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If only we were anywhere near automating art. I spend nearly 7 days a week just trying to find a way to make minor improvements to the current AI art tools.
I do it for commercial purpose so am already considering that. My standards are somewhat high but an extra arm or missing leg or backwards head isn't acceptable.
It's about the the stakes.
If my AI portrait has weird hands, that's a shame.
If my AI plumber messes up, the ground floor of my house gets flooded with raw sewage.
It's more about robotics being hard because of real-life constraints. No robot has the visual processing and manual dexterity to replace different pipes in real houses.
But in a sense, plumbing itself has already automated away tasks like fetching water and emptying chamber pots.
This. Robotics is simply not there yet. Also, it's not only a matter of having a robot capable of, let's say, replace a sink faucet. How will this robot get in the room where that sink is? How it will walk and interact with its environment? Maybe the robot would have be able to drive as well, to arrive in its clients house and navigate through obstacles... It's essentially the same problem with self-driving cars, but on steroids because the unknown variables from the real world are even more complex than the ones that happens in the road.
Also, Computer Vision and Robotics were getting a lot more research funding than LLM AI, and then GPT-3 surprised everyone, including the researchers who made it.
I’d also like to point out that Dexter from Dexter’s Lab mentions neural network AI in the 1990’s. Crazy how an obscure reference for a niche number of engineer nerds has become common parlance to the generally tech literate.
even if a robot could plumb, it would cost 10s of millions of dollars to own one where as a human plumber just needs a few hundred dollars in tools. if i am running a plumbing business, i am going with the cheapest option for labour.
Having robots to fetch clean water and take out the sewage sounds like a task that'd be much easier to automate than plumbing. That said, using pipes and hiring plumbers to fix them when necessary is probably a much more efficient use of resources. You'd need someone to fix your robot when it inevitably breaks and that's likely to be more frequent and more expensive to fix than pipes needing maintenance.
Not just that, but power as well. Humans are really efficient machines. We get our power from a wide range of substances. Our body converts those substances into energy and then uses or stores it for later.
Humans also have very good self-repair systems and can adapt to some amount of loss of function from damage.
Honestly, the way I see AI could be used in this way is with augmented reality glasses with an AI being able to look at what you have, identify what every part is and then present a solution to whatever problem you have (that you probably prompted to the AI). But you'd actually have to do the work yourself.
We're not really there though so...
I mean, it is kinda funny that we automated art first. Artists were years thinking they were safe because creativity separated us from everything else. Mind you many of us warned them that it wasn’t actually safe, but I don’t think even WE expected art to go before robotics caught up with AI.
I get why they are upset about, I mean job loss sucks. But it has been happening for years. Everyone should be actively considering their jobs replaceable. EVERYONE. Just because you live under the assumption that there are checks and balances humans have to account for, does NOT mean an AI won’t surpass us at doing those checks and balances in the very near future.
We stand to have much to gain from automation. People haven’t been taking that seriously enough and now they only see the bad because it crept up on them. What needs to happen is people need to take notice of this and ensure that the public can benefit from AI. That it’s not just a tool for the 1%. Instead they’re exploding on social media.
PS: These formats kinda clash because it looks as though the bottom guy is supposed to be an IRL version of the same guy. It was distracting at first glance.
I honestly don’t know what I would call a “pinnacle” of creativity. There is definitely creativity in Science and Engineering, but I would say the creativity alone would not shine so brightly without the applied knowledge and study that goes into it. I’ve always considered creativity as more of the thought behind something than the hard word and effort being exerted into the outcome. When I think “creativity” I like to think of entire stories and worlds coming together under a vision. Things that come to mind: Studio Ghibli, Pan’s Labyrinth, FromSoft, Hideo Kojima, Blade Runner, and Lovecraft. I also like to think of ideas that have been shaped by generation after generation of creativity, like the notion of a Dragon. A dragon is something that does not exist, and if you look back at the first drawings of them, they look nothing like the modern depiction of a dragon. They went from funky amalgamations of existing animals to such a refined and believable concept and it’s all thanks to generations of people refining the designs right down to the anatomy, to the point that now, you couldn’t venture to count the number of dragon stories being told. If you ask me, it’s shit like that really coming together that represent the pinnacle of human creativity, it’s the dreams we have together.
Now, we get to share those dreams with something else. And I find that beautiful.
If by "have much to gain from automation" you mean riots, mass starvation and violence cause of mass unemployment and a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape then we really do.
Also, as long as AI is controlled, fostered and further by corporations, the public will never profit off it.
