“One person even took the time to write out an 850-word breakdown of the AI work’s shortcomings.”
But they didn’t. The “breakdown” they link to is clearly and glaringly AI-authored.
“ Fair warning before I dig in: this image is actually a very competent rendition. It's doing more right than most AI Monet pastiches. But you asked what makes it inferior to a real Monet, so here's the honest breakdown. What's missing — the physical object”
Plus the whole piece is just “someone did something and now here are a bunch of tweets”.
Yeah the 850 worded one is certainly AI, but I don't think it disproves the whole article. It's not an official study either, but things in between are allowed to be written about too.
Ah, this warms my heart. Now if only the people who were at first so willing to participate in this experiment engaged in more self-reflection and less rage...
But this is why we have “experts”. It’s like the guy playing a Stradivarius on the NYC subway. Most people can’t distinguish ok from brilliant, in a subject they don’t understand. Most humans cannot distinguish slop code from decent code but I assume most HNers can. However I can’t tell you why one electrical wiring job is better than another unless it looks untidy.
Once you get passed a minimum level of decent we have to rely on experts and the communal agreement of experts to decide. Sometimes that easy (is the electrical wiring on fire) sometimes it’s much harder. (Insert controversial wiring discussion here)
I have a feeling like the lay person wouldn’t have made a comment, it’s only the people that think they are an expert that wouldn’t have confidently said why this painting is worse.
Also experts in an art competition have the award to an ai art piece. It was only because they didn’t know it was ai. So no, even experts are susceptible to these issues.
When judging art, like when judging wine, there is very little objectivity: people have some expectations and preconcepts about what is good and what is bad and they emit their judgement mostly based on their preconcepts. In this case they have been "primed" (this is a real psychology concept) that it was AI and they invented a lot of reasons to explain why that was bad AI slop, but that happened just because they where "primed" on AI. If the post was about a lost, wonderful Monet, found for the first time the comments would have been about how typical Monet it was and how beautiful the choice of colors and the water reflects or whatever.
This is also seen when blind-tasting wines when prestigious "grands crus" are classed as bad whereas humble, mostly unknown, wines gets great appreciations. When people say that a wine is "great" or "extraordinary" is mostly because they have been primed to think it must be extraordinary, because of the name, the presentation, the prestige etc.
This problem is always true in the domains like art and philosophy where there is no ground truth and everyone can say very much what they want and it can be never be proved wrong neither right. Actually, in philosophy, all the branches that developed to be grounded on facts and ground truth have been given a different name and separated from philosophy so what remains in philosophy is just the empty words.
People are much more humble when they are asked about an hard-science question or judgement.
I am also having fun about all the hate about AI that people express, this is almost comical. You can almost literally see their little ego that feels menaced by the AI and they react based on fear and anger. Of course this doesn't mean there aren't real problems about AI use but the way people react irrationally is just fun to observe.
I guess this is kind of the recursive version of the purported phenomenon, but, are we sure all those comments aren't just bot generated outrage so people can have big engagement by feeling superiour or whatever?
Yeah I'm hesitant to take a strong opinion on this given how many of the replies could themselves be AI, or humans counter-trolling by baiting him to say "aha! I got you!" to the most over-the-top examples.
That said, it has definitely pulled some real humans out of the woodwork to give their real opinion that "yes, I'm influenced/duped by context and that's a good thing". And that's an accomplishment.
Rarely do people get the right takeaway from this effect. Take a normal bottle of red wine and some top tier, swap them around so the ordinary is in the expensive bottle and vice versa. Serve them. People prefer the ordinary wine in the expensive bottle.
Bad takeaway: taste is meaningless.
Good takeaway: qualia depends on many contextual cues beyond the obvious.
Part of the appreciation of Monet is the fact that it was made by Monet. The art pieces 4′33″ or Black Square are early examples of this within the are world. Many pieces will have you saying, my 8 year old could have done this, so why is this piece famous? Critiques and appreciation are often not literal because we cannot properly express these subconscious effects.
Id argue that your dichotomy in of itself requires context.
While the idea that qualia depends on contextual cues might be valuable to understand how culture evolves, it's also indicative that that these cultural phenomena evolve to preserve in group/out group dynamics.
It's not so much, "taste is meaningless" and more, "taste is an arbitrary construction." These kinds of tests are the natural tools of the cynics and satirists of the world.
