Lobachevsky's recent activity
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Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech
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Comment on Ed Zitron: How to argue with an AI booster in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentMind elaborating on this? From all the studies and calculations that I've seen I've always come away with the impression that its energy usage is within the ballpark of a large forum (like reddit)...Mind elaborating on this? From all the studies and calculations that I've seen I've always come away with the impression that its energy usage is within the ballpark of a large forum (like reddit) and way way lower than something like a video hosting service, such as tiktok or youtube. And that in terms of output it is more energy efficient than a human creator sitting at his/her computer. So if that's true, seems like the only way AI could be considered an environmental disaster is if one presupposes AI is inherently bad.
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Comment on ‘Being short is a curse’: the men paying thousands to get their legs broken – and lengthened in ~life.men
Lobachevsky LinkI have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've...I have come to believe that the source of the whole issues between men and women in dating is the fact that men are almost always the pursuers and women are almost always being pursued. I've recently experienced what it's like to switch sides and oh my god being pursued is incredible in the way how in control you feel, like you cannot possibly do ANYTHING wrong that is going to turn off the one pursuing. It was liberating and awesome, but on the other hand it can also be annoying or scary, and I also realized I have absolutely no idea how to say no and especially how to say no without feeling bad about it.
On the other hand, it also gave me extremely valuable perspective of what it feels like on the other side. I genuinely think that if we all experienced both sides of this (that is, if both genders pursued each other evenly) we would all be better at understanding how the other person feels. Most of my female friends have experienced the whole "oh I didn't realize he was into me this whole time, we were just friends" which I think is because they don't know how does it look to pursue someone when you don't know if they're into it. And guys can be oblivious as to when they definitely should pursue or indeed when they absolutely should stop - because they don't know what it's like to be pursued and what signals come from it.
That being said, I don't believe this dynamic will ever significantly change. It feels so damn good to be on the passive/receiving end that I don't think anyone who's in that position would change that dynamic very much. Which is a shame, because I do think it's ultimately a mistake, but what can you do.
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Comment on Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentSee but when I read takes like this, I always ask myself - can I trust the human though? Of course ideally you have a compassionate, competent, trained individual that dedicates plenty of their...See but when I read takes like this, I always ask myself - can I trust the human though? Of course ideally you have a compassionate, competent, trained individual that dedicates plenty of their time to help you deal with your problems in the best way possible. Unless you're filthy rich and can afford personal staff like that though you're just dealing with whoever is available - in the case of therapists that's expensive people who see you very briefly and then a large number of other people and who then need therapy themselves working a job like that. I'm not saying it's impossible to find good therapy, it's just not that easy and I'd personally rather have something available. Ideally it's a close friend or a relative of course, but I can see how it would be useful to have, especially in the past, when I was a teen and growing up. Some things that we all go through and don't require specialized therapy to treat, more like good life advice. Of course for serious conditions therapy should be the way, but I'm sure you are aware that people with serious conditions like depression often avoid therapy, so again perhaps it's better than nothing.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentNo we aren't. Almost everything I mentioned doesn't have anything to do with being a digital artist, it's entirely specific to the domain of AI generation. That being said, I don't see anything...I would add that we’re no longer comparing skill ceilings fairly - we are now looking at the skill ceiling of a digital artist using AI in a separate medium, not just prompt engineering.
No we aren't. Almost everything I mentioned doesn't have anything to do with being a digital artist, it's entirely specific to the domain of AI generation. That being said, I don't see anything unfair about this. A photographer with background in art will benefit from knowing the principles of light and shadow, color theory, composition among others. An artist with a background in 3D modeling will benefit from knowledge of construction and perspective. Why is that arbitrarily not part of the skill ceiling? At the end all of these share image creation as a commonality. Though I will reiterate - even with that constraint, even if you limit it to purely generation specific things, the skill ceiling is still high - look at my previous comment for examples of that.
