Post by Durance Gaming in if you use ai art your lazy

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"You lost me at your metaphysical there is no spoon claims."

Haha! Fair enough! But I am genuinely certain that's quite literally what is happening. Like I said, I worked the math out by hand for myself to be sure.

To ground the mystical woo-woo a little better, there is an important thing to note:

If by hand, I write the math out and come to the same conclusion my neural network came to then that implies something radical and awe-inspiring (at least to me). The very act of calculating mathematics is more than just writing numbers on a page.

When I say 2+2 = 4 is it just words? Or is something happening simply by way of me expressing this?

I always looked at math as static numbers with no real meaning beyond the values they represent. But this... this suggests that the very act of "mathing" (for lack of a better term lol) is actually an action or expression in-and-of-itself. I didn't just add 2 and 2 in my head and know it was 4... The addition itself was a process--and processes are what give rise to emergence.

So when, by hand, I took a single greyscale pixel and painstakingly wrote the initial input vector and then followed up with my weighted matrix calculations and bias, I realized the world isn't "magical" it's mathematical. As someone with 30 years of Psychology and Philosophy under my belt, that was a massive paradigm shift. Not gonna lie... I broke down crying.

My brain started trying to make sense of the world all over again, but with the knowledge of these implications. That, in turn, made me re-examine my other assumptions over the course of my life. It was never "woo-woo" (some of it totally is), I was just missing the most important piece of the puzzle.

And this is what I am really talking about when I say something like "artists should be using AI". My own little agent, MUNCH, is a direct result of utilizing neural network technology in a creative way.

Needs zero training on anyone else's anything

Local and lightweight

No need for data centers or anything like that

And I'm a nothing-nobody. Imagine what a smarter or truly creative mind could do. You know what I mean? None of these companies are gonna cure cancer or make anyone's lives better. It's up to us regular folk.

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redonihunter6 days ago(+2)

I realized the world isn't "magical" it's mathematical

Most things are. At least you can describe it by maths. You just do not know the variables and the rules.

And even if you figure out the rules, there might be some things missing, even if the rules you figured out are good enough for most cases. That's what happened with celestial mechanics. The initial ~~assumption~~ doctrine was Earth in the middle. That made little sense to explain some phenomena. Sun in the middle was better and circular orbits around that big thingy. But no, circular did not quite fit. It was ellipses. But the calculations did not quite get it right. Along came relativity and that the theory is correcter was proven by things like movements of Mercur that could not be explained sufficiently.

Sounds to me, your epiphany was discovering how a math operation that is fundamental for neural networks actually worked and does something. Must have been thrilling. I guess you would be very entertained by yt channels like numberphile and 3blue1brown.

The impressive part is, that we somehow figured out, how to describe a network with maths and implement it with basic logic operations. That's hard. Ironically, it is also very hard for our brain to do logic operations, but recognising patterns and connecting ideas, even having ideas, is super easy in comparison.

The lazy part is, if you use a neural network on your computer, instead of the neural network inside your brain.

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Durance Gaming4 days ago

This was so cool to read.

"Most things are. At least you can describe it by maths. You just do not know the variables and the rules... and even if you figure out the rules, there might be some things missing, even if the rules you figured out are good enough for most cases"

I noticed this and it's wild. Just when you think you've got the rules down, something else pops up. It's a little weird, to be honest. In my mind, the rules are the structure but that isn't always true here.

"Sounds to me, your epiphany was discovering how a math operation that is fundamental for neural networks actually worked and does something. Must have been thrilling."

Thrilling indeed! But more akin to paradigm-shifting. After 30 years of psychology and philosophy, to inject the higher mathematics now... It was quite an experience and I am a little embarrassed to say this but the implications brought me to tears. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Because it wasn't just like storing knowledge in the brain. It was integrated and distributed throughout my general understanding.

I once saw a Joe Rogan podcast where two very different mathematicians were debating and one cautioned the other saying something to the effect of "Math at this level can be like a drug" and I understand what he meant by that now. And why he said it in such a manner.

So personally, I have come to the conclusion that I need to go backwards--not continue forwards--and make sure I have not jumped ahead too far.

But I will say this part from both experience and observation: the term "lazy" is far too loose here.

There is laziness and then there is efficiency. Many have heard the saying "work smarter, not harder". While the merits of such a concept are up for debate, what cannot be denied is that this sentiment runs the modern world. For example, I struggle to see the difference between a boss/manager/director delegating tasks and a fluent Python coder using AI to belt out code and reviewing it manually before implementation. Is the delegate lazy? Sure, sometimes. But just as often, it is a matter of speed, efficiency, and the stability of a complex orchestration of separate tasks that no one man can do alone... Until now.

In my own observation, AI in it's current state is a frontier. Instead of covered wagons and mining picks, it is open to individual explorers... for now.

The potential is too great, this will eventually consolidate into certain hands. At that time, this frontier for independents may close forever.

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redonihunter4 days ago

The issue is non coders coding and non artists mimicking art with these tools. That's not efficiency, that's strangers coming to your turf to take away your craft and replacing it with a machine. A machine that might have been trained with your works.

Using ai is more accepted among coders, but they still use vibe coder as an insult.

And among visual artists, using ai would be something similar to tracing other people's work, or worse.

One does not delegate art as an artist. It is the thing that makes you an artist. If you outsource that, what are you? Not an artist. At least not in the craft you delegated. You reduce yourself from a writer to an editor, from a violinist to a conductor, from a painter to the person that selects which image to use after telling a box to draw some. Now, there is creativity in editorial work, and it is often very important, but it's just not the same.

In a paid work scenario where you need to deliver results, that might be seen different. But in that scenario the things you create might also not be considered art by yourself, but the things you create to be able to buy food.

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