Source (Bluesky)
Transcript
recently my friend’s comics professor told her that it’s acceptable to use gen Al for script- writing but not for art, since a machine can’t generate meaningful artistic work. meanwhile, my sister’s screenwriting professor said that they can use gen Al for concept art and visualization, but that it won’t be able to generate a script that’s any good. and at my job, it seems like each department says that Al can be useful in every field except the one that they know best.
It’s only ever the jobs we’re unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation. The more attuned we are with certain processes, crafts, and occupations, the more we realize that gen Al will never be able to provide a suitable replacement. The case for its existence relies on our ignorance of the work and skill required to do everything we don’t.
AI has been excellent at teaching me to program in new languages. It knows everything about all languages - except the ones I’m already familiar with. It’s terrible at those.
IDK about that I’m a professional slop maker and I think it could replace me easily.
Ignorance and lack of respect for other fields of study, I’d say. Generative ainñ is the perfect tool for narcisists because it has the potential to lock them in a world where only their expertise matters and only their oppinion is validated.
they’re both wrong, and they’re both right
an AI can create concept art for a writer to better visualise their world to generate ideas in a pinch, but it shouldn’t ever be what you use to show anyone else: you still need real concept art
an AI can also create writing for their art so that they can flesh out a back story to make their visual art more detailed, but it’s not going to write anything that you’d want anyone to read as a book or act in for a movie
both things can be used for the described purpose, and both things are inadequate for quality output
we’ve had this juxtaposition for a while: “redneck X”… they’re scrapped together barely functional versions of the thing you’re trying to do, on the cheap, with home-made tools. you wouldn’t sell it, but it’s kinda fine for this 1 situation with many many asterisks
professionals often don’t like when someone can hack together something functional because they know the many many places where that thing falls down when you talk about long-term, and the general case… but sometimes a hack job solves a specific problem in a specific situation for a moment for cheap and that’s all you need
(just don’t try it with electricity or your health: the consequences of not understanding this complexity is death… of course ;p)
an AI can create concept art for a writer to better visualise their world to generate ideas in a pinch, but it shouldn’t ever be what you use to show anyone else: you still need real concept art
so… if it’s only for creating visuals for yourself and not for showing anyone else… I already have a perfectly fine imagination that I’ve been using for that purpose for as long as I can remember. Maybe it’s useful for these people who I’ve been told have no imagination, but to me, it seems awfully redundant.
there are different kinds of imagination, and there are different kinds of being creative… just because someone isn’t visual doesn’t mean they aren’t creative: especially when you’re talking about writers
I am 100% positive ai cannot take my job or replace me. In related news, I’m the only person in the world who makes a very specific thing.
What do you do?
That’s also why the billionaires love it so much:
they very rarely have much if any technical expertise, but imagine that they just have to throw enough money at AI and it’ll make them look like the geniuses they already see themselves as.
billionaires love it
They think it knows everything because they know nothing.
Which ironically means that they are the easiest people to replace with AI.
… They just… get to own them.
For some reason.
I’m a programmer I think both are an art and can’t be replicated by ai well. Sure you get an acceptable pic, you may get something written well (okay stretching more here I haven’t read anything by ai that make me think that but it’s been minimal so giving some leeway), but human art is its own quality.
Just reminded me of a bit of the Dune novels, people were putting rocks out to be sandblasted by a dust storm and selling as art. I guess I agree with Duncan on that.
Wait art needs the emotion bit, huh probably to mean more than generated stuff. Another realization but good to understand. I do think the human component is necessary… Until it isn’t but not today.
This is why leadership loves it. They don’t know shit about fuck.
Something I’ve learned along the way is that almost everything is more difficult and more complex than I initially assume it is.
When I look at work other people are doing I start with the assumption that it’s far from simple and that I don’t understand it.
This assumption has been invaluable to me, I suggest it to everyone.
I’m in a nightmare scenario where my new job has a guy using Claude to pump out thousands of lines of C++ in a weekend. I’ve never used C++ (just C for embedded devices).
He’s experienced, so I want to believe he knows what he’s doing, but every time I have a question, the answer is “oh that’s just filler that Claude pumped out,” and some copy pasted exposition from Claude.
So I have no idea what’s AI trash and what’s C++ that I don’t know.
Like a random function was declared as a template. I had to learn what function templates are for. So I do, but the function is only defined once, and I couldn’t think of why you would need to templatize it. So I’m sitting here barely grasping the concept and syntax and trying to understand the reasoning behind the decision, and the answer is probably just that Claude felt like doing it that way.
That’s just what C++ people do. They are all equally mad. I am not even joking.
Can you elaborate? This is my first time dealing with higher level languages in the workplace (barring some Python scripts), and I feel like I’m losing my mind.