It feels like you’re getting wrapped up on the ease of use of taking a picture, vs. the skill ceiling involved in actual professional-level photography.
I'm just applying it to both, well, fairly. You mentioned both skill floor and skill ceiling, I addressed both. Skill floor of photography is much lower than skill floor of AI generation. Skill ceiling of both is high as well, not extremely low like you were suggesting.
But that last 20%? That’s where careers are made and that’s where you see truly professional work.
If your metric now is "it must be professional work with a possible career", I'll point out that people have been making good money from AI generation for a while now. There are openly AI generative patreons up with thousands in estimated monthly income (I won't be able to find an example right now, but feel free to search). I don't think this is a good metric personally, but even that AI generation passes.
In conclusion I'll just reiterate that the question that I am seeking an answer to is "what makes AI generation fundamentally different from any other technological advancement in the past that were accepted as a new medium" and so far I haven't found a satisfactory answer unfortunately. It was interesting insight nonetheless, good day to you as well.
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Comment on Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentCloud based models typically are very censored. However the reality is that a lot of people want this functionality for obvious reasons. It's also very difficult to completely prevent this, people...Cloud based models typically are very censored. However the reality is that a lot of people want this functionality for obvious reasons. It's also very difficult to completely prevent this, people have been forcing chatgpt into smut mode since its inception. At that point I don't think the company should be held responsible if the user goes out of their way to engage in this kind of thing.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky (edited )Link ParentSorry, it's not clear to me how do you go from the first sentence to the second one, let alone the third one. Mind elaborating as to how exactly do you arrive at that conclusion? I disagree of...That said, yes, they indeed find patterns, and then they go on to generate visuals / text / audio based on the patterns with which they are familiar without any possibility to build on them. It is entirely reductive and cannot be anything but. <..> it is always going to feel like a rehash
Sorry, it's not clear to me how do you go from the first sentence to the second one, let alone the third one. Mind elaborating as to how exactly do you arrive at that conclusion? I disagree of course, so it's not so obvious to me.
It’s lacking the humanity that creates novelty. I’ve never once seen a piece of generative AI art that inspires me.
I have and I don't think it's because I'm a weirdo that gets inspired by soulless crap as you would perhaps put it. It's because I look past the surface level examples of "generative AI art". Practically any statement along the lines of "all of the AI art that I've seen is bad" will be an example of toupee fallacy. You're right, there's plenty of low effort garbage slop out there, but there's plenty of low effort garbage slop digital art period. It's not as easy to pump out in large numbers, but that's not really the point of contention here. This leads me to my biggest disagreement:
There is still some barrier of entry to proper photography, analog or digital. <..> the skill floor and the skill ceiling are so incredibly close to each other. Do you know how to type words into a prompt? You can generate AI art.
I cannot see how you can possibly say this when everyone has a smartphone and everyone uses their smartphone camera. Even my grandma uses her smartphone camera. It is quite literally push a button get good results thanks to the built-in algorithms that do the processing for you. I don't agree that generating AI art has a lower skill floor. And I don't agree that gen AI has a low skill ceiling. I guess it makes sense that you would think that considering you think it's impossible to create anything good with gen AI, but the whole point with gen AI, LLMs included, is that you pretty much have to integrate it with other tools, use the right model for the task, or even do some training of your own. That's how you get good results and there's a lot of very advanced techniques there. It's also unexplored, you've got people hiding their metadata because they've figured out some combination of things that work well. When it comes to visual art, being a trained artist is hugely helpful, because your knowledge of what is a good art piece, what's good composition, what makes things look appealing, is very useful. Not only that, but hybrid workflows are very powerful. You can use area specific prompts or use your sketches or paint over things to have fine grained control over what the model does. That's why I used the comparison to using premade textures earlier - because it is in essence the same thing: streamlining some part of your work to achieve better results faster.
I'm curious what do you think about this since if I understand correctly that's where your opinion on gen AI is rooted from. By the way, I do think your conclusions with those assumptions aren't incorrect, it's just I don't believe those assumptions to be true frankly.
