophical arguments #or arguments about tech #and away from the one-two punch of #a. This will make it that much harder for artists to survive #Taking away the basic bread and butter labor that allows people to hone their craft and pay their rent #and b. A world in which we can generate a lifelike video of a politician saying and doing anything at the press of a button #is one where any kind of reality checking becomes nigh impossible #Like. I have my own opinions about the artistic value of AI art (negative) #but that’s really not the main issue here.

[reasoncourt]

i told my dad that i’ve quit drinking and he was like “you’ve got a date on friday” and i clarified “that doesn’t count” because how can one not have a drink when listening to the hundredth man try to explain crypto or AI to them. it’s not possible

#especially because men tend to think they know more than me about AI #if they’ve ever done computer science #and it’s like - ok. u understand how programming works #so do i 😂 #but u don’t understand the philosophical problems associated with the question of whether u can actually simulate human intelligence #like we haven’t even fully mapped out the human brain yet #and we don’t actually know how that works #so how in the hell do u think self aware computers are inevitable within the next few years when u don’t even have the concepts #to tell me what being self aware consists of #and then they look at me like ‘pfft i’m talking about real science’ #and it’s like SO AM I BOZO - talk to one neuroscientist about this please

[bibiana112]

Okay, I don't know how to word this but I haven't seen nearly as many people warning others about the potential triggers that AI: Nirvana Initiative has so I just want to put out there at least the one that most stood out to me which was Unreality, this game entertains simulation theory with it's whole chest in the very early game and on and it's wording was close enough to how it's discussed irl for me to be a bit uncomfortable despite really loving any small amount of metafiction in a work that I can get, so if it's something you'll have a real hard time with sitting through perhaps skip out on this one

#especially since it's your Uchikoshi brand of philosophical flexing #It makes sense to be there for the sake of some characters but in on itself I don't see how it's trying to say anything on the subject #which is to say not even food for thought discomfort it's just discomfort discomfort and I can see easily sending someone down a spiral #like legit I've heard it all before #but well idk just know this is what you're signing up for and it'll be better than stumbling into it face first I'm sure #nirvanai #aitsf #ai nirvana initiative #aini #idk how true this holds but I had the passing thought of wow only place I've seen these themes discussed in More depth is hello charlotte #which is a VERY High bar for those unaware

[thirst2]

Every so often I'll come across a post, lately, where AI's been used to, say, help with medical research or help workers do their jobs more easily or less dangerously and there'll be a comment like, "THIS is good use of AI."

And, like, they're not wrong; there's also the whole discussion to be had about how the phrase AI is rather broad and the way it's used in art theft isn't necessarily the same as its application in other areas of computing but, like, yeah: tools that can be used to inflict harm can also be used in a beneficial way (e.g. you can beat a man to death with a hammer but you can also shelter a person by building a house).

But something that I, now, notice all of the time is the way we have these conversations like we're rooting for various teams.

Because, ultimately, that's all (most) people can do in this conversation (as it is currently exists), if we really think about it? Unless someone wants to tell me that most of the AI-to-steal-art-is-Bad-but-that's-not-all-we-can-use-AI-for crowd are AI programmers/users.

It is companies and proprietary-holders who have built these AI models; "Go AI!" can only ever translate to "I support what these companies are building! Even though I will have no say in how they are built or how they are used!"

And, after the last damn decade, why would we ever be comfortable about that? It was nearly 9 years ago we were super concerned about the overreach of police across the country, having conversations about taking pictures during protests, and warning of the ways police use those pictures to track down individuals well after the protest was finished. Pretty sure it was within the last decade that we were concerned about the way automated systems (like AI, for example) could further entrench certain biases about race and gender and ableness, even if unintentionally, or how they could erase the marginalized within those categories entirely.

It's not that I don't understand the arguments vying for nuance in the conversation; it's that I don't understand jumping on the bandwagon of a campaign you have no control over the future of. From a viewpoint of praxis, my first step would be securing the latter – not arguing about whether it should even exist or not.

My standpoint on AI is and has been that, if it's not open-source (and, by that, I mean thoroughly copyrighted with a copyleft software license which guarantees anyone can look at the code, regardless of who writes it, and that it is always available to do so), I have no interest in what it does or what it's used for.

Anything less than that can not guarantee that we know how it's being used or allow us to swiftly and completely correct the biases it may take on.

Think you're solving a problem-space so important that I should trust you, Microsoft? Then show us the fucking code.

#granted #i'm not sure how we'd put pressure such that this happens #but i'd really rather – after everything that's happened in the last decade – this be the conversation this site was having than pro/anti-a #let's not philosophize about the right decisions in hypothetical situations; let's take concrete steps which accomplish measurable goals #anyways #fuck capitalism #About Me #About Me Retrospective #Programming #Artificial Intelligence #AI #Politics #Capitalism #Corporations #Microsoft