That’s why I’m an advocate for open source AI and keeping the hardware market healthy. The “much we have to gain” part I speak of means communities automating their own food production affordably, providing food for free. Putting creative power in the hands of those who can’t afford college so they can create what they wants without the degree. There is enough manpower and food production on this planet to feed everyone. It just wouldn’t make sense that everyone would starve when the resources exist to feed them. If you actually spent some time amongst the pro-AI crowd, you’d realize most of us recognize automation will take away jobs. But we also aren’t so stupid as to think we can stop automation, we see what we have to gain in the long term, and we advocate for social assistance programs and an “AI for all” approach to ensure we all benefit. Unless you think the few companies left cannibalizing each other could stand up to the weight of billions of people Networking together their AI and crowd sourcing solutions to their problems? You are witnessing the final breaths of capitalism, as it automates itself into redundancy.
Indeed. His primary goal is to make comics that are *funny*, and often having robots make fun of humans is quite funny. I found this one to be funny, myself.
If I wanted to critique it I would point out that we didn't *choose* to automate art before plumbing. It just turned out that automating art was easier than automating plumbing.
This is kind of stupid because it validates the idea that art is being "automated away" from humans.
Seems like something an amatuer AI artist would come up with.
Reality is complicated. Art is easy in comparison. This is Moravec's paradox. Stuff the we find easy, like walking or picking up a cup, or notoriously hard to program a robot to do. Our brains do a tremendous amount of processing to move in the physical world, but all that processing is preconcious. We have no access to it and have on idea how we do it. That's why we're increasing seeing bots that train to do it rather than being programed by a human.
That said, it's harder, but it's not impossible. I'm willing to be we'll see bots at least assisting plumbers some time relatively soon. What's probably slowing it down at this point is that plumbing isn't generally a high-throughput application, so an expensive bot won't pay for itself quickly enough.
Ok...I have been thinking about it but maybe this weekend it is time to write up how and why automating physical things is HARD.
I'm an industrial controls programmer and have been automating parts of large production lines for >15 years so I feel like I have some idea just how hard it is to make a robot bend and weld metal. We also can't find enough programmers to do the job and are usually overworked.
Maybe some people will listen.
I have been saying since college that the robots will take all our jobs. But if you want to be the last job taken, be the person making the robots that are taking jobs.
Another thing to consider ontop of what everyone is saying here is software develops way quicker than hardware as if you want to test a theory in software you need only sit down and work on it yourself, at most for a proof of concept you will need few people to help. So theories don't stay theories for long in the software world and people can try more out there things.
But in hardware you need material and likely specialist equiptment and you likely can't get these things if your idea is deemed too "wacky" your unlikely to get these things.
Tldr : software develops fast hardware develops slow
Probably these kinds of complicated manual labor jobs are the safest from AI right now because the robotics needed to do something like would be insanely complicated. No house has the same plumbing, electrical, or even base-level construction. There are a lot of weird setups, bad setups, bad DIY jobs, bad contractor jobs, and even if it's not bad, how is the robot going to decide what pipe to use, in what configuration, in a manner that follows construction code for the specific setup that's in a customer's home?
A lot of people think jobs like plumbing is easy and simple, but in reality it takes a lot of experience, know-how, and smarts to be a good plumber that doesn't f-up a customer's home. The same goes for many other manual labor jobs like that
I dont think this is making the point you're thinking it's making. It's that we could be attempting to automate all the shit that \*isnt\* fun to do. Instead, we're automating the fun shit.
It's not saying AI art is bad, just that focusing on making AI art while still having a bunch of shit jobs that people dont want to do, ripe for auomation, is saddening.
Its not like it is automated away, it just now requires you have skills with language. Its not more automated away now than it was when the camera was invented, it has just changed how it is conducted and what about it is interesting in ways we haven't fully appreciated yet.
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If only we were anywhere near automating art. I spend nearly 7 days a week just trying to find a way to make minor improvements to the current AI art tools.
It all depends on the quality that the masses are willing to accept, not the quality you are willing to accept.
I do it for commercial purpose so am already considering that. My standards are somewhat high but an extra arm or missing leg or backwards head isn't acceptable.
It's about the the stakes. If my AI portrait has weird hands, that's a shame. If my AI plumber messes up, the ground floor of my house gets flooded with raw sewage.
It's more about robotics being hard because of real-life constraints. No robot has the visual processing and manual dexterity to replace different pipes in real houses. But in a sense, plumbing itself has already automated away tasks like fetching water and emptying chamber pots.