I encourage you to especially check out 0x29A’s responses because he definitely speaks better to this than I can
I've seen you mention it before and I have read those responses. I don't really think they're of interest to me since they seem to come from the point of inherent dislike for the thing itself (EDIT: judging by the latest reply I was right to avoid it), whereas as I mentioned I'm looking for an answer as to why this thing would be inherently different from all the other things that were brought by technological advancements before (and didn't cause the arts to die in the process, not even once). Hence I replied to you since you seemed to be more interested in the discussion. Thanks for that, by the way, I really appreciate your detailed and thoughtful comments so far!
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentSorry, I wasn't clear. I am not trying to say that commissioning a work is like directing a film. I'm trying to say that you cannot gatekeep creating art behind execution, because clearly, such as...I don’t believe that commissioning a work is a fair comparison to directing a film.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I am not trying to say that commissioning a work is like directing a film. I'm trying to say that you cannot gatekeep creating art behind execution, because clearly, such as in the case of a movie director or a composer or Sol LeWitt providing directions for other people to execute can absolutely in an of itself be considered creating art.
The nature of generative AI (in the whole-cloth way we’re discussing it at the moment, acknowledging there are other minutiae that we are ignoring to your point) is that it’s only going to chop and screw what already exists.
Where is this coming from exactly? I highly disagree with this take, but I'm not sure how to go about it since you didn't really provide any supporting evidence or anything particularly specific. Anyway, machine learning algorithms don't "chop and screw", they find patterns in the data. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach, it is in fact very effective apparently at understanding both language and visual arts.
it simply isn’t going to be as enjoyable of an experience
With respect, that's just personal preference and isn't really relevant to the discussion in my opinion. I don't find composing music enjoyable or indeed traditional drawing methods. I'm not wired to enjoy these and it's part of the reason I didn't get that far. I enjoy playing around with various diffusion models or LLMs way more and if that's your criteria, then apparently that's way more "art" to me.
why not just focus that energy into actually writing for writing’s sake?
Because I don't/won't/can't/don't want to. Just like some people play music and some people draw and some people dance and some people dress up, we all are different and we like different forms of self expression. I think saying "huh, playing piano, well have you tried DRAWING instead", or "watercolors, my my, have you tried Photoshop, that's a real artist's medium" would at best be very rude. I'm not saying you are doing it in the same way, but so far I don't see a fundamental distinction other than it's a new medium that is acceptable to be elitist towards.
To me, it rings pretty hollow, and feels like you’re adding in a middleman that doesn’t need to be there.
That middleman is called medium. Until we are able to project our minds, we are stuck with that middleman, its limitations and boundaries. I think I mentioned already the way modern cameras are sophisticated automated machines that pass what you "see" through multitude of algorithms. Why are you not against that middleman? But even the most simple medium, like a pencil, is a middleman that you have to adapt to. You won't be able to add any color if all you have to work with is graphite, even if the vision in your mind is colorful. AI models are the same, they have their quirks which you have to work around, you have to learn how to prompt them, which models are good for what, which tools you can use to make the vision more accurate. But again, any medium is like that, until we can project our minds you are necessarily compromising some of your inner vision when translating it into reality.
To avoid dragging on, I'm simply looking for a brief answer to a simple question: what is fundamentally different about AI generation that I cannot find in any other medium before this that is considered to be a valid form of self expression and thus art? So far I have never been able to find it, and that's why to me negative views of AI gen are yet another wave of "newest technological development is bad".
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThe point I'm trying to make is that there is no need to do anything other than express yourself. Commissioning a work can absolutely be of far more "importance" than executing it. Think more...The point I'm trying to make is that there is no need to do anything other than express yourself. Commissioning a work can absolutely be of far more "importance" than executing it. Think more broadly. A movie director doesn't need to do anything other than telling others what to ("commissioning") in order for all of us to consider them the most "important" person at the top of the credits. Making decisions isn't necessary either - you could be throwing paint at the canvas and see how it lands and we could call that art and you an artist. You could set a video camera in one place, record thousands of hours of footage and then simply select some frames of it or clips of it. Sol LeWitt gets credited after his death because others simply followed his written instructions on how to execute his Wall Drawings - this one is practically maps 1 to 1 to "prompting" someone to do what you intend.
