Quote from: BadApple on August 02, 2023, 09:38:56 AM

Quote from: Tod13 on August 02, 2023, 08:49:22 AM
Weirdly, I just ran into the first RPG where I just could not wrap my head around how the rules were written. But I'm positive Index Card RPG did not use AI.

Sorry about that.  I'm the one who brought it up to you.  It makes a lot of sense to me but then I've been watching his YT content for a long time.  Hank does have his own style.  Maybe it helps that I'm also ADD?

Oh don't apologize. I really like some of the ideas in it. A lot. I just can't read it. LOL

Students of history will not be surprised at this issue at all.  It's not the first time it has happened.  We are going through an information paradigm shift.  The last one of this magnitude (there have been others in-between, but not of this scope) was the invention of the printing press.  A thousand years from now, people will be talking about the Internet the same way we talk about Gutenberg.  Look what happened back then.  People invented a way to mass-produce collections of information.  Instead of hand-copied manuscripts that took years to produce, books could be copied by the thousands.  So, what was the result?  The traditional guardians of information saw their monopolies being threatened.  The church had always held a close grip on who could read and interpret the Bible; now every literate (still a small percentage, but growing) person could read it for themselves.  Students at universities rioted, partly because of the threat the new information technology caused to their potential employment (loads of barely literate clerk/copiers were rendered obsolete).  Newspapers and broadsheets spread all kinds of information: true, false, salacious.  Now, only money was needed for your voice to be heard.  You didn't need the permission and cooperation of the traditional powers to spread your point of view widely.  The Protestant Reformation would have been impossible without the printing press.

What were the great concerns at the time?  How the "public" could possibly be trusted with increased information.  Entire volumes were written decrying the dangers of books, reading, learning, outside of the guidance of the church and universities.  There were calls for regulation of printing presses, bans, taxes, and other forms of control.  But information, once freed, is very hard to suppress.  It is arguable that the very notions that undergird our modern representative democracies (republics) rely heavily on free access to information.

So, what is the issue today?  Exactly the same.  The Internet democratized information transmission.  Now you don't need money or the approval of the various regulators who had formed to curate and "verify" the information available to the public.  The Internet itself has already served as a paradigm shift by flooding the average consumer with volumes more information than was available just 40 years ago.  This is why you see those in charge so worried about "fact-checking."  Their (self-serving) argument is that the volume of information available is so great that the average person can't separate the good from the bad.  Of course, instead of proposing ways to combat this (like teaching critical thinking and information analysis in schools), they want to name themselves curators of the information on the 'Net.  But it won't work.

Now we have AI, which at this stage is really just an information synthesizer (where the Internet can be seen as an information aggregator).  It's threat is mostly in that it can put information in a usable form much faster than most humans can.  Of course, the problem lies in that AI isn't really artificial "intelligence."  It has no way to vet the information it synthesizes, so it must be guided by its programming (which is mostly controlled by the powers-that-be, for now).  AI is a tool, like the printing press.  It will cause as much (if not more) disruption to existing institutions and structures as the printing press did.  But in the end, it increases the amount of information the individual has access to.  What it doesn't do is vet that information, much like the Internet doesn't.  And THAT is the great challenge of AI.  How are you going to know what is actually true, when checking the AI synthesizer would pretty much invalidate its use (you could simply create the synthesis yourself in the time it would take to check the AI's synthesis)?  There have been articles written about computer-aided mathematical proofs (not exactly the same as AI, but close), where mathematicians have used computers to hard-calculate so many iterations of a problem that they consider it "proven."  They then go on to use that "proof" to prove another (via computer), and another, and another.  Critics have pointed out that the proofs have layered on top of each other to such an extent that no human could ever actually verify the end result.  This will be the great challenge in AI.  When one AI "hallucinates" a source that is then cited and re-cited, how do you, the end user, know you are getting a false "fact"?

As it was in the time of Gutenberg, the problem is not the increasing availability of information.  It is, as always, how to vet the volumes of information as an individual...

Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 02, 2023, 10:47:10 AM
And THAT is the great challenge of AI.  How are you going to know what is actually true, ... ?

The same way you find out what is true with the volumes of internet dreck you get when you search for information today.  Look for primary sources, use syllogistic logic, etc.  But, 99% of people that went to primary school in the 80's and later are handicapped as they didn't really receive an education but were baby sat for 12 years.  No education in logic, critical thinking, research, formal debate, et al.  So, they are hopeless no matter info they get. 

This is going to be impossible to police.
AI is being incorporated into every word processing and graphics editing software. It will be ubiquitous, it already is. It is a powerful tool, and like all powerful tools it will be used for good and for evil. Yes, we will see mountains of drivel and bad AI art, but smart creative designers will also use it to make incredible things and to increase their output by a thousand fold.

As Steve Jobs put it, "computers are like bicycles for the mind."

