The Brutalist used AI to achieve Hungarian accents I’d say the most immediate issue here is why they used Hollywood actors and not Hungarians. But such is the film industry.
But what’s the problem? They use auto tuning and CGI all the time.
But is it a slippery slope? What’s next? AI to imitate cerebral palsy? Tom Cruise to play a black man? Eternal film careers unhindered by the actors death? Tailor made films where you choose the cast?
What’s the problem? Authenticity.
AI has its place – I’ve seen wonderful mathematical/analysis where development times were slashed – but- anything where it is involves writing/acting/ music I have a real problem.
AI is fine if you just want ones and zeros. Literature, music, acting is made wonderful by the grey between the ones and zeros. And yes – I appreciate I mixed my metaphors – but it seemed appropriate
So science yes … the arts no?
I suspect if national treasure (TM) David Hockney experimented with AI he would get a rather warm reception … he’s used a lot of technology in the past … but Damien Hirst less so.
And Matisse directed others to arrange his cut outs. Maybe that was primitive AI.
I don’t really know and I’m rather ignorant about how AI can be used … it seems to me it’s very definition is cloudy. On the one hand what most people think of when they hear AI is the searching of the whole internet in a millisecond to get an answer to a problem when really it’s also a stand alone ‘programme’ that learns and then teaches itself.
Art is a singularly human persuit. Artists will undoubtedly use AI and simply see it as another tool to be manipulated towards their individual creative ends. Artists push at boundaries, or at least the truly great ones do, AI is just another means to that end. Where it will have a catastrophic effect is in the applied arts. AI will replace countless graphic designers and illustrators to give but two examples. AI will be cheaper, quicker and easier to employ than human hands and as I’m sure all will agree the first of those things “cheaper” will win out in most circumstances.
The AI art I have seen doesn’t impress so far. It’s glossy and finished to a high degree but it’s obviously not made by a human heart, mind and hands. It’s soulless, uninteresting and bland. It lacks any definable, individual visual language.
Technically, AI isn’t searching the entire internet to provide the output – it has assembled a huge amount of information in its model which it uses. It then learns from that as well as continues to assemble information. I am paraphrasing a man from Microsoft who explain that to me when I made the same point you did. Sharing isn caring etc.
Auto tuning is great… there’s not a day goes by when I don’t wish that Elvis, James Brown and The Beatles hadn’t had the same advantages. How much better would their music have been. Sad.
Born at the wrong time, I guess.
Can’t they auto tune the tapes?
I think he’s being ironic. I read somewhere (maybe here?) that young people these days are so used to autotune that a natural singing voice, even a very good one, sounds wrong to them.
They are so very very lucky.
Quick tip: Buy the real ‘physical’ deal before you can’t… as ‘not being able to’ will come sooner than you think. I give it ten years.
Isn’t the problem also that AI (or A1, as the Trump minister calls it) that it can potentially do the same job as many actual people, thus getting them fired?
Funny now to remember how we used to assume, when predicting the future, that artificial intelligence would predominantly take over all the manual, unskilled jobs. It never occurred that creative jobs in the arts might be the first under threat.
AI can have detrimental effects on the arts potentially, but it has many other uses in which it will be superior to humans and will transform many different areas. It is certainly not all bad.
“AI is transforming medical imaging by enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. AI algorithms can analyze images more quickly and precisely than humans, identifying subtle abnormalities and patterns that might be missed, potentially leading to earlier and more accurate diagnoses. This can be particularly valuable in detecting diseases like cancer and cardiovascular conditions”
Used In Addition To human checking of medical images is most definitely a great thing, but not as a complete replacement. There could still be situations where the algorithm can miss something that an experienced human will not.
AI in military operations is really interesting. It can dramatically reduce the time to evaluate a number of information sources (in some cases, provide the means to combine the information sources in the first place) providing more accurate, more effective and much faster ‘decisions’. But the moral question about deciding to blow something up sitting with a piece of software is incredibly difficult to resolve.
