#Anti Stupid ML Theories

[plumsaffron]

Miraculous Fandom is full of selfish bastards that frown upon individuality for specific characters and embrace doing blow for predetermined paths prompted by ringers or alleged big trashshots' mouths.

Otherwise I suppose a new level of lame is encouraging stupid theorist prompts that reel others who could been left alone.

And to make matters worse, they’ll crawl back to continue consistently acknowledging the existence of writers or similars to above tier associates of the accursed franchise they know they’ll be disappointed by and help bring forth more chaos.

[fishboneart]

Fishbone #005

They weren't kidding, that history can rhyme

Only 9 layers and 5 source images this time. Things don't always have to be a federal fucking issue.

With how much ai art wank discourse is rooted in purity politics, especially but not exclusively on tumblr, I was amused by the mental image of slipping into a hazmat suit before venturing into the dangerous and repulsive wasteland of ai art to retrieve alien salvage like the stalkers in Roadside Picnic. It doesn't feel like that, it feels like being a grabby little corvid in the shiny trinket factory, but I still enjoyed the concept.

The rest of the image is about art as alchemical process and I'm not going to explain it.

I've been observing for some time that the objections to ai art are indistinguishable from the objections to photoshop ~20-25 years ago (including the one about "it's different this time bro trust me") so I want to look at some of them a bit closer.

It's not real art

Stop getting your talking points from fascists.

But-

I don't care how you justify it, it's a fascist talking point. Stop.

It's stealing

At risk of resurrecting stupid bullshit I was already bored with 20 years ago, I honestly think there's a better case for this regarding PS than machine learning. PS artists actually do use elements from existing images, lots of them (ideally with permission/license). However, consensus opinion has long since concurred that PS artists substantially transform and recontextualise those elements and the result is an original creation, same as physical collage.

As I've come to understand it, ML doesn't use elements from existing images, just mathematical descriptions of image attributes. It doesn't incorporate images on any level, or even pieces of images, so I'm left wondering what's being stolen here? I'm not being shitty I genuinely can't see anymore what is stolen when ML simply does not use any part of any existing image to generate an image.

There's no skill/creativity involved

The first time I ever used adobe photoshop (I've long since switched to GIMP, change the name, FOSS 5evar, etc.) I spent about fifteen minutes excitedly stacking filters on a picture of a butterfly, before the person showing me how it worked dismissively explained that filters don't make art.

Elements and principles of design are learned skills. They're taught at art school because they're not innate and they're important as hell. I often feel like people are tacitly arguing all that stuff's just padding--and if you're staunchly anti-ai-art I promise that's not an argument you want to make, it will backfire spectacularly on you.

And yeah, I think everyone still agrees that just piling filters on a photo isn't very creative and takes no particular skill. I doubt anyone thinks instagram filters take a good photo for you. I think (or hope) that we all understand now that complex image editing and manipulation does in fact take skill and creativity.

I can't help but wonder how much of the vapid trash we're seeing in the explosion of ai art is the equivalent of the 2000s explosion of shitty filtered photos.

The computer does it for you

There's so much more to PS art than filters, and the computer emphatically does not do any of that stuff for you. It doesn't do composition or colour theory or concepts or art history for you. It just does what you tell it to, you still have to make the art good. Fishbone #001 involved manually isolating dozens of fucked up hands from ML images, and I complained about it the entire time and the computer didn't even get me a cup of tea.

A lot of people used to actually genuinely believe that photoshop was a magical plagiarism machine that you stuck stolen art in and it automatically made perfect composites for you. Probably some people still do, it's a big world. But it never was true, no matter how hard they believed it.

Is there more to ML image generation? Idk I'd have to try it to find out for sure and I'm very tired. But the more I learn about it the more I think there could be. The frequency with which I see very elaborate and specific prompts with garbled and all-but-irrelevant images does at least suggest that the magical ease of making ai art has been somewhat oversold.

Using it in any way is cheating/cheapens your art

I think the cheating idea mostly came from the photography community, who thought PS was a shortcut to better photos for undisciplined talentless hacks who couldn't be bothered to learn to take a good photo. The irony. But for me, since I wasn't using it to improve photos, this was such a weird take. Cheating at what? At photoshop art? I'm cheating at photoshop by... using photoshop?