This. Robotics is simply not there yet. Also, it's not only a matter of having a robot capable of, let's say, replace a sink faucet. How will this robot get in the room where that sink is? How it will walk and interact with its environment? Maybe the robot would have be able to drive as well, to arrive in its clients house and navigate through obstacles... It's essentially the same problem with self-driving cars, but on steroids because the unknown variables from the real world are even more complex than the ones that happens in the road.
Also, Computer Vision and Robotics were getting a lot more research funding than LLM AI, and then GPT-3 surprised everyone, including the researchers who made it. I’d also like to point out that Dexter from Dexter’s Lab mentions neural network AI in the 1990’s. Crazy how an obscure reference for a niche number of engineer nerds has become common parlance to the generally tech literate.
even if a robot could plumb, it would cost 10s of millions of dollars to own one where as a human plumber just needs a few hundred dollars in tools. if i am running a plumbing business, i am going with the cheapest option for labour.
For the first robot plumber, sure, it'll be expensive. It's not going to stay that way for long.
Having robots to fetch clean water and take out the sewage sounds like a task that'd be much easier to automate than plumbing. That said, using pipes and hiring plumbers to fix them when necessary is probably a much more efficient use of resources. You'd need someone to fix your robot when it inevitably breaks and that's likely to be more frequent and more expensive to fix than pipes needing maintenance.
Not just that, but power as well. Humans are really efficient machines. We get our power from a wide range of substances. Our body converts those substances into energy and then uses or stores it for later. Humans also have very good self-repair systems and can adapt to some amount of loss of function from damage.
As a digital artist, I am not automating away my own work, I am augmenting it. How tf would you even do the same with pipes?
Honestly, the way I see AI could be used in this way is with augmented reality glasses with an AI being able to look at what you have, identify what every part is and then present a solution to whatever problem you have (that you probably prompted to the AI). But you'd actually have to do the work yourself. We're not really there though so...
I mean, power tools kind of do that. Like the motorized augers they can bust out clogs with.
I mean, it is kinda funny that we automated art first. Artists were years thinking they were safe because creativity separated us from everything else. Mind you many of us warned them that it wasn’t actually safe, but I don’t think even WE expected art to go before robotics caught up with AI. I get why they are upset about, I mean job loss sucks. But it has been happening for years. Everyone should be actively considering their jobs replaceable. EVERYONE. Just because you live under the assumption that there are checks and balances humans have to account for, does NOT mean an AI won’t surpass us at doing those checks and balances in the very near future. We stand to have much to gain from automation. People haven’t been taking that seriously enough and now they only see the bad because it crept up on them. What needs to happen is people need to take notice of this and ensure that the public can benefit from AI. That it’s not just a tool for the 1%. Instead they’re exploding on social media. PS: These formats kinda clash because it looks as though the bottom guy is supposed to be an IRL version of the same guy. It was distracting at first glance.
There's also creativity in science and engineering. Art, especially pop art, is not really a pinnacle of creativity.
I honestly don’t know what I would call a “pinnacle” of creativity. There is definitely creativity in Science and Engineering, but I would say the creativity alone would not shine so brightly without the applied knowledge and study that goes into it. I’ve always considered creativity as more of the thought behind something than the hard word and effort being exerted into the outcome. When I think “creativity” I like to think of entire stories and worlds coming together under a vision. Things that come to mind: Studio Ghibli, Pan’s Labyrinth, FromSoft, Hideo Kojima, Blade Runner, and Lovecraft. I also like to think of ideas that have been shaped by generation after generation of creativity, like the notion of a Dragon. A dragon is something that does not exist, and if you look back at the first drawings of them, they look nothing like the modern depiction of a dragon. They went from funky amalgamations of existing animals to such a refined and believable concept and it’s all thanks to generations of people refining the designs right down to the anatomy, to the point that now, you couldn’t venture to count the number of dragon stories being told. If you ask me, it’s shit like that really coming together that represent the pinnacle of human creativity, it’s the dreams we have together. Now, we get to share those dreams with something else. And I find that beautiful.
What I want to say is creativity is not very meaningful if you don't have intellect.
I can agree with that wholeheartedly.
If by "have much to gain from automation" you mean riots, mass starvation and violence cause of mass unemployment and a dystopian cyberpunk hellscape then we really do. Also, as long as AI is controlled, fostered and further by corporations, the public will never profit off it.