Putting my sarcastic hat on for a moment I must comment that if AI will make slaughtering people more efficent then that alone makes adopting it more than worth chucking the arts into the dustbin of history. I mean who needs humans to paint, make music and write etc when the tech bros can make themselves even more obscenely wealthy by killing people faster. I know whose side I’m on.
Putting aside moral issues about war in general. If AI can help to make more accurate strikes reducing in less human loss of life that could be somewhat positive
I find myself agreeing with both of you.
Because history informs that humans have always striven to reduce the death toll during conflict. Even now in the present carnage that is being meted out in various parts of the globe one can see that noble virtue being steadfastly applied. I am completely convinced that putting AI into the hands of warmongers the world over the first thing they will do is rejoice in the new found ability to kill fewer people with more surgical strikes.*
* This sarcastic hat seems to be stuck on my head, I can’t think why.
Yes, if the perpetrators are intent on genocide then better technology isn’t going to help much. The idealist in me wonders if these days Dresden wouldn’t need to be completely flattened like it was in WW2.
The problem with making something abhorrent slightly better is that it is still abhorrent.
The problem with making something abhorrent more efficient is that it becomes more abhorrent but people notice it less.
The hat suits you by the way – never take it off!
Your post made me wonder (with a shudder) how a generation or two might make all the diff here. Much of the carnage and misery we are seeing at present is being meted out by authorities of old men and women, none of whom are digital natives (see Locust’s reference to a Trumpista mangling “A1”). Imagine the scope of horrors that could come about when the people in charge are fully conversant and able to deploy aspects of AI to prosecute their wars and mayhem.
So that’s ideal. Nobody loses their job and early cancer detection improves
I rather think that AI in fillums is the least of our worries. AI generated tariff policies are somewhat more threatening to global stability.
And after last Saturday’s lazy, stupid, ludicrous, utter traducing of the Doctor Who legacy by Russell T Dogbreath, perhaps we’d do better handing that tradition over to a bloody stack of microchips.
Doctor Who never the same since Tom Baker left. Bring back cardboard monsters, wobbly sets and willing suspension of disbelief.
@vulpes-vulpes The cartoon episode? I quite liked it.
It would have worked as a Simpson’s parody episode. It did not add any grace to the canon.
But then little of worth has been added to the canon for quite a long time now, it’s been turned into a Russell T Dogbreath aren’t-I-clever-and-sod-the-tradition show.
So why are you still watching?
I hold the view that Dr Who has always been largely shit. One merely has a more benevolent view of the actor who was in the role when you were young.
I agree Dr Who has always been largely shit. However, I thought Eccelston’s stint transformed it into something quite decent and watchable and then Tennant and Smith transformed it into something that was, at times, really very good indeed. Unfortunately, after Smith it went back to being rubbish again.
Tom Baker was good if you could overlook the sets shaking when doors were slammed.
It’s an issue because there’s already been extensive industrial action within Hollywood over the threat posed to various people’s livelihoods by AI, because the technology is rapidly becoming emblematic of the escalating threat to traditional media posed by Big Tech, and because the AI companies have demonstrably been playing fast and loose with other people’s intellectual property.
AI will do good things for humanity, but I’d be wary of buying too much of the snake oil being sold by its cheerleaders. The internet was going to make everyone better informed, social media was going to make life less lonely and more connected. If a tech bro tells you it’s pasta I’d go ahead and check under the sauce.
Your last sentence is the best thing I’m going to read today.
It is a nail being hit squarely on the head.
I have just finished Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams. Its a good read and it suggested to me that IT developments are generally started for positive reasons. Then shitloads of money gets made (largely held in company stock) and those initial principles of good become secondary. Or not even on the list anymore. This is where Facebook is right now.
AI is heading in the same direction – it may already be there. The good things will be pointed at to divert attention from the very small number of increasingly dubiously moraled people’s (who can afford the best PR and legal advice) avarice.