And the idea that using PS at any stage in your process irredeemably sullies your art is just stupid on its face. It's not radioactive. It's not a PFAS. Sin isn't real. Santa isn't putting you on the naughty list for photoshopping. The Galactic Council of Artistic Integrity aren't checking for pixels.

Needless to say, since 100% of the source images I use in this project are ML generated, I also think it's a bit of a silly objection to ML image generation.

It has no soul

I am not and have never been christian. I do not and will never care what your imaginary friend thinks about art.

Also, this is a repackaged fascist talking point. I told you to stop that.

It sucks

Most of everything sucks, what's your point?

People are going to lose their jobs

Unfortunately this one had some connection to reality. By about 2010 there were almost no painted book covers, and painters who'd made their living from them were forced to adopt PS or find a different job. It wasn't just book covers of course, commercial artists across the board felt the pinch of automation. That's not exactly PS's fault, the parasitic owning class will simply take any opportunity to fuck over a worker for half a buck, and PS art is generally cheaper because it's generally faster to make.

I actually have some questions about how this will play out with ML though. Currently, yes, it's looking very much like in ten years there won't be any PS book covers any more, but I think the parasitic owning class are going to quickly remember they don't actually want art that they can't hold copyright over, and human artists will remain necessary. No one wants a logo they can't trademark. No one wants commercial art if they can't control the licensing. I don't even think it'll take a wholeass test case, just a few things like selfpub novels using the same cover image as a major release or folks using pure ML images from the big stock sellers without paying, and as soon as they realise they can't sue anyone about it they'll come crawling back, cap in hand, to hire you back as a contractor at an insultingly low rate.

People will lose their jobs or find their billable hours severely cut, but, unfortunately, as the brave Luddites showed us, you can't stop automation by fighting the machine, no matter how noble your motives. You need to actually change society somewhat.

But I think this should be enough of a concern without having to also make shit up. You can just object to ML on the basis of tangible harms it will be used to inflict on individuals and society. That's plenty to be mad about, you don't need to put lipstick on it.

It's different this time bro trust me bro

Plenty of people sincerely believed that rise of PS was fully automated skill-free art theft and the sky was falling, and pointing out that all the same things were said about the invention of everything from the photocopier to home video to the printing press to the camera didn't even slow them down because this time it's different, this time it really is that bad. It wasn't.

And I honestly don't know anymore if it is.

[psychotrenny]

And like, you can reject that definition if you really want. I haven't seen any useful or more coherent definition (the standard liberal usage is incredibly vague as to what makes "Imperialism" distinct from any other action or process that a nation undertakes to advances its interests or spread it's influence) but if you think you've got one then go ahead. Just be aware that your definition differs from the one used by basically every successful anti-imperialist movement of the 20th and 21st centuries and as such has a long, widespread and well respected history of use. Like it's absurd how many people will see Marxist-Leninists go "This Country/Action isn't Imperialist" and interpret it as "Those Tankies are denying that stuff is happening" rather than "That stuff doesn't meet the Leninist definition of Imperialism". It's gets even more ridiculous when those same people being ranting about how they are the only ones who actually read and correctly understand communist theory while all the MLs are idiot LARPers. It's one thing to repudiate the Leninist definition but it's just plain stupid to act like it doesn't even exist

I love how so many people, even self-identified "Leftists", keep using the word "Imperialism" to mean "when a big country does stuff to a small country". It's not as though the term describes a very specific politico-economic relationship of ownership, exploitation and dependency that is achieved by Capitalism at it's highest stage or anything like that. If only some very influential man, the kind of guy who walks around the world if you will, wrote a book about it. Oh well, I guess it's not important; not like it's the principle contradiction of our age or anything like that...

[hollenius]

Sorry, I just really love interviews where Peter Buck talks about books. And also about crying at a Pepsi commercial.

