Posts
Comments
These systems will always have the issue of the uncanny valley, especially the closer it tries to mimick photo realism the moe uncanny valley. Not even the best CGI can go past this more or less. Hence many I causing Nyerere argue that live action movies should use less CGI or only use it as a spice cause it does not leave as good impact as practical effects, people can still see what is real and is CG. And the more real CG tries to be the greater risk for uncanny valley. The current Last of US show feels more real to asuence because they use a lot of practical effects, the clickers and bloaters are made not with CGI but with suits and prosthetics.
Progress is also a myth, degrading human arts and the value of them and striping them of the creative and artistic process is not progress, reducing the value of human skill and growth is not progress, it is just further dumbing down humanity and creating a wave mediocrity . It is simply giving every aspect of your life to companies like Open AI, these tech giants like AU researcher Gary Marcus points out have no desire to play fair, so not open their research for peer reviews release systems despite risks. It solved and serve their venture capitalists investors, many who would lsay be to see a world where they would not need artists.
Despite the human losss and cultural loss that would mean.
Now for some more ideological oriented tech utopians it is part of creating AGI and a future tech utopia which I would describe similar to the dystopia in the movies Wall E and the novel Brave New World.
Is that what we want? A future if a passive dumb down humanity reduces to a consumer in an endless stream of content. The existential risks are also there m, like Crichton’s film Westworld something could go wrong even in a robot filled theme park and you would loose control.
Where a crises of meaning will happen as human labour or activity will no longer have a real impact. This will effect mental health negatively.
Making art is good for mental health and remaining mentally sharp in older age. It is a self expression and through the creative process and friction you get growth. AI generation takes that all out of it. It focuses on output and quick gratification, but quick gratification does not make people happy in the long run. We need friction in the creative process to feel creatively fulfilled.
The Hadza in Africa who live as Hunter gatherers, sure they have problems we do not have but they suffer very little depression and anxiety disorders. A reason for that is that they feel community and they feel needed. Everyone contributes something to their society, everyone feels important. A world where machines do everything the feelings of alienation, meaningless etc will increase.
Secondly these systems are just hype, they are not creative, sentient or aware, they just probabilistic algorithms have massive datasets of others work with any permission or consent. They are as Gary Marcus puts autocorrect on steroids.
The mistakes they with image generators going from slight uncanny valley to absolute horror with dead eyes, zombie faces to not being able to do hands, Chat GPTspouting bullshit to even dangerous BS, or self driving cars not slowing down when a human holds a stop sign in front of it are inbuilt into the system. You can never get anything specific.
These models have no grasp or relationship with the outside world. It does big know why it creates or even what a hand is. It has no intentionality. Chat GPT does not know what it writes it just hopes to next most likely word or phrase.
So theme making mistakes like these is a reality as they have no grasp or knowledge of the world. Hence why image generators are the best at making horror and uncanny valley because sometimes what they make are so unhuman that no human would make them.
So please tone down the current AI hype and there has been many in many the past, a new AI winter is coming but now tabla to fools in Open AI and the rest we will deal with more dangerous forms of media manipulation, deep fakes and fake media then ever. More cheating and faking than ever. With more energy stealing systems than ever hence it good for the people environment. In fact just having everyone having self-driving cars would demand more energy production than ever. The AI utopia would not be realistic without degrading our environment and recourses. There is no free lunch and no escape from entropy.
Just like in inGen in Crichton’s novel Jurassic park or Delos his film Westworld, these companies never thought about what they should do, only what they could do to get greedy investors. This is the horror when AI research as moves from transparent universities to corporations. They have not gone through the philosophical and social implications of what they are doing. Driven by money and utopian goals.
Even worse many of these tech utopians scoff at Fields’s like psychology, neurology, anthropology and philosophy which tries to give a different perspective and show awful low respect to human values and arts.
I also see it here peoples say that artists will be replaced in the comments, making art is a human activity and something defines modern human behavior.
Humans will not stop and other humans want the human factor he connection. An AI avatar will never beat areal human actor I connecting with the real world and human feelings.
These AI systems are not creative, not sentient or have any theory of mind or insert being of human feelings, thoughts or experience. They cannot give anything specific and they are not artists or intelligent.
The amount of dual respect I have seen against especially visual artists among the tech utopians is heartbreaking, anthropomorphising these machines or even worse de-humanizing the artist, as just another algorithmic system.
We do not know how human creative process and inspiration work nor how to replicate consciousness . It is beyond the grasp of what we know. So artists will not be replaced.
Don’t fall for the current hype.