> Eloquent, moving, and more-or-less exactly what people said when cameras first hit the scene.
This is a non sequitur. Cameras have not replaced paintings, assuming this is the inference. Instead, they serve only to be an additional medium for the same concerns quoted:
The process, which is an iterative one, is what leads you
towards understanding what you actually want to make,
whether you were aware of it or not at the beginning.
Just as this is applicable to refining a software solution captured in code, just as a painter discards unsatisfactory paintings and tries again, so too is it when people say, "that picture didn't come out the way I like, let's take another one."
Photography’s rapid commercialisation [21] meant that many painters – or prospective painters – were tempted to take up photography instead of, or in addition to, their painting careers. Most of these new photographers produced portraits. As these were far cheaper and easier to produce than painted portraits, portraits ceased to be the privilege of the well-off and, in a sense, became democratised [22].
Some commentators dismissed this trend towards photography as simply a beneficial weeding out of second-raters. For example, the writer Louis Figuier commented that photography did art a service by putting mediocre artists out of business, for their only goal was exact imitation. Similarly, Baudelaire described photography as the “refuge of failed painters with too little talent”. In his view, art was derived from imagination, judgment and feeling but photography was mere reproduction which cheapened the products of the beautiful [23].
What stole the joy you must have felt, fleetingly, as a child that beheld the world with fresh eyes, full of wonder?
Did you imagine yourself then, as your are now, hunched over a glowing rectangle. Demanding imperiously that the world share your contempt for the sublime.
Share your jaundiced view of those that pour the whole of themselves into the act of creation, so that everyone might once again be graced with wonder anew.
I hope you can find a work of art that breaks you free of your resentment.
Ah well, I'm neurodivergent and it’s challenging for me to write a comment while remembering that others don’t have access to my thoughts and might interpret things differently. And it's too late to edit it now
What I wanted to show is that, clearly different from a camera or other devices, AI can copy originality. OPs comment was pretty original in it's wording, and gpt came pretty close imo. It really wasn't meant as a low effort comment
If AI can copy originality, we should be questioning our concept of originality. Not that it isn't a very suspect concept already. It's something to praise children for (autonomously combining the concepts provided to them) - but I've had the unwisdom of lurking long enough on the pre-LLM noosphere to get a glimpse of what gets done to the real originals since time self-fulfillingly immemorial.
'sides, I'm also neurocute af and feel acutely endangered by stuff that's effectively channeled: expressions which represent coherent agentic thought, yet are not bound to the volition of any individual embodied organism by regular personal accountability. If psychology is any indication, as non-augmented humans we're already not consciously aware of half our driving forces, and that's been trouble enough throughout history. How do you find it at all safe for the environment to broadcast Big Nobody's thoughts towards sentient beings?
AI is the linguistic instrument of those who cast away their capacity for bona fide verbal cognition as a condition of entering the hierarchy. They're a rather dangerous bunch, what with no beans to spill or marbles to lose. Subtle too, "somehow" got all normies working for 'em and usually not even knowing it till it's too late. Tell em I said hi!
Plot twist. The comment you love is the cynical one, responding to someone who clearly embraces the new by rising above caution and concern. Your GPT addition has missed the context, but at least you've provided a nice little paradox.
What I especially enjoy is seeing those people accuse AI of being a "parrot" or a "mindless next-token predictor." Inevitably, these accusations are levied in comments whose every thought and token could have been lifted verbatim from any of a thousand such comments over the past few years, accompanied by the rusty squeak of goalpost wheels.
This is a non sequitur. Cameras have not replaced paintings, assuming this is the inference. Instead, they serve only to be an additional medium for the same concerns quoted:
Just as this is applicable to refining a software solution captured in code, just as a painter discards unsatisfactory paintings and tries again, so too is it when people say, "that picture didn't come out the way I like, let's take another one."