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-xpm-2001-10-14-0110140554-story.html

Edit: apparently this is not accessible in all countries, so I am copying and pasting the text under the cut. Contains some discussion of Michael Stipe’s lyric-writing strategies as well as tales R.E.M. reading all of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories while in the van in 1982, whether Faulkner or Hemingway or Fitzgerald liked music, intuition vs. hard work in the act of creation (and how writing a song isn’t like writing a novel), the relative effectiveness of specificity vs. generality in bringing about an emotional response in the audience (and, again, how songs aren’t like novels) etc.

RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FABLES: MARK LINDQUIST and PETER BUCK

THE HARTFORD COURANT     October 14, 2001

Mark Lindquist: The only thing I did to prepare for this was to go through my CD collection, and the three bands that dominate my collection are the Beatles, R.E.M. and the Replacements. I listened to albums by each in progression, and one of the things I noticed -- maybe because I was looking for it -- is that each of these bands became increasingly interested in narrative, in story, as their career progressed. Do you think that happened with R.E.M.

Peter Buck: Absolutely. When we started out, Michael was trying to find a way of communicating that wasn't a literal language. He didn't want to string together sentences that told a story that everyone could agree on. I really respected that, the feeling that the narrative stuff has been done, love songs have been done, and this sort of Rorschach blot of words and emotions are a different way to approach telling a story.It also opens it up a lot, in that people can listen to these songs and, without knowing exactly what they're about, put themselves in the song. Michael told me recently: His theory is, name your 10 favorite rock songs of all time. Write them down. Then write next to them what they're about. Guarantee that you'll only be able to do that for two of them.

ML: Let's try that. Name your five favorite rock songs.

PB: "Like a Rolling Stone," "Fight the Power," "We Can Work It Out," "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" and "Gloria" by Patti Smith.

ML: OK, "Like a Rolling Stone." What's that about?

PB: Obviously it's an aggressive song putting someone down, but I don't know who that person is. Assuming that I know a little about Dylan's life, it could be about the people who followed him around. It seems to be a portrait of someone who thinks they're a winner, who's high in society. Who that is, I don't know. I could be completely wrong. I don't know what Napoleon "who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat" means.

ML: But you remember the line about those Siamese cats.

PB: With Dylan, you always get that. "The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face." That's from "Visions of Johanna," which is one of my favorite songs, but I have no idea what that means.

ML: How about "Fight the Power"?

PB: I would assume, being a white guy from the suburbs, that it's about being black, but I don't know. If the Beastie Boys had written it with the same lyrics, I'd have no idea.

ML: "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" is from "Pet Sounds," which is chock-full of stories, at least in my mind. I may be imposing a narrative, because I listened to this CD when I left for college, and to me that album was about leaving home, going on a new adventure: "I once had a dream, so I packed up and left for the city." But that may have nothing to do with what Brian Wilson intended. Still, let's talk about R.E.M.'s progression toward stories.

PB: When we first started out, I know that Michael felt everything in rock and roll had been done. We didn't want to write a love song, or anything that could be construed as a love song, for 10 years.

ML: What would you say your first love song was?

PB: Well, it wasn't a love song. "The One I Love" is an anti-love song, but since "the one I love" is in the title ... we used to play it, and I'd look into the audience, and there would be couples kissing. Yet the verse is, "This one goes out to the one I love/A simple prop to occupy my time." That's savagely anti-love. But that's OK. People perceive songs as they are. People told me that was "their song." That was your song? Why not "Paint it Black" or "Stupid Girl" or "Under My Thumb"?

ML: But that's pop music -- Noel Coward's line about the amazing "potency of cheap music."

PB: It doesn't even matter, the value of the music. I've teared up at commercials.

ML: What commercial made you tear up, for God sake?

PB: The Pepsi commercial where the woman is depressed and the monkeys bring her a Pepsi. It was because of my life at the time, and not the commercial, but that's what pop music is, too. It's not necessarily what's written or even implied. It's what you as the listener take out of it. Which is why I tend to think songs that are less specific are more powerful.I've never cried at, say, "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" by Bob Dylan, which is a very specific song. I know that there's a woman named Hattie Carroll, and she was killed. But it was reportage. It never made me tear up, but other songs have. It's all about what you bring in at that moment, so narrative is not necessarily the most important thing.