AI will be like jet planes for the mind.

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 02, 2023, 04:25:40 PMAI will be like jet planes for the mind.

Every AI developer/investor I have spoke too was a sociopath.
Every positive for AI I have heard whas rhetorical or theoretical, or came from an alien view of what "good" was.
Every negative one has been a concrete fear and loss of livelihoods, or of a social shift I don't want to live in.

Automation is nothing new. The backlash to automation has been going on for centuries. I think one of the issues we're facing now is that creative types saw themselves as exempt. I can't say all creative types were this way, but lately there has definitely been a certain sense of smug superiority emanating from artists and writers as blue collar types lost their jobs to outsourcing and automation. "Learn to code," they said. Which, when journalists got laid off, suddenly that phrase became a bannable offense.

Machines can do jobs far better than humans can, but strangely enough, craftsmen did not disappear. The best craftsmen today are the ones who utilize machines in the most clever and skillful ways. Once we get over ourselves and stop whining about AI, the best writers are going to be the ones who best utilize ChatGPT, and the best artists will be the ones who best incorporate Stable Diffusion.

It may be that we need to oppose AI for existential reasons, but it won't be artists and writers who wage the Butlerian Jihad.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on August 02, 2023, 04:46:45 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 02, 2023, 04:25:40 PMAI will be like jet planes for the mind.

Every AI developer/investor I have spoke too was a sociopath.
Every positive for AI I have heard whas rhetorical or theoretical, or came from an alien view of what "good" was.
Every negative one has been a concrete fear and loss of livelihoods, or of a social shift I don't want to live in.

Pretty much why I'm a Catholic and not a Capitalist.

Capitalism is better than Socialism/Communism, but unfettered it has zero place for the human spirit or the dignity of the human person (and ultimately morphs into the fascistic public-private partnership when it's allowed to buy up government officials).

Just because one can, doesn't mean one should do (even if a bunch are going to do it anyway)... China and what this country is turning into are what this attitude leads to. Fortunately it's not all that sustainable in the long term (with the unfortunate understanding that it can be sustained past a single person's lifetime).

That said, I am not in favor of banning AI, just requiring a label for AI generated content so those who care about supporting real talent can put our money in the hands of the individuals we prefer to support.

DeviantArt is flooded with AI art and it has a characteristic soulless quality to it. I don't know how to describe it, but the more you look at AI generated "art" the more you notice underlying patterns in the output. Namely, it always has weird jpg artifacting and objects blend together in physically impossible (and obviously unintentional) ways that I can only describe as "melted cheese". Human beings cannot draw like that. Even the crudest output of artists who are just starting out doesn't look like melted cheese.

I've seen anime style AI art and the fine details suffer extensively from the melted cheese look. The AI also has difficulties with anatomy. It can't decide whether men should have bulges or be ken dolls, and it cannot draw nipples correctly. When it draws superheroes in costume, their costumes are part of their flesh and you can see crude approximations of nipples on the chest area... for men only, whereas women are creepily doll-like in that respect.

Maybe these issues will be fixed, but why not just draw art? It's obvious that AI generators are only being used by talentless hacks to churn out soulless filler. Everywhere on deviantart now there are AI "artists" who each churn out hundreds of "pieces" in their gallery every day. There's no care or effort put into any of it, it's just filler that serves no purpose and contributes zero value.

Deviantart hasn't yet instituted a deletion policy, but at this rate they're gonna have to or they'll run out of server space. AI art spam is a serious problem.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on August 02, 2023, 04:46:45 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 02, 2023, 04:25:40 PMAI will be like jet planes for the mind.

Every AI developer/investor I have spoke too was a sociopath.
Every positive for AI I have heard whas rhetorical or theoretical, or came from an alien view of what "good" was.
Every negative one has been a concrete fear and loss of livelihoods, or of a social shift I don't want to live in.

The gatherers were threatened by those sociopaths who wanted to actually plant and harvest the food. The loomers were threatened by those sociopaths who wanted to build machines that would sew cloth together en masse, cheaply and quickly. And we are all familiar with how threatened the carriage makers were by those sociopaths who wanted to replace horses with engines.

This technology is as revolutionary as the printing press, and that will mean the end of many institutions and the beginning of new ones.

Do I hate that it is going to replace illustrators? Yes, I deeply love art and have a collection of originals, and have travelled the world just to see original works I admire in great museums. Art will live on, but illustration is a commodity and will be automated.

Words have already become cheaper as word processors have become more efficient. They already had spelling and grammar checkers. This is just the next level of that. Words are a commodity too. There will still be great literature made by great writers.

I could be doom and gloom about this, but there are enough things to be gloomy about. Creative people will find ways to be creative with this software. Hacks will still be hacks.

Quote from: Corolinth on August 02, 2023, 04:53:08 PM
It may be that we need to oppose AI for existential reasons, but it won't be artists and writers who wage the Butlerian Jihad.

