the ethics of digital assistance

[Naboka]

This post can be immediately attributed to procrastination. A reluctance to return to the disenclutteringnesses of one burdened with more possessions than sense.

(And why not with the cat away at the beach for a week?)

I've been doing some portraits in my free time and encountered a hmmmm situation. Should I, shouldn't I?

In art classes you often have to do still lifes. Boring. (Not nearly as much fun as nudes, but good for developing skills.) One woman's still lifes were...childish? incompetent? undeveloped? But, she would bring in various works that were stunning and accomplished. Near photographic renderings of faces and landscapes. She was using a camera obscura ap with an Ipad. The instructor finally said: no more of this for this class. It's not conducive to developing your ability and skill. And does it really meet the definition of art?

In the movie Tim's Vermeer, Jenison wanted to see if he could replicate the artist's work reinventing technology that would have been available to the artist. He achieved similar results to the master's work.

Which begs the question of mastery. Have you really mastered something if you're using technology rather than you own independent ability? Like someone winning the Tour de France having somehow managed to incorporate electric assistance in the bike frame.

Anyway, I downloaded the softeware, and knocked off a quick portrait last night that turned out better than anything I've ever done. It's like tracing with paint by numbers. You can be a clumsy oaf and still produce remarkable work. Usually a picture takes days. The camera obscura ap produced it in less than 2 hours. And I say the ap produced it because it felt like being a worker in a factory producing someone else's stuff.

Been involved in soooooooo many discussions about whether using technological assistance is really art or not. And under what circumstances. I suppose part of the equation is whether the "artist" is being honest.

But, fat chance of honesty in a world filled with fragile egos and fraud.

Ran across one of the games of asdf (?) who was running a program and getting perfect scores. Was surprised any of them still existed. But, it made me wonder: why? Really, why? What does any of that accomplish?

Sometimes reaching outside a community provides unique views that haven't been steeped in whatever catechisms have been internalized by members. Maybe someone here has a unique view.

Anyone have an opinion?

Guess I'm just going to offer up 2 portraits for the price (free) of one. The software assisted stuff makes me look masterfully skilled, but the unassisted stuff just has more meaning.

and now

back...

to...

drudgery...

[erakis17]

I don't know how this plays out in other spheres; I imagine AI tools will slowly reshape the way a lot of creative and non-creative endeavors work. But I can give a personal example. Some years ago I wrote a boggle solver mostly as a Python exercise, and then proceeded (as one does) to optimize the heck out of it, so I could solve billions of Monte Carlo-generated boards.

I've never cheated with that tool, and find the idea ludicrous — as you say, what would be the point? But for a while, I used it heavily for post-game analysis. Save my results page, run it through the solver, and over time see which words I was systematically missing (especially things like palindrome words, which should be automatic). Studying those "missed word" lists actually did make a significant improvement in my results.

So, that's the obvious niche for this limited form of machine intelligence. A trainer. Just like chess programs have revolutionized chess training, or video replays improved sports training, or any number of other examples.

For creative pursuits, it sure seems like AI "should" be able to improve art, music, writing, what have you, without taking away what it means to be an artist. But right now it seems to function mostly as a very smart plagiarism engine. That's a different category of assistant from a musical scoring program, or a simple grammar checker. I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out but it's pretty obvious the economic effects will be awful for creative professionals for the foreseeable future.

[Naboka]

I don't know how this plays out in other spheres; I imagine AI tools will slowly reshape the way a lot of creative and non-creative endeavors work. But I can give a personal example. Some years ago I wrote a boggle solver mostly as a Python exercise, and then proceeded (as one does) to optimize the heck out of it, so I could solve billions of Monte Carlo-generated boards.

I've never cheated with that tool, and find the idea ludicrous — as you say, what would be the point? But for a while, I used it heavily for post-game analysis. Save my results page, run it through the solver, and over time see which words I was systematically missing (especially things like palindrome words, which should be automatic). Studying those "missed word" lists actually did make a significant improvement in my results.

So, that's the obvious niche for this limited form of machine intelligence. A trainer. Just like chess programs have revolutionized chess training, or video replays improved sports training, or any number of other examples.

For creative pursuits, it sure seems like AI "should" be able to improve art, music, writing, what have you, without taking away what it means to be an artist. But right now it seems to function mostly as a very smart plagiarism engine. That's a different category of assistant from a musical scoring program, or a simple grammar checker. I'll be interested to see how it all shakes out but it's pretty obvious the economic effects will be awful for creative professionals for the foreseeable future.

I think your training and improvement points have a lot of merit.

As I've commented before, Josh Waitzkin used a lot of video to figure how he did stuff that he had no idea how he did it. His Art of Learning is an excellent read.

After finishing my second portrait attempt just now with the camera obscura ap, I'm noticing mistakes I normally make with certain alignments. Like in the eyes and mouth. Mistakes that have become ingrained in my approach.

In the wife's kindergarten class, the kids have to trace, trace, trace letters as the learn them, then practise them independently. I think this is the approach I'm going to take with the app. It's teaching me certain muscle and mental patterns that correct old flaws.

I suspect there are enough people these days who can write a boggle solver as you did. (As a computer illiterate, I've got no clue how you guys do that stuff. I can't even work most of the stuff on my phone. And am far too lazy to learn.) As in anything involving humans, probably not all of them are willing to let go of the crutch. Esteem issues or whatever. It's pretty easy to justify whatever makes you feel like you're better than others.

Being better than others seems to have some survival benefit. Mabye, we get rewarded with dopamine, endorphines, or other feel good chemicals so that "being better than others" becomes addictive. Sort of like a runner's high--without the actual effort.

Problem is, like with kindergarteners, really smart kids can get stuck in wanting to be smart, so they become reluctant to make mistakes and look stupid. We try to get them comfortable with failing and not knowing. Failing often and then examining what went wrong. Failing is the only way to learn. The only way to succeed. Mostly they get it.

But, sometimes they grow up stuck in that fear. The internet is filled with people terrified of being wrong.

Anyways, not to belabor this. The wife is constantly telling me I never shut up and overexplain everthing.

So, agreed on the training, learning and improving aspect of these things.

Judicious application.