Careless People is one of those rare reads for me in that I laid it aside and didn’t finish it. I had read around two thirds of it when my growing dislike of the author made continuing with it impossible for me. Her endless excuses for not quiting despite knowing full well the awfulness of the business she was deeply involved in grated on me intensely. I found her and obviously the subject(s) of her book repulsive. Well done for sticking it out. I’ve had to resort to reading ‘cosy crime’ to rid myself of any residual foul taste.
Possibly becasue I work in IT, SWW didn”t seem that bad but I think your point is valid. The ending redeems her a bit. I think it is difficult to work in these places without being part of the problem.
I followed it up with a cosy crime as well – Marble Hall Murders by Anthony Horowitz. Which I am enjoying immensely.
Though in a recent interview in the i Horovitz had this to say.
I dislike the ‘cosy crime’ term too but I can’t think of any other way to describe this particular sub-genre of crime fiction.
I suspect he isn’t reading this thread. Although, if he is (Hello Anthony – big fan), I would point out that @pencilsqueezer did it first.
Big snitch.
That’s very nearly my porn name.
I thought you looked familiar.
Disagree. I think AI is on a completely different level to things like Facebook which just adapted existing technology. AI will change everything, like the invention of the telephone, computer and subsequently the internet. If has hardly begun
I didn’t mean to suggest that AI is a just a different version of Facebook. The point I was trying to make was what happened at Facebook will happen at the few AI companies that come out on top.
I think Facebook was the gateway drug to the internet for many people – not particularly those in the western world. Ownership of Facebook has meant ownership of hugely valuable personal data and tools to profile that data. It has shown how unreliable people are when they own a lot of anything.
AI is heading the same way but is manifestly a bigger, more frightening concept. IT companies, once they get to a certain scale, do not innovate. They buy innovation either to own it or shut it down. This will happen to AI and there will be 3 or 4 AI companies only who will all behave in a similar way to protect what they have.
There was a window between the early 90s and the Financial Crisis where Silicon Valley really did deliver a series of products which, at relatively low cost, improved the lives of millions. They’ve been trading on/abusing the goodwill from that period ever since.
Yet the subsequent record is spotty at best; endless “disruption” in the name of progress, but generally leaving things worse than they were before, Power being abused time and again, because human beings have never been able to wield power on this sort of scale without corruption ensuing.
The game they’re playing with AI is a familiar one; dangle the promise of a future tech utopia, convince governments and regulators that they can’t afford to miss the boat and then demand that a path should be cleared through the usual rules (and taxes) so that the chosen people can get on with doing God’s own work and delivering us to the promised land.
These individuals have long since shown us who they are and what sort of future they’ll deliver. They’re drunk on their own sense of manifest destiny and they should be regarded with enormous suspicion.
Absolutely decimated my freelance writing/editing business (and that of at least one other poster who contributed to an earlier AI thread).
As I’m about to hit 70 and have had a bloody good run, the impact on me has been relatively minor. Wouldn’t be nearly so happy if I was 40 or 50 and had a family to suspport and/or a mortgage to pay,
The people whose livelihoods are being shredded/will be shredded deserve nothing but respect and sympathy. The idea that they’re simply collateral damage in the face of “progress” is revolting. These are human beings who are having their lives turned upside down by forces way outside their own control.
It is of course terrible for people to lose their livelihoods. However the same has been said since the industrial revolution. The human race adapts and finds employment in different areas. I am not defending the use of AI for absolutely everything but time will tell if the advantages outweigh disadvantages. Earlier detection of cancers? That is a good thing surely?
“The human race adapts and finds employment in different areas.”
The human race may adapt, but individual humans are getting their lives fucked, and they deserve empathy.
I have friends who have seen their livelihoods as illustrators and graphic artists seriously impacted already. They have experienced a downturn in enquiries and a loss of previous longterm business arrangements. These are people who have studied, gained experience and worked diligently to establish a foothold in a highly competitive sector. They are seeing their livelihoods destroyed by tech firms who have trained their AI engines on the stolen work of talented individuals. Tech firms who do everything possible to avoid paying their dues and taxes unlike my friends and others who have paid their fair share without complaint. Will there be a benefit to society from AI? Undoubtedly there will but at what cost? Or is all that cost acceptable if it’s not you paying it and are you sure that at some not too future date that it won’t be you getting thrown under the bus to satisfy the bottomless greed of the tech bros?