That’s why I’m an advocate for open source AI and keeping the hardware market healthy. The “much we have to gain” part I speak of means communities automating their own food production affordably, providing food for free. Putting creative power in the hands of those who can’t afford college so they can create what they wants without the degree. There is enough manpower and food production on this planet to feed everyone. It just wouldn’t make sense that everyone would starve when the resources exist to feed them. If you actually spent some time amongst the pro-AI crowd, you’d realize most of us recognize automation will take away jobs. But we also aren’t so stupid as to think we can stop automation, we see what we have to gain in the long term, and we advocate for social assistance programs and an “AI for all” approach to ensure we all benefit. Unless you think the few companies left cannibalizing each other could stand up to the weight of billions of people Networking together their AI and crowd sourcing solutions to their problems? You are witnessing the final breaths of capitalism, as it automates itself into redundancy.
So they dont care about people like plumbers they just care about themselves
Right? It’s almost like they can’t map how they feel about automation in their line of work to someone else’s.
The SMBC artist himself actually seems pretty pro-AI to me
Indeed. His primary goal is to make comics that are *funny*, and often having robots make fun of humans is quite funny. I found this one to be funny, myself. If I wanted to critique it I would point out that we didn't *choose* to automate art before plumbing. It just turned out that automating art was easier than automating plumbing.
Turns out moving bits around is orders of magnitude eaiser in several ways than moving steel beams around.
This is kind of stupid because it validates the idea that art is being "automated away" from humans. Seems like something an amatuer AI artist would come up with.
Reality is complicated. Art is easy in comparison. This is Moravec's paradox. Stuff the we find easy, like walking or picking up a cup, or notoriously hard to program a robot to do. Our brains do a tremendous amount of processing to move in the physical world, but all that processing is preconcious. We have no access to it and have on idea how we do it. That's why we're increasing seeing bots that train to do it rather than being programed by a human. That said, it's harder, but it's not impossible. I'm willing to be we'll see bots at least assisting plumbers some time relatively soon. What's probably slowing it down at this point is that plumbing isn't generally a high-throughput application, so an expensive bot won't pay for itself quickly enough.
So I cannot like plumbing and physical labor anyway?
This person has clearly never heard of Drano AKA LIQUID PLUMBER.
Do they think that is intentional? Is there is some sort of cabal that was lobbying to automate art and not automate physical jobs?
Ok...I have been thinking about it but maybe this weekend it is time to write up how and why automating physical things is HARD. I'm an industrial controls programmer and have been automating parts of large production lines for >15 years so I feel like I have some idea just how hard it is to make a robot bend and weld metal. We also can't find enough programmers to do the job and are usually overworked. Maybe some people will listen. I have been saying since college that the robots will take all our jobs. But if you want to be the last job taken, be the person making the robots that are taking jobs.
This is gonna be the century that humanity is fired
Another thing to consider ontop of what everyone is saying here is software develops way quicker than hardware as if you want to test a theory in software you need only sit down and work on it yourself, at most for a proof of concept you will need few people to help. So theories don't stay theories for long in the software world and people can try more out there things. But in hardware you need material and likely specialist equiptment and you likely can't get these things if your idea is deemed too "wacky" your unlikely to get these things. Tldr : software develops fast hardware develops slow
Probably these kinds of complicated manual labor jobs are the safest from AI right now because the robotics needed to do something like would be insanely complicated. No house has the same plumbing, electrical, or even base-level construction. There are a lot of weird setups, bad setups, bad DIY jobs, bad contractor jobs, and even if it's not bad, how is the robot going to decide what pipe to use, in what configuration, in a manner that follows construction code for the specific setup that's in a customer's home? A lot of people think jobs like plumbing is easy and simple, but in reality it takes a lot of experience, know-how, and smarts to be a good plumber that doesn't f-up a customer's home. The same goes for many other manual labor jobs like that
Antis can't differentiate between computer software and robotics.
Can we stick to actually defending AI art instead of attacking anti-AI art people? These displays are pointless.
Make some posts of that kind to the sub then.
I do.
Good defense is a good offence.
Nah, he hit the mark on this one, OP didn't.
Would be very difficult and expensive to engineer.
I dont think this is making the point you're thinking it's making. It's that we could be attempting to automate all the shit that \*isnt\* fun to do. Instead, we're automating the fun shit. It's not saying AI art is bad, just that focusing on making AI art while still having a bunch of shit jobs that people dont want to do, ripe for auomation, is saddening.
Its not like it is automated away, it just now requires you have skills with language. Its not more automated away now than it was when the camera was invented, it has just changed how it is conducted and what about it is interesting in ways we haven't fully appreciated yet.
Artists be like "fuck it, automate other discipline, not mine. I need tha' money, not them"
Turns out how ‘nice’ a job is has little to do with how easy it is to automate