ML: Do you think that works in literature? One of the things they tell you in Writing 101 is to make things more specific rather than more general. Is literature more powerful if it's less specific?

PB: Absolutely not. I think literature is a chance for someone like me, who's led a more or less middle-class life, to look into someone else's heart and mind and be shown a world that I don't know. When I was a teenager, I read a lot of African American literature -- "Soledad Brother" or "Invisible Man" or Richard Wright, and there were things that completely changed my life. The strength of literature is its specificity.

ML: Why do you think R.E.M.'s music has become more specific, more story-driven?

PB: I think Michael was trying to find a way on the early records to tell a story without telling a story. As he got a little older and became more comfortable doing the singing and being a public figure, the idea was still, "I'm not going to tell a story where someone says this is a song about ... " Now as a writer Michael likes to take a character he imagines and write from that perspective, tell a story in the first person. But it's not necessarily his perspective.

ML: When I saw R.E.M. in Seattle in 1999, I think Stipe introduced "The Apologist" by saying, "This is a story about ... " And "All the Way to Reno" is a pretty classic narrative. It reminds me of "That's Not Me" from "Pet Sounds," not musically or lyrically, but conceptually.

PB: "Reno," I'm sure that is sung from the perspective of a 17-or 18-year old girl. It has to be. I've never asked him.

ML: And "That's Not Me" is sung from the perspective of a like-minded 17- or 18-year-old boy. Bret Easton Ellis has said as you get older, you become more interested in narrative, in stories with a beginning, middle and an end.

PB: Part of it is definitely an age thing. When I was in my 20s, and my band was in its early years, we were capturing an experience, not necessarily thinking about the chain between the past and the future, which is what a novel is. As you get older, your life is less about capturing the moment and more about understanding what you're doing.

ML: Has Michael's progression or change as a lyricist been influenced by literature?

PB: I don't know. The only way I can say our band was directly influenced by literature was when we did our first big American tour in 1982, before our first EP came out. We were in a van, touring to nobody, playing songs no one has ever heard. I managed to find all three of the Flannery O'Connor short-story collections, and every member of the band read every one of the words in those three collections on that tour. We passed them around, pages falling out, putting pages back in, reading them with a light on at 2 a.m., going from San Antonio to L.A. I felt really strongly that it changed the way we thought about writing. I don't know why, because she writes about faith and the problems of faith in a world where there is no faith, and Michael wasn't writing linear dialogues, but when we made our first record, I think we all thought Flannery O'Connor was something we would emulate in some way.

ML: I can be listening to a particular CD or song that evokes a mood or a moment in a way I admire, and I will try to get the same effect into what I'm writing. Has the reverse ever happened to you? You're reading a novel or short story, and it works for you so well, you think you want to get whatever it is that works for you into your music? Do you take what you read the night before into what you write?

PB: All I can say is I certainly hope so, which is why I try to read good stuff.

ML: OK, other books that have affected you as a songwriter?

PB: Denis Johnson.

ML: Why?

PB: I don't know why. "Already Dead" changed me when I read it. I can't say why or how, but I felt like a different person at the end, in the same way that when I was a teenager, Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" completely moved me.

ML: One of the things music can do for writers is that we can take a song, an idea in a song, or even a character in a song, and expand it into a story, or a screenplay, or a novel. Another thing music can do for writers is set a tone for whatever we're working on that day. Most writers I know listen to rock, but Kerouac talked about how he would do that with jazz.

PB: What do you think Faulkner did?

ML: I think he just drank.

PB: But do you think he put the 78s on? He probably wasn't a Glenn Miller guy. Was he a Duke Ellington guy? I bet Faulkner played records at his house. I'd be really shocked if he didn't play gospel stuff from the '30s and '40s, if he didn't listen to blues music.

ML: What about Hemingway?

PB: My feeling is he didn't get much pleasure in life. Having read his books, I doubt very much that he had an ear for music. I bet he loved music in the hills of Spain, dancing to it, no matter how good or bad it was. But did he go home and put on records? I doubt that very much. Now Fitzgerald, he found joy in life.

ML: And in drinking. It kept him from writing.