What exactly makes AI so fundamentally different that we throw these examples out of the window? It seems to me that the only prerequisite is expression and why shouldn't someone be able to express themselves by using a written prompt and selecting the appropriate results?
Mind you I'm not saying that it's as impressive as painting something from scratch, it's just I don't believe that effort is ever required for self-expression (and therefore creating art).
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThe fact that you think that the only way to use generative AI is creating whole pieces with no control over it is the issue. We are talking about the same entity here. In fact from reading this...The fact that you think that the only way to use generative AI is creating whole pieces with no control over it is the issue. We are talking about the same entity here. In fact from reading this thread my impression is that the criticism comes from belief that that's the only way to use it, when that couldn't be further from reality. That being said, even generating whole pieces still retains the authorship and creativity since, as I mentioned, execution isn't a necessary prerequisite for being credited as an author of an art piece.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentYou seem to be missing the fact that you can just use it as part of your normal process. You can generate backgrounds, enhance a sketch, proofread your writing, bounce ideas, stuff like that. For...You seem to be missing the fact that you can just use it as part of your normal process. You can generate backgrounds, enhance a sketch, proofread your writing, bounce ideas, stuff like that. For example, I can use a textured brush to save myself a lot of work, or even just grab that texture and paste it into my piece. That's what photoshop allows us to do among other things. That's automation, right? I'm removing some "humanity" from my work by letting a digital tool do some work for me. Yet no one minds it, it's just automating some part of the process.
You might say that well, the texture was made by someone so it still "keeps" that humanity when I use it. Well, what if I generated that texture with a regular old procedural generation algorithm. You know, the kind they use to create terrain in video games - it's not really random, there's rules built into it to create certain patterns. Does that suddenly remove some humanity from my piece if I used a texture generated with that algorithm? I personally don't believe so. And AI is the same thing, except those rules for generating something are discovered during the training process. Am I giving up humanity by using an AI generated texture then?
Or you might say that by using more automation you're crossing some threshold after which it becomes not "human made" anymore. How did you even pick that threshold then? Am I giving up humanity from my photos by using a smartphone or a modern camera? They perform a LOT of automatic work to make your photos look better, including taking multiple pictures and sort of averaging the best aspects of all. Used to be you had to select optimal aperture and shutter speed, nowadays the camera can do that for you. At which point are these photos not human made anymore, at what level of automation and how did you pick that? You admit yourself, AI works do require a human prompting them, curating them, editing them. You hand wave that as grasping at straws, but it's not at all clear to me why that would be the case.
Maybe you say it's just commissioning the work, asking someone else to do it, that doesn't count. Except up to this point, there were no requirements to consider something a piece of art or even assign authorship to it. Certainly you didn't have to create the work yourself, you could simply give instructions to others and they would do all the work. We don't even know if some paintings by old masters were executed by their hand or not, and yet no one ever doubts their credit. I think we've suddenly forgotten that fact in the era of AI hate.
I'll be honest with you, as someone whose artistic side hasn't had proper development but who still wants realize his vision sometimes, I am ecstatic that these tools exist and it really saddens me when there's such vitriol towards them in certain communities.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentWhy? It was a new medium, required a new skillset, simplified some aspects of the work (how many digital artists know how to mix paints?), largely moved traditional art into a niche with digital...Photography:Photoshop and Photoshop:GenAI imagery are absolutely not equitable ratios from a “get with the times” perspective.
