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AI Evolve vs Preserve
It was a dinner after the premier of Sheiny's movie "Sinking In The Fire". Everybody was present since they celebrated a rather unusual success of the movie. And also they celebrated the reunion of Sheiny's mom and dad. She was still a bit shocked by the identity of her dad. But it was already a few days in. So she started getting used to it.
The Richie's Gang, Chloe and Ivan were talking among themselves on the background, without much interest to the others. Mr. Hambleton was looking something up on his laptop just before the dinner started. So when they started to talk, he spoke.
Mr. Hambleton: Sheiny, what do you think about the situation on ArtStation?
Sheiny: What's the situation?
Mr. Hambleton: You don't know? They have now a protest against art generated by Artificial Intelligence.
Mendel: They protest what?
Mr. Hambleton: Ah... Well... You know computers can draw pretty pictures now?
Mendel: Really? Cool!
Mr. Hambleton: Well, artists do not like it.
Mr. Humbert: They are a bunch of pussies! I remember back in the 80s and 90s we were all afraid that CGI will take all our jobs. But instead it created new ones.
Mendel: What's a CGI?
Sheiny: Computer Generated Images.
Mendel thought about it.
Mendel: Wait, so computers could draw images back in the 80s. And only now there is a protest?
Sheiny: They protest not making images on the computer, but rather that the computer makes the images alone.
Mendel: Like, by itself?
Mr. Hambleton: These are neural network protocols. Don't ask me about what it means, I know almost nothing about it. But technically speaking they allow you to type something into a prompt and the computer would generate an image for you.
Mendel: Like the google image search?
Sheiny: Better! In image searches you only find what's there. AI is smart enough to combine styles together. For example you were able to find a picture of a firetruck. And were able to find a picture of a Van Gogh painting. But what if what you really wanted is a firetruck painted like if Van Gogh would have painted it? Image search would not find a picture like this unless it's been made and published before. While AI can put two and two together and generate one on the spot for you.
Mendel: Well that's amazing!
Mr. Hambleton: But the artists are afraid that they would loose their jobs because of this technology.
Sheiny: You know what scares me more about AI? Not that somebody might loose a job. But that more people will rely on something they have no ability to understand.
Amanda: What you mean you don't care about them loosing their jobs?
Sheiny: Mom, it's complicated.
Amanda: How they gonna feed their babies?
Mr. Humbert; Miss, the business always changes. I remember when Jurassic Park came out with it's computer generated dinosaurs. All of the model-makers thought that their days were counted. And soon they will all be out of job. But what happened was, somebody had to make those models on the computers too. And so they just got re-trained.
Mr. Hambleton: I don't think it's that simple with AI. It let's people just type in what they want and the program will spit out the final image.
Mr. Humbert: Can it spit out the final animation?
Mr. Hambleton: Well maybe not now. But eventually. Some day in future you would just type what kind of story you want to see on your phone. And the phone will generate a movie for you.
Mr. Humbert thought about it.
Mr. Humbert: So you are saying that there will not be any movie productions soon? Well wait a second there... The trend is now to shoot films back on film actually. Look at Christopher Nolan or Tom Cruise. Their whole business model is to make shit for real and not using computers for everything.
Mendel: Decorative jobs?
Mr. Humbert: What?
Mendel: Well, I work at a wood factory. And they are planning to use more machinery to replace some more tedious jobs. Well. I was kind of afraid of that for some time. But I think I know the answer. Decorative jobs would still exist.
Sheiny: What do you mean?
Mendel: There are still hotels that use an elevator operator. Even though today elevators are automatic. It looks more prestigious to have a human doing the job there. Or something like a restaurant waiter. A machine could do it. But rich people would like a human with good manners instead, I suppose.
Sheiny: Selling rich people their own ego. Smart!
Mr. Hambleton: I think, in my opinion, we should have some legislation that restricts AI! I mean we could deal with the problem at hand instead of relying on some "decorative jobs".
Sheiny: That has the same tone as copyright.
Mr. Hambleton: What do you mean?
Sheiny: Before copy-machines you could only buy another copy from the publisher. And before the printing press, the only way you could have copies was to ask somebody to literally re-make something for you. If you wanted to have a copy of a book 500 years ago, you should have either written it all yourself on a new piece of paper. Or payed somebody to do that for you... With printing press copiers, you know, people who make copies, were angry since it took their job. And with today's copy-machines, printing press owners were angry. So they made copyright laws worse and worse to combat new technology.
Amanda: Well... They were trying to survive. What's wrong with that?
Sheiny: They were taking away people's freedom, so they would not need to learn some other job. The job was obsolete. They were trying to make it not to be obsolete by restricting people's freedom.
Amanda: There are still people that write copies by hand.
Sheiny: Really?
Amanda: In the synagogue they have Torah written by hand. I think it takes something like a year to make one such copy.
Sheiny: Right! Hm... That's interesting. Torah, or the Bible is not under copyright.
Mendel: Perhaps artists could stay in business similarly.
Mr. Hambleton: There is a catch though. They are using computers to draw art in the first place. And it seems like the problem is not that the art is done on the computer. But how simple it was to do it.