Critics and purveyors of the Fine Arts and Refined Tastes tend to get a little "up their own asses" about the things that they like.
So, while I agree that the framing of "taste is meaningless" is a bad take, it's valid to point out that there's natural humor here.
This kind of playful mockery is as old as the arts themselves. See: Diogenes.
My 2 cents is that qualia is definitely a fancy way to say “opinions”. As in:
“My opinion is that this brand is good because others have told me it is. My opinion is that it is expensive because it must in fact be good. The bottle looks old, therefore it is old, which means it must be good because anything good takes time. Everyone has told me how this is amazing, so I need to ensure my refined palette can identify the blah…blah..”
Opinions all the way down, rarely ever based on concrete objectivity. Even for Monet.
In abstract you take the same paintings, stick them in some old dead dudes attic in Nowhere, Montana because he just did them for fun, I’d be surprised if they even ended up at a yard sale.
And that is the point. Value is entirely subjective and built through opinions. If your opinion begins with “I don’t like this,” you don’t tend to then overlook the same characteristics you willingly ignored or even embellished when you believed you are expected to like said thing.
Last summer I created and printed out a book "Claude Code - An Autobiography" written by Claude Code. Read it on the beach during vacation.
It was a hallucinated mess. And, not the worst book I have ever read. Entertaining.
So, if AI would wrote the perfect book, would you read it? Or do we need to be able to relate to the creator/ author to really appreciate it? Do we need to appreciate something to enjoy it?
People want importance. To feel, or more accurately, to show that they "Know". That they "Care". They are experts in this or that. They are this, they are that. Whatever it is they are "selling" or to whichever group they want to belong to - they play that part they conceive is theirs.
I love exercises like this - they expose this. Float it right up to the surface. It's poetic.
That only tells us that pro-AI people lie to elicit the desired responses on Twitter. Since lying is their default mode, this is not surprising.
If you tell the neighborhood that the new guy who moves in is a criminal, virtually all people will believe it as well and not use their own judgement.
Of course on Twitter there won't be any art critics, perhaps the responses are all AI bots.
1. AI can now be indistinguishable from reality in many cases.
2. Many people hate AI art, not just when it looks bad, but also conceptually.
3. Perception is very easily influenced by many factors.
So given those three facts, this outcome is obvious (and yes, it's cherry-picked, but I'm referring to the big picture), and I'm not sure why I don't see this a lot more often as a form of trolling or dishonest "evidence" that disliking AI art is a bad thing - maybe I'm too pessimistic.
I once lucked into a private tour of a Monet gallery. I asked the curator, "these paintings just don't look great, why should I be impressed?"
The curator responded that Monet, and impressionism in general, were a reaction to the then-new invention of paint sold in tubes. Previously a painter had to mix pigment powder right when they painted. So they usually couldn't paint outdoors where the wind would blow the powder, and they couldn't capture rapidly-evolving scenes.
Tube paint changed that. Impressionists started painting things in motion, or in shifting lighting like dawn. Their paintings were designed not to look good close up, but to be viewed at a distance, where the "pixelation" (so to speak) resolved into a coherent picture. They skipped on fine detail to capture something as fast as they could, because they could never do that before.
I still don't care for impressionism on an aesthetic level, but I learned something that day about art history and why some people appreciate art that I don't.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 49.6 ms ] threadBut they didn’t. The “breakdown” they link to is clearly and glaringly AI-authored.
“ Fair warning before I dig in: this image is actually a very competent rendition. It's doing more right than most AI Monet pastiches. But you asked what makes it inferior to a real Monet, so here's the honest breakdown. What's missing — the physical object”
Plus the whole piece is just “someone did something and now here are a bunch of tweets”.
What an utterly pointless piece of churnalism.
Once you get passed a minimum level of decent we have to rely on experts and the communal agreement of experts to decide. Sometimes that easy (is the electrical wiring on fire) sometimes it’s much harder. (Insert controversial wiring discussion here)
I suspect The same applies here.
Also experts in an art competition have the award to an ai art piece. It was only because they didn’t know it was ai. So no, even experts are susceptible to these issues.
This is also seen when blind-tasting wines when prestigious "grands crus" are classed as bad whereas humble, mostly unknown, wines gets great appreciations. When people say that a wine is "great" or "extraordinary" is mostly because they have been primed to think it must be extraordinary, because of the name, the presentation, the prestige etc.