PB: He's another of those people who never really found what he needed to do in his life. I re-read "The Crackup" about a year ago, and there's a great quote, and I paraphrase, about how when I was young I wanted to be Byron, Don Juan, J.P. Morgan. All that is burned away. I'm a writer now, nothing else. Literature is something written out of deep understanding. Music is written more out of the intuitive. When I read great books, I refuse to think they just made it up as they went along. That's what happens in rock and roll.

ML: There are passages that come to you as a writer that feel like they wrote themselves. However, you unfortunately have to write the other 500 pages or so yourself.

PB: The good stuff occurs because you work really, really hard, spend your entire life immersed in one thing, and if you're able to let yourself go completely for that time it takes to do anything great. My superstition, though, is songs that are there that aren't written. I think every songwriter feels, "I'm really good at my craft," but the good songs pop up, and you always like to feel they come from somewhere other than inside of you.The night I wrote "Losing My Religion," I was drinking wine and watching the Nature Channel with the sound off and learning how to play the mandolin. I had only had it for a couple nights. I had a tape player going, and the tape has me playing some really bad scales, then a little riff, then the riff again, and you can hear my voice say "Stop." Then I played "Losing My Religion" all the way through, and then played really bad stuff for a while. I woke up in the morning not knowing what I'd written. I had to relearn it by playing the tape. That's where songs come from for me, someplace where you're not really thinking about it.That's what's different from literature. You can't sit down and let "The Great Gatsby" happen. The songs I write are four minutes long. You can disconnect from wherever you are for four minutes and find it. I really doubt you can do that for months with a novel.

ML: There's something that's always struck me as a little off about Peter Buck and Michael Stipe. Traditionally, the songwriter is thought of as the more intuitive, and the lyricist as the more lettered. The reality is you're the more lettered, and Stipe is the more intuitive.

PB: Michael has this amazing ability to absorb things. He doesn't sit around and read tons of books, but he does read. He probably reads more political literature than I ever have.

ML: It's funny, I know lots of novelists who wish they were rock stars, but I don't know any musicians who wish they were novelists.

PB: Hey, I'm raising my hand right here!

The poster has moved with me now for 15 years. It's part of a series for America's public libraries, featuring a very young-looking R.E.M., with Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Michael Stipe and Bill Berry each holding their favorite books. I'd love to know what Stipe is holding, but, like his early lyrics, the title is obscured. Peter Buck holds an Oscar Wilde collection, and that, along with a mention of Wilde in a Smiths song from the same era, "Cemetry Gates," conspired to send me to the library. Peter Buck's a tremendous reader. His Seattle home is filled with almost as many books as records. So we asked Buck to dine last week with his friend Mark Lindquist, whose music-infused novel "Never Mind Nirvana" gets like few others the profound way music can be not only a soundtrack to life but also a road map. We asked them to talk about how artists and musicians are influenced by each other. -- David Daley, Books Editor

[bi-dazai]

remember how one anarchist got a Leninist quote wrong (even tho the guy was still fucking anti anarchist and was super fucking dumb about shit like that) and MLs took it as an excuse to openly express how little they thought of all anarchists, how every anarchist is stupid and dumb and doesn't read theory, etc.

Like when MLs go on about leftist solidarity they really do not want solidarity with anarchists, they want solidarity with tankies because the ML fantasy is power. Everyone thinks theyll be Lenin. Everyone wants to be the one in control, no one wants to have to listen to the mass populace. They want to control it like a simulation. So many of the MLs I've met are narcissistic, thinking that reading Lenin and Marx makes them qualified to run everything.

[we-future-first]

A Theory of the Evolution of AI-Driven Economics

For some years, I have tried to understand zero interest rates, the impact of technology acceleration, and the introduction of the AI/machine learning/robotics spectrum to human economies. I am particularly interested in the interrelationships of these. What follows is my general theory. I have not amassed "proof." These are ideas and not scientific assertions. I equate them more with historical arguments than "facts." Nevertheless, I feel these are in the direction of how the phenomena I've thought about will ultimately be interpreted.