Sheiny: So you are proposing banning user interfaces that are too simple to use?
Mr. Hambleton: Well if it becomes so simple to use them that an average person could generate art for themselves. Nobody would buy art ever.
Mr. Humbert: Then it's a question of a business model.
Sheiny: Exactly!
Mr. Hambleton: What do you mean?
Mr. Humbert: Well, they could make a big deal about drawing art for real. Like make it a statement to use real art instead of AI art. As many filmmakers make a big deal about using physical film or practical effects instead of digital photography and CGI.
Mr. Hambleton: This is not how value works.
Mr. Humbert: You have never been in an art school? Value of art is very much a question of persuasion. A kind of PR stunt on top of PR stunt, mixed with politics.
Mr. Hambleton: What I'm saying is... people pay for value. If they want to see a movie, they cannot make it themselves. So for them it is of value to go pay somebody who makes movies. And if enough people want to see a movie, they split, basically, and buy the production.
Sheiny: Exactly! Ham... People can come together and put some money to get a movie produced.
Mr. Hambleton: But with AI people will have a very cheap way to make a movie. So cheap that they could just click a button and have it done. Therefor those who make movies will become obsolete.
Sheiny: They can do something else.
Mr. Humbert: They would not have to. The business is flexible enough.
Sheiny: Yeah well. Perhaps they could find a way to work with this limitation.
Mr. Hambleton: You are pro-freedom Sheiny. Isn't developing something like this takes away the freedom from the artists to do art?
Sheiny: It doesn't.
Mr. Hambleton: Yes it does. It diminishes their price to such a low value, that nobody will do it.
Sheiny: I agree with that it will be harder to sell art. But it will not be impossible to make art. If I want to draw I take a pencil and draw.
Mr. Hambleton: What about films?
Sheiny: If I want to make a film. I take a camera and shoot. Didn't we just make a movie?
Mr. Hambleton: Right! Shit!
Mr. Humbert: Ham. There is always a way to market something. A lot of actors have a market value. Deep fakes of those actors do not have that same value. You know. The actor should be really there for it to have value in the eyes of the consumer.
Mr. Hambleton: What if they don't know that it's a deep fake?
Sheiny: We can perhaps make an AI program that detects deep fakes.
Mr. Hambleton: Right...
Sheiny: But I think the problem is not the deep fakes. Or AI forcing potentially diminishing prices. Prices going down is a sign of good progress. A sign of capitalism working. What I'm afraid of is that we don't understand how it works.
Mr. Hambleton: But we do. It's a neural...
Sheiny: Neural network! Right? You give it a bunch of right answers and wrong answers and it teaches itself to arrive at the right answers. Seems perfectly understandable. But I'm not satisfied. What are the algorithms that it arrives at?
Mr. Hambleton: The algorithm stays the same. The training data changes.
Sheiny: Well I'm thinking of training data as of binary blobs in the Linux kernel. I want to see the source code.
Mr. Hambleton: I don't think this is anywhere near intelligible for humans.
Amanda, Mendel and Mr. Humbert at this point thought that Sheiny and Mr. Hambleton started speaking Chinese and joined the conversation of Chloe, Ivan and the Richie's Gang.
Sheiny: It's all the fault of copyright!
Mr. Hambleton: I'm sorry!
Sheiny: Copyright made it possible to make proprietary software. People got used to proprietary software as a result. Which means that people are okay with not knowing how something works. They are literally not allowed to see into the source code of the program. Those people have kids. And those kids think that it's totally okay to develop technology that humans can't understand. And now we have AI. That even whoever developed it doesn't understand it.
Mr. Hambleton: How about making an AI program that translates AI programs into human readable source code? And then, pass it through itself?
Sheiny: You have to give it enough right answers and enough wrong answers to train it. So somebody has to compile enough right answers for it. It means somebody have to reverse engineer a million AI programs before one such AI program could be taught. I think at this point, this somebody could simply explain how to write it in source code in the first place. But how to even reverse engineer that stuff? It's, as you said, unintelligible for humans.
Mr. Hambleton: I told you! We need to regulate AI.
Sheiny: This is a different issue. You were talking about people loosing jobs. This is an issue of understanding how it works.
Mr. Hambleton: Should we allow programs that people do not understand to run?
Sheiny: Not allowing it will just increase the black market.
Mr. Hambleton: What do you mean?
Sheiny: If drugs were legal. Mafia would not sell them.
Mr. Humbert noticed the directions of Sheiny's thoughts and wanted to tell her something about their business. But Amanda ( Sheiny's mother ) was present. So he didn't talk about it. Thought she and Mr. Hambleton understood his look.
Mr. Hambleton ( quietly ): If this would be legal... You would not have the money to make your movie.
Sheiny: Are you telling me that I'm ugly?
Mr. Hambleton: Ah... No... Just ah... you know what I mean.
Sheiny: The price would have been lower, that's all. And as Mr. Humbert said, with time and with fame, I could get my price higher. Also... Think about it. We did all this money without copyright attached to nothing.
Mr. Hambleton: Hm...
Happy Hacking!
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