And yet, they are. https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/16/23557098/generative-ai-art-copyright-legal-lawsuit-stable-diffusion-midjourney-deviantart

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 02, 2023, 06:24:43 PMThe gatherers were threatened by those sociopaths who wanted to actually plant and harvest the food.

I am curious about what technology danger level is required before it steps into a threshold of "innately just bad" for you, or if there isn't one.
Bioweapons? Nukes? Automated kill bots? Mind control drugs? Eugenics (assuming their not mandatory)?

I understand fatalism in the sense of "Oh humanity was always doomed to be replaced by the cyborg elite and their doom bot armies, Im just saying its inexorable". But to equate any innovation as the same, is moronic.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on August 02, 2023, 04:46:45 PM

Quote from: Thor's Nads on August 02, 2023, 04:25:40 PMAI will be like jet planes for the mind.

Every AI developer/investor I have spoke too was a sociopath.
Every positive for AI I have heard whas rhetorical or theoretical, or came from an alien view of what "good" was.
Every negative one has been a concrete fear and loss of livelihoods, or of a social shift I don't want to live in.

Most of this is just asserted into the ether rather than backed with concrete facts or logical arguments.

While I'm inclined to believe that 1) is likely true for many investors (in general), I'm willing to bet that this claim is just "according to you", as opposed to "according to a health care professional who actually evaluated and diagnosed these people, and you can cite".

2) Is 100% a baseless claim. There are plenty of concrete benefits to AI that have been mentioned here already that are not just rhetorical or theoretical, but actually being enjoyed by people as we speak, or this wouldn't even be a topic--If there was zero concrete benefit to AI ABSOULTEY NO ONE WOUD GIVE A SHIT. The only reason we're even discussing this topic disproves on its own that there are not concrete benefits. If there was no benefit there would be ABSOLUTE ZERO reason for people to bitch about it for feel threatened by AI.

AI greatly expedites the creative process, and contrary to many claims here you can't just shit a prompt into a keyboard and automatically produce ready made AI content. Most of what AI makes on its own is crap. You have to go through multiple prompts then heavily edit it a lot of times (particularly written material, especially for RPGs, or long form stories) for it to be any good. But you can do research with it, run it for ideas, check for grammar and style, or quickly do menial stuff like resumes, etc.

There are also plenty of uses for artists to help refine their own original art. Since they can feed their art to the AI and tell it to redraw/paint it in different styles, then retouch it and run it again till you arrive at what they want. Shadiversity did an entire video on this a while back, trying different drawings that he did himself, as well as various videos debunking common anti-AI claims.

3) And yet, no one has been able to adequately defend any of these concrete fears, because they aren't really that concreate, but are largely (#NotAll) just theoretical or based on a fundamental of how the tech works or even the creative process. Every time people claim that AI "steals" art and they try to defend that claim they end up describing stuff that human artists have done for millennia and would rend them thieves as well. So it isn't really that AI "steals" art, but that people feel threatened by how fast and efficient it is. So they bend themselves like a pretzel trying to invent reasons why what the tech does is somehow unethical on a fundamental level. But the tech itself is neutral. The corps that own it are the primary concern.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 02, 2023, 05:05:34 PMThat said, I am not in favor of banning AI, just requiring a label for AI generated content so those who care about supporting real talent can put our money in the hands of the individuals we prefer to support.

This continues to fail to understand that 1) there is no way to effectively distinguish between AI vs human created content, and most importantly 2) that humans can use AI generated content as a base, or even feed it their own original content to refine it, then heavily edit it. So, as I asked multiple times in this thread, what % of human vs AI generated content are we talking about here? How do we even determine what's human created vs AI? Do any of you even understand that this isn't a binary and that humans can create original content mixed with AI content and that the human element can completely transform the AI content into something new?

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 02, 2023, 08:14:24 PMMost of this is just asserted into the ether rather than backed with concrete facts or logical arguments.

I am merely stating why I am mortified by the technology.
I by all means want to be proven wrong.

I also disagree on your principles.
Basics:
1: Artists can produce more work faster. This will just cause their wages to fall.
2: In the future there will be more prompters less artists as learning art basics will be less valuable then ever.
3: This is all hoping the tech doesn't advance further. What it can do now was UNFATHOMABLE.

I take the idea that the tech will not just outsource more jobs, lower wages and make entry level positions less available...just wrong.

For me, the good news from this thread is that DTRPG allows AI art for covers and interiors, you just have to mark it so in the product metadata.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 02, 2023, 05:05:34 PM

Capitalism is better than Socialism/Communism, but unfettered it has zero place for the human spirit or the dignity of the human person (and ultimately morphs into the fascistic public-private partnership when it's allowed to buy up government officials).

Which is why I prefer Free Market economics and rolling back the leftist changes that made the US a capitalist country