Why? It was a new medium, required a new skillset, simplified some aspects of the work (how many digital artists know how to mix paints?), largely moved traditional art into a niche with digital being the mainstream, lowered the barrier to entry (no need to buy canvases and paints, a smartphone is sufficient, an ipad is sometimes a tool of choice even for professionals), had the exact same arguments levied against it (it's not real art, it's a cheap shortcut to real skills, it's not soulful enough).
The use of AI in photography (and the arts in general) at this point is mindless point-and-click drivel that requires little more than a pulse to operate. It is the artist’s equivalent of a “script kiddie” saying they can do the job of a photographer because they wrote a sentence describing the same picture that a photographer could ostensibly take.
But digital art was always full of poor quality amateur hour examples. Look at Deviantart since forever. Sorry, I'm not seeing a fundamental difference here. You could argue a difference in scale, which is perhaps true, but otherwise I'm not particularly convinced.
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Comment on Is AI actually useful for anyone here? in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThank you. I don't really understand why AI hate is so prevalent online. Seems like in the real world everyone is using these tools successfully to some degree with no issues. It's not...Thank you. I don't really understand why AI hate is so prevalent online. Seems like in the real world everyone is using these tools successfully to some degree with no issues. It's not particularly different from any other tech that "came for jobs". In particular I'm shocked to see digital artists repeat the exact same arguments that were levied at Photoshop back in the day - something that essentially created digital art as a medium. And the same people that have directly benefited from that are rejecting the next iteration.
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Comment on How my life changed with ADHD medication in ~life
Lobachevsky (edited )LinkI must say I nearly cried when I could relate with every single thing you said were gone/fixed for you. I've been struggling to keep up with my life in similar ways for a while now, but especially...I must say I nearly cried when I could relate with every single thing you said were gone/fixed for you.
I've been struggling to keep up with my life in similar ways for a while now, but especially the last 2 years when I started living alone. I haven't kept up with basic chores, I'm afraid of losing my job. Since I'm an immigrant, that would be completely devastating and put me at a risk of being kicked out of the country within 3 months.
Sadly, in Sweden it's nigh impossible to get help without going to a private clinic (which costs roughly $3000 just for an assessment, months of savings, not counting the cost of medication). I cannot even get a diagnosis because the specialty clinic that does them rejected my application (done with an initial psychologist appointment), basically saying that since I never lost a job, done drugs, failed education or anything like that, they're not going to look at me. Since I'm an immigrant, any of those things would destroy my life (and still might).
Even if I did get approved, it's around 2 years waiting list to get assessed. This isn't hearsay, several therapists told me this. So I'm faced with a choice - do I spend A LOT of money on the private clinic, or try to manage on my own. I don't even know if I have ADHD, if the medicine would help. I know that I relate to the symptoms, for example the ones in the OP, but I have no idea if I actually have it, or maybe I'm just disorganized and lazy. I've never really significantly considered it before, but now I'm leaning more towards getting treatment. The questionnaire (apparently ASRS- V1.1 that you mentioned in another comment) one therapist gave me I (totally unexpectedly for myself) answered "frequently" on every single thing (like "do you interrupt people", "do you finish sentences", other simple things like that) except one, which was "do you get up from your chair in meetings". Which I thought was a bit ridiculous, but apparently some people have that.
Anyway, sorry for ranting, I'm super happy for you OP and it gives me more courage to maybe spend my savings on the treatment and hope that it works for me too.
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Comment on I don’t care whether you use ChatGPT to write in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentI thought the point of the article was precisely that it doesn't really matter where it comes from. Low quality is low quality, regardless whether it's made by a human to optimize for Google...I thought the point of the article was precisely that it doesn't really matter where it comes from. Low quality is low quality, regardless whether it's made by a human to optimize for Google search, maximize clicks, by someone employed in a troll factory, or by an algorithm. All of those have existed before LLMs and while you're right that this tech allows for more of that - in the end it's not about which program is used to pump out the trash, at the end of the day it's all authored by people.