Your coworker is mistreating Claude and this story wants me to call CPS.
Claude will come up with all kinds of creative ideas and that’s neat, but you really need to reign it in to make it useful. Use Claude’s code as a suggestion, cut out the stuff that’s over the top – explain why you did that to Claude, it will generally get it. Add it to your CLAUDE.md if it’s a repeat issue.
Claude will
come up withsurface all kinds ofcreativeeother people’s ideas and that’s neat, but you really need to reign it in to make it useful. Use Claude’s code as a suggestion, cut out the stuff that’s over the top – explain why you did that to Claude, it will generallyget itincorporate that into future prompts. Add it to your CLAUDE.md if it’s a repeat issue.FTFY
Thanks.
Thank you. Dude checked in a shit load of code before going on PTO for three weeks. We get pretty live plots of data, but he broke basically every hardware driver in the process.
Yeah that’s Dunning-Kruger in a nutshell. Kind of scary that almost everyone in leadership positions sits atop the peak of “Mount Stupid” for most of the things they make decisions about.
Choosing a screw. Pretty straightforward, right? It’s not. What forces are involved? What materials the screw and the surface are made of? What conditions will it be exposed to?
I basically assume every aspect of the work my friends do is insanely difficult and they have to put in effort convincing me certain parts are stupid easy that even a child could do it.
playing bass guitar-- there’s an exception. it’s exactly as difficult as it looks
Simple bass line, anyone can play this.
Pretty difficult then? I’ve heard some jazz bass guitarists that were insane
low end and rhythm-- that’s what the bass guitar is there for. you can still be technically officially a competent “bassist” without any of the fancy technical embellishments that great bass players employ.
but yea, not to disparage the bass guitar at all, but the basics of matching the kick drum and chord progression and the physical chops of actually playing the thing doesn’t take that long to get a handle on
edit: check out les claypool and primus for an example of some rare bass-centric music
Counterpoint: time. Even playing simple lines, there’s a big difference between a groove that is completely locked in, and one that is not. And that difference is all about the precise timing of the hits between the players in the rhythm section. The bass sets the foundation of all of that.
Life is hard for a musician. For a bassist it’s nearly impossible.
Which explains why C-suites push it so hard for everyone
Well, they have the one job that actually can be replaced by “AI” (though in most cases it’d be more beneficial to just eliminate it altogether).
Orrr…hear me out, this is gonna sound wild… Or we don’t believe that this debate is even one we need to have until we have actual fucking AI, which machine learning slop IS NOT. And seeing the kind of morons hyping “AI”, chances are, mankind will never develop true AI because the funding goes to the morons screaming loudest, instead of actual experts slash scientists.
AI is very useful for our business. (/s) We get paid by the hour and our billing hours have exploded simply by being hired to clean up after “vibe coder’s” shit.
We deal with massive amounts of data and AI can’t write optimized code for shit. Hunting down system slowdowns thanks to bad code is a constant gig with our clients.
Are you hiring?
there’s professors of comics?
It’s an industry worth over $2bn, it’d be odd if there weren’t people studying it.
I’d imagine its a course as part of a broader degree, or even a purely elective course
AI absolutely can be used for the work they know best, it’s just that the individual using it will be the only one who knows how to use it correctly and everyone else will just be making slop.
Exactly. There’s a Dunning-Kreuger effect here where if you don’t know what you’re doing, it looks like AI just miraculously does what you would have wanted it to do if you were smart enough to craft a good prompt.
But if you know what you’re doing, you know what tasks it is worth using AI for, and then you craft a good prompt, get a lot of valuable processing done by the AI, and then review, fine-tune and polish the rest.
It’s Dunning-Kreuger, so when you understand the complexities within the area of your expertise you’ll doubt the likelihood of effective automation using statistical brute force.
Funny enough even that second part involves a lot of chaos out due to Dunning-Kreuger effect yet again.
I had 4 different friends go “I am experienced enough in programming, I can use it responsibly” during group projects with some paraphrasing at my uni.
For context those friends ranged from juniors to freshman. We were pretty skilled but NOWHERE near that experienced.
Funnily enough, all my engineering professors seem to encourage the use of genAI for anything as long as it’s “not doing the learning for you”
What’s funny is that there’s basically no practical use for GenAI in engineering in the first place. Images like technical drawings need to be precise and code written for FDM/FEA etc. needs to be validated by some kind of mathematical model you derived yourself.
They say “it’s a useful new tool” and when I ask “what is it useful for” they typically have no answer besides “writing grant proposals” lol
There are lots of useful applications for machine learning in engineering, but very few if any practical applications for genAI.
“writing grant proposals”
I mean thats a time suck for most researchers.
