Fun things I've been reading
Hi! Here are some fun reads that found me in recent weeks:
Ted Chiang wrote some interesting articles for the New Yorker on generative models and fiction writing. I appreciate the insights from an art practitioner; the arguments were a lot more specific from someone who also knows what it’s like to be standing over a make-believe world spread out on pieces of paper around the room and questioning their life choices at 2 A.M. (I’m guessing.)
When photography was first developed, I suspect it didn’t seem like an artistic medium because it wasn’t apparent that there were a lot of choices to be made; you just set up the camera and start the exposure. But over time people realized that there were a vast number of things you could do with cameras, and the artistry lies in the many choices that a photographer makes. It might not always be easy to articulate what the choices are, but when you compare an amateur’s photos to a professional’s, you can see the difference. So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator?
In his article, his answer is no. I’m not so sure. Chiang brings up the work of Bennett Miller, who generated more than a hundred thousand images with DALL-E to exhibit twenty but couldn’t repeat the project with updated models. Chiang writes this is not an intended or profitable use case of DALL-E, so this is a fluke. But what if Miller had his own, even locally hosted generative model?
The lawsuit between Sarah Andersen (a cartoonist and illustrator) and Stability AI, Midjourney, et., has reached the ‘get the popcorn’ stage. As the judge wrote:
Midjourney does not identify a dispositive legal argument that was ignored, it simply dislikes my conclusion.
Two books I’m currently reading from serious people:
Unmasking AI from Dr. Joy Buolamwini about the ‘coded gaze’ and how AI models reflect “both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them.”
The New Breed by Kate Darling on how relating to robots as animals, instead of mechanical humans that will replace us, would be both more helpful and accurate.
That’s it for today. Enjoy pumpkin soup season!