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The article in which Scott compares John Henry's mining capacity to the Machine's
(www.astralcodexten.com)
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
Art's value is determined by two measurable factors: prettiness at a glance, and ungarbled signage, artist motivations be damned. With this in mind we can predict other advancements in entertainment (all art is entertainment!)
For example, future pro boxing matches will be performed by rock'em sock'em robots in skin suits. They can score more points than humans. Soccer will be performed by restaurant server robots...in skin suits. Humans will still have a place in Olympic skiing and swimming so long as human pleather warps in water.
I like how he even had someone with art expertise literally explain it to him and he writes it off as "lol she must have super artist vision for details."
I don't know there's something here about how broken the way we engage with art is. How commodified art is inherently decontextualized and while you can see the beauty or the power or whatever you lose something without the curation and presentation you get from a gallery or a museum.
I also want to dunk on a few of the specific inclusions. AI clearly doesn't understand the point of cubism in particular, making it an exceptionally clear example of what Scott's artist friend was talking about. Including a digital photograph of a collage that clearly makes use of the depth of the actual work is pretty dumb.
I'll quote her since it's by far the only worthwhile part of the article:
according to someone who goes by Ilzo on the socials.
image in question: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQ3wnEZWAAA_mY8?format=jpg
It is funny in a way that he included the Victorian Megaship thing, as imho that is a bad piece of art. As the ship doesn't properly work in various ways, that it looks so much like AI (including the nonsensical rigging, the weird perspective, the smaller boats on direct collision course, and all the other things that make no sense, size wise or wind direction wise), it just isn't that great. It also has that AI art feel where on first glance you go 'huh, that looks interesting' and then it gets worse and worse the longer you look at it. (which makes sense in some ways as it was a quick piece done by the artist).
It's a very "steampunk (derogatory)" picture, like something I would have found on sale in the artist room of the science-fiction convention that convinced me I don't like science-fiction conventions very much.
yeah, any picture i got wrong in his thing i thought "this is stock image shit, i couldn't care less whether it was synthesised or industrially produced"
It's just....blah.