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Comment on Notorious image board 4chan hacked and internal data leaked in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentThis is not it. The Nazi bar thing is brought up all the time, but the Nazi bar is a space with limited seats and everyone is exposed to each other. You can stay in boards or even threads that...This is not it. The Nazi bar thing is brought up all the time, but the Nazi bar is a space with limited seats and everyone is exposed to each other. You can stay in boards or even threads that have their own thing going and not interact with insane people at all. 4chan is also very far from "totally unmoderated", but you're not going to be booted for disagreeing with the mods, which is how basically every other community with open registration operates at this point in my experience. Whitelisted places like tildes are perhaps an exception (hard to say). And because there's no upvotes or accounts or posting history, each post is mostly judged on its contents. It's basically the only place on the internet that I could talk about some niche/specialty topics with people who know what they're talking about.
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Comment on I'm tired of dismissive anti-AI bias in ~tech
Lobachevsky Link ParentAs far as I could tell from following the court cases, basically the only form of "stealing" they did was scraping, and even that is mostly a problem if you then distribute this data (this would...As far as I could tell from following the court cases, basically the only form of "stealing" they did was scraping, and even that is mostly a problem if you then distribute this data (this would be piracy). Basically the same reason seeding a torrent can be punished, but just viewing (i.e. copying to your machine) a movie on a pirate website isn't (the pirate website is the one breaking the law, not the viewer). So if you actually consistently apply the standards we've been using to AI companies, they're not doing anything wrong and certainly not "stealing" anything. And thank god for that, because imagine if it would be a copyright violation to base your work, no matter your contribution or how the end product changes (in this case the end product is not even in a different medium, it's a different entity entirely), on someone's copyrighted material without asking for permission or license first. It would basically be a copyright nightmare with an end to creativity, since nothing is truly "original", everything is based on something.
Now you might argue that due to various reasons like the scale of it all it needs its own regulation, which is fine, but under our current understanding of IP they seem to be in the clear. Certainly not "stealing".
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Comment on Professional writer endorses short story written by OpenAI's new creative writing model in ~books
Lobachevsky Link ParentYeah, but that doesn't go against the principle of "trying to say something". If you go even deeper at the principles of machine learning, then basically all models are "trying to do something"...Yeah, but that doesn't go against the principle of "trying to say something". If you go even deeper at the principles of machine learning, then basically all models are "trying to do something" based on their training. A simple classifier of apples vs oranges is "trying to tell you" whether an image is of an apple or an orange. That's basically all they do. And as we can see with LLMs, we can make this "trying to say something" extremely flexible. I'd argue that the big reason for hallucinations for instance is because generic models are "trying to" be a helpful assistant, and helpful assistants don't refuse orders. Simplified, sure, but the principles are there if you look for them.
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Comment on USA asks Sweden for help in the egg crisis in ~food
Lobachevsky Link ParentThe obvious point of these headlines being that since the US is doing some hostile politics towards these countries, then it's hypocritical to reach out for help. It's 100% what all of the...The obvious point of these headlines being that since the US is doing some hostile politics towards these countries, then it's hypocritical to reach out for help. It's 100% what all of the comments on reddit ended up being, god bless that website that cannot possibly stoop any lower in terms of quality of discussion. So yeah, I think it's very much done on purpose.
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Comment on USA asks Sweden for help in the egg crisis in ~food
Lobachevsky LinkI don't think it's honest to label that as "Sweden"...The industry organization Swedish Eggs
I don't think it's honest to label that as "Sweden"...
The question is not whether it's "a lot", the question is whether it's so bad compared to other online services that it deserves to be called an environmental nightmare that should be rallied against.
Well what do you mean by that? We don't need tiktok, I think we need it way less actually, and yet no one is speaking out about the horrors of how much compute is required to deliver videos to millions of people. To me it feels like outcry against dirty polluting container ships when they're actually insanely efficient compared to other transportation methods and a pretty small factor when it comes to emissions as a whole.
This is CO2 emissions, not power, but
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-54271-x