Yes they do. Did I not write words to that effect?
Like all huge technological breakthroughs it can be used for good or bad purposes (see post above). There is always opposition to tech advances. My grandmother was scared of the telephone and never watched television. Am sure some found the radio to be the “devil’s work” when it was invented.
Can anybody now imagine life without the internet? It’s difficult and we have had it in the current form for barely 30 years which is nothing
The problem with business is that it only worries about society and morals when it can make money from them.
The internet is an open platform. AI is proprietary technology being developed and leveraged by private companies and individuals.
If (say) Mark Zuckerberg had authored and controlled the internet from day one we’d be living in a very different world.
Time will tell whether this will be an “advance” – I wouldn’t buy the hype for now.
Sort of. The internet requires plenty of hardware and software to be useful. These are in the hands of such companies. Maybe 90% of computers in the world use an operating system developed by one company
Who are the companies that own and run the internet?
Again I didn’t say that.
Not true. I suspect you are confusing PCs with computers. I am sat at my desk (at home) with at least 6 operating systems on the go. Only one device is Microsoft (becasue I am a cool kid).
Cloud computing is a potentially different kettle of fish. There are 2 huge (Azure & AWS) and 2 nearly huge (Google and Oracle) providers with a few others that may last becasue people like/trust them (e.g. Apple).
Yes I meant PCs. Most of us have them in our homes. I wasn’t confused, it was just an example. What about server farms?
Server farms are a flavour of data centre which is a way of saying big building full of computers. Cloud services run in data centres as well. Traditionally, server farms were high volume, lowish spec servers that allowed people to add and replace capacity easily. Cloud services is basically a different way for computers to be sold to people and organisations.
AI is driving more powerful servers to be utilised in this way becasue the computing task is significantly higher. And the improvements in computing capabilty is making AI more feasible/better/quicker.
Services like Azure and AWS have loads of tools built into their operating systems but, generally, the data being used is proprietary to the companies that use them.
The best adage for users is that if your aren’t paying for the service with money, you are paying for it with your data.
@Leedsboy
Or as the pithier saying has it
If you aren’t paying for the product,
you are the product
When I got a Sky satellite receiver and dish I insisted on paying full price for it rather than getting it for free as long as it was connected to my phone line.
Thing is that many of the big Tech innovations of that period were costly and unprofitable, losing (usually other people’s) money steadily.
In the end they got incorporated, by the financial institutions that funded them, into the great debt-trading Ponzi that led to the financial crash.
The ones that survived did so by turning into data-harvesters and advertising sellers. Without those practices none of them would be viable businesses.
I am in now way defending the “owners”of AI (who are no doubt evil greedy bastards) and freely admit my understanding of all the complexities of what might or might not happen is, to say the least, sketchy but isn’t all this yet another example of modern technology swamping old technology? Jobs will be lost, including those unfortunate and highly talented friends of Pencilsqueezer, and people with no say in the matter will see their lives changed forever but like coal miners who were told their product is dirty and the pits are now closed, that’s the way of this nasty and cutthroat world we live in.
Said it before, all my life generally speaking the world got better – less wars, less poverty, lowering chances of nuclear holocaust etc etc. These last ten years have proved how Wrong I was. Keep my head down, stick close to my friends and loved ones, drink some wine, play some records and hope the planet doesn’t blow itself up before I shuffle off this mortal coil.
‘Wine,’ said Lord Kingscourt, ‘is not a drink. It is a kidney-flush for Frenchmen and prancing fops.’
© ‘Star of the Sea’, Joseph O’Connor, 2002
I have a friend who makes his living doing voice overs for advertisements.
He reckons he will be out of work within the next 1 – 2 years.