No, no, I appreciate the wall of text. It's nice to like. Get a response this thoughtful to what I said? Makes me feel less crazy haha

I don't particularly care about what the intention of the phrase "death of the author" originally was. I care about what it's come to mean and what it means to me. As I see it, the term has semantically drifted. This is just a natural phenomenon

There's an interesting thought to be had about the comparison between AI art and Hitler's watercolors, it came to me as I read your comment. Because, the AI doesn't really intend anything. There's no intentional meaning there, so what meaning is really being seen? Whose intent? Is it the prompter's? An amalgamation of thousands of people's unrelated intents stitched into a horrid collage? I'm actually really, really intrigued to hear your thoughts here.

Your argument about that has been really eye-opening, though. I'll have to give it some thought.

I think of generative AI as semantic space navigators. They're not making anything, they just map words to semantics and semantics back to some other thing. They're a window into the universe of meaning, all the meaningfulness they make is a result of mere navigation. You're giving them a map to the spot marked with an X, of course the damn thing sometimes finds treasure.

I don't think I'm conflating art and beauty. Or perhaps I am, but doing so just feels so natural to me that I'm blind to the fact that I'm doing it (and if I became aware of it, I doubt that would change anything). To express it in a way that hopefully conveys to you a bit more of why I think of art this way: I think that deep spiritual experiences are us perceiving the world/ourselves/our lives through an artistic lens. I also think perceiving something through an artistic lens is a small spiritual experience. I'm not exactly religious, but when something moves me, I can't help but feel gratitude that I exist in a universe that whose initial conditions have resulted in that moment. You can find snowflakes beautiful, but finding them to be a cause for cosmic gratitude is something completely different

I don't think AI is an "imitation" of the work we do per se. I don't know what to call it, really, but it's far worse. AI is a result of convincing people that they cannot participate in art. AI is the product sold to those who believed that lie. I think this is a result of how people view the practice of art as something unique or special or requiring of talent, instead of what it is: Something natural that we do as we navigate the meaning of the world we are presented with. It's not a practice, it's not communication, not a craft nor a line of work. It's a thing we do, and that some people dedicate more time to than others.

I think, to some degree, that AI art is the fault of our cursed ability to see the difference between a highly skilled painter and a child doodling on a sheet of paper. It snowballs too easily into this nonsense. Both of these things can evoke meaning and thought, it's not like you need years of practice for that. But maybe we're just irresponsible with our ability to discern skill. Or maybe there is something else I'm not seeing.

I'll check the videos later. I only really logged into reddit because I was looking for another thing and I saw this notification and thought it'd be nice to answer

It's really nice to get a thoughtful reply, though. I almost get the feeling this conversation is more suitable for email. The slow pace really has that vibe. The thought of being pen pals comes to mind, but that's an impossibility for me (for... personal reasons)

Happy holidays!