This problem is always true in the domains like art and philosophy where there is no ground truth and everyone can say very much what they want and it can be never be proved wrong neither right. Actually, in philosophy, all the branches that developed to be grounded on facts and ground truth have been given a different name and separated from philosophy so what remains in philosophy is just the empty words.
People are much more humble when they are asked about an hard-science question or judgement.
I am also having fun about all the hate about AI that people express, this is almost comical. You can almost literally see their little ego that feels menaced by the AI and they react based on fear and anger. Of course this doesn't mean there aren't real problems about AI use but the way people react irrationally is just fun to observe.
I guess this is kind of the recursive version of the purported phenomenon, but, are we sure all those comments aren't just bot generated outrage so people can have big engagement by feeling superiour or whatever?
That said, it has definitely pulled some real humans out of the woodwork to give their real opinion that "yes, I'm influenced/duped by context and that's a good thing". And that's an accomplishment.
Bad takeaway: taste is meaningless.
Good takeaway: qualia depends on many contextual cues beyond the obvious.
Part of the appreciation of Monet is the fact that it was made by Monet. The art pieces 4′33″ or Black Square are early examples of this within the are world. Many pieces will have you saying, my 8 year old could have done this, so why is this piece famous? Critiques and appreciation are often not literal because we cannot properly express these subconscious effects.
Those that like wine just because they think it’s expensive just have objectively bad taste.
So your defence only works for people with objectively bad taste. It’s not something that applies to everyone.
While the idea that qualia depends on contextual cues might be valuable to understand how culture evolves, it's also indicative that that these cultural phenomena evolve to preserve in group/out group dynamics.
It's not so much, "taste is meaningless" and more, "taste is an arbitrary construction." These kinds of tests are the natural tools of the cynics and satirists of the world.
Critics and purveyors of the Fine Arts and Refined Tastes tend to get a little "up their own asses" about the things that they like.
So, while I agree that the framing of "taste is meaningless" is a bad take, it's valid to point out that there's natural humor here.
This kind of playful mockery is as old as the arts themselves. See: Diogenes.
“My opinion is that this brand is good because others have told me it is. My opinion is that it is expensive because it must in fact be good. The bottle looks old, therefore it is old, which means it must be good because anything good takes time. Everyone has told me how this is amazing, so I need to ensure my refined palette can identify the blah…blah..”
Opinions all the way down, rarely ever based on concrete objectivity. Even for Monet.
In abstract you take the same paintings, stick them in some old dead dudes attic in Nowhere, Montana because he just did them for fun, I’d be surprised if they even ended up at a yard sale.
And that is the point. Value is entirely subjective and built through opinions. If your opinion begins with “I don’t like this,” you don’t tend to then overlook the same characteristics you willingly ignored or even embellished when you believed you are expected to like said thing.
It was a hallucinated mess. And, not the worst book I have ever read. Entertaining.
So, if AI would wrote the perfect book, would you read it? Or do we need to be able to relate to the creator/ author to really appreciate it? Do we need to appreciate something to enjoy it?
We can see every day.
Some people have no clue about the concept of Impressionism.
I love exercises like this - they expose this. Float it right up to the surface. It's poetic.
If you tell the neighborhood that the new guy who moves in is a criminal, virtually all people will believe it as well and not use their own judgement.
Of course on Twitter there won't be any art critics, perhaps the responses are all AI bots.
Albeit the original source was flagged.
2. Many people hate AI art, not just when it looks bad, but also conceptually.
3. Perception is very easily influenced by many factors.
So given those three facts, this outcome is obvious (and yes, it's cherry-picked, but I'm referring to the big picture), and I'm not sure why I don't see this a lot more often as a form of trolling or dishonest "evidence" that disliking AI art is a bad thing - maybe I'm too pessimistic.
The curator responded that Monet, and impressionism in general, were a reaction to the then-new invention of paint sold in tubes. Previously a painter had to mix pigment powder right when they painted. So they usually couldn't paint outdoors where the wind would blow the powder, and they couldn't capture rapidly-evolving scenes.
Tube paint changed that. Impressionists started painting things in motion, or in shifting lighting like dawn. Their paintings were designed not to look good close up, but to be viewed at a distance, where the "pixelation" (so to speak) resolved into a coherent picture. They skipped on fine detail to capture something as fast as they could, because they could never do that before.
I still don't care for impressionism on an aesthetic level, but I learned something that day about art history and why some people appreciate art that I don't.