I believe that interest rates are largely driven by expectations of population dynamics of a particular sort. When a population grows or is anticipated to grow, and the basic prospects of human laborers are economically positive--that is, they can expect to gain and hold on to rising cashflows, then interest rates will maintain a positive bias all things being otherwise equal on the money supply. This means that people in an economy basically can reproduce and see their children move toward homeownership without inordinate risk. If this trend breaks or is threatened, then the bias on interest rates becomes either temporarily or permanently negative depending on the force of the trend. Virtually all economic expansion is ultimately tied to housing and housing investment--including credit.

In the advent of technology acceleration, human labor tends in two directions. First, there is an increasing pool of sub-high skilled persons who earn nominal wages for effectively being "human robots." This includes checkout clerks, cleaners, security guards, etc. I do not insult the dignity of such people, I merely point out that their work can often be done by an unskilled person within a week or two of starting employment. Second, there is a pool of highly skilled labour that earns very high wages by coping with technology dynamics and acceleration. In this pool are physicians, computer programmers, etc. This second pool garners higher and higher wages as they find methods to institutionalize and protect their skill base. Over time, they become optimal targets for automation especially if they cannot create a license or certification process that is so protective that start-ups are barred from entry (e.g. practicing medicine).

Over time, automation erases large groups of the "lower-skilled" class of workers because automating their functions is easier. As AI and the associated spectrum of ML/robotics accelerates, the second group is "attacked" first by productivity enhancement tools (which force multiply one doctor to do the work of seven) and then, ultimately, full automation and remote operation. More importantly, society recognizes these trends and is less apt to have confidence there is a long-term capacity of groups to accelerate their wage gains and thus their housing consumption. In this environment, economic stimulus works--through standard liquidity expansions--but interest rates remain bound to zero because the new investment gains tend to be in areas that automate away low-skilled labor, or, over time, to concentrate into hub and spokes much more productive high skilled laborers. There is no simple policy by which government can rapidly upskill wage potential through economic stimulus.

This trend explains the overwhelming transition of technical societies to move toward zero interest rates and to be locked there. Japan was first--and achieved this in isolation first. Now other nations follow in turn. In short, all new investments tend to reduce long-term cashflow capture prospects of increasing segments of the population. ZIRP thus becomes a gravity-like force blocking the prospects of rising rates--with increasing strength.

So where does this lead? If one assumes technology maintains a Kurzweil acceleration (and I do), then more and more skills are subsumed by automation quicker and quicker. This eventually reaches a point where more and more (and eventually all) humans fall into the low-skilled pool of "human-robot workers" who have very little prospect of securing a long-term cashflow demand (like delivery drivers). Further, even those with high skills are under constant threat of medium-term automation first by highly enabled super-producers and ultimately by full automation.

I have seen this trend play out several times--for example, in the securities trading industry where fewer and fewer super producers can eliminate pools of highly skilled people until they too are automated.

Over time, this leads to a glut of liquidity as investment shifts toward more and more productive firms (e.g. Amazon and Google) and they, in turn, invest in more and more AI/robotics that eliminates more and more skilled wage power from the workforce. This trend only accelerates and never reverses. (AI never gets stupid, dies, or weakens). In such an environment, training data becomes currency until it is no longer needed--but all potential training data becomes a key economic asset of any firm. To the extent that data is locked in humans (e.g. a law firm) the value of such players tends to fall and their powers diminish until they too can be broken by automation. Then consolidation into a few power firms is inevitable. Anti-globalism attempts to stop this trend at national borders but is likely futile in the medium term.

In the long run, humans are increasingly reliant on the few firms with the investment capacity to accelerate AI investment--and these firms garner most capital investment.

The inevitable outcome is that most people do menial work while a few dominant shareholders of the AI intensive firms consolidate wealth.

The next and last portion of this becomes more speculative, but my guess is that these firms effectively become "national" or socialized and their productivity is socialized. UBI will result as a "dividend" for the last vestiges of market operations of society--I give markets about 30 years to live. For now, I believe this view of technology and economics explains most of the macro-social trends that the highly developed world is experiencing and will continue to do so for the next 10 years at least. If I had to speculate on a "post-market" world, it will be entirely algorithmic.

submitted by /u/rlanham1963 [link] [comments] source https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/hg5yys/a_theory_of_the_evolution_of_aidriven_economics/