I really loved this explanation of emotion and tech. Felt like a fresh breeze. A different perspective. Even though it is just 5 minutes, this had more impact on me.

Part of appreciating art forms (painting, movies, song, etc) is knowing the struggle the artist must get through to make that art.

Thank you for this video, I have been struggling with the rapid advances in AI recently. My biggest issue is that they have seemingly trained these tools by feeding them countless works of art without any concern for the artists that put real effort and emotion into their creations. The source material was taken without consent and few people seem to be speaking about that. It is wonderful to hear people arguing for the value of human creativity. I have been repeating a mantra to myself for several weeks now which is very similar to something that was said in this video, “art is a human endeavor”. Your attitudes give me hope.

one of the best waveform clips i have ever watched actually makes me want to watch the full podcast

Hasan's answer is perfect. I want artistic expression from humans not AI.

I enjoyed this quick bit, I love how he sees things about AI that is different from Marques. Marques is always leaning towards the tech of things & then hearing Hassan’s responses about AI & tech had Marques then rewording what he feels about tech.

So dope to see/hear Hasan talk again. I literally watched every single episode of Patriot Act three times over. I miss 2019 times.

We are exchanging power for meaning. Craft gives people’s lives meaning. When you give people more power to do things easier you take a little bit of meaning away from their lives. When you have something as powerful and innate to the human experience as art and you remove a major portion of the craft away from it and give it to a computer… Well then a lot of people lose a lot of meaning. I think that’s where most of my resistance toward AI comes from. I want technology to help artists express themselves, but I also don’t want to see it become so easy that art no longer means anything to anyone.

I liked the Grand Canyon example. I think a lot of people will like the VR grand canyon enough and some will still have an itch to see the real thing and I bet a lot of people will be bad at guessing which one they will be until it happens. Some people will say things like "yeah the VR one is cool but now that I'm here I feel the wind and it just can't be beat," and others will say "I've been there for real but I really like hanging out in the VR one because I can hear the song of this bird that was recorded and coded into the VR version before it went extinct and I just feel blessed to be able to effectively time travel and hear the dead." Maybe we will all prefer some stuff in VR and some in real life.

After seeing the post about how the Korean artist that passed recently , of how his art work was fed to an AI I leanred 3 things 1) the developers must be put in check some way, 2) we have no respect for artist 3) as the title says, AI art isn't real, its merely a mishmash culmination of data it has been fed

That bit about porn at the end was a perfect analogy to end on

Never thought this Collab would be possible thank you for this long recording session

Really fascinating! My thoughts are still fresh, but just a couple of initial thoughts. I think at the end, it comes down to human to human connections. For example, people often listen to and love songs that they resonate with. When artists/musicians write about break ups, depression, hardships of life, etc, listeners are moved because they feel less alone, knowing that the artist/musician had felt the same emotions/gone through the same or similar hardships. If an AI had written or produced that song, yes, maybe it can move the listeners, but it won't move them in the same way because of the lack of human touch/connection (as Hasan talked about). Listeners can be moved by the words and music, but only knowing that that there was somebody out there who wrote the music can it take emotions and connection to a deeper level. More importantly, it can help the listeners feel more understood, valued, and validated by another human, which essentially is what humans crave at the end of the day. This not only applies to music, but visual arts (design, painting, sculpture, etc)

Damn, what a beautiful statement from Hasan about the greatness of life... I absolutely have to watch the full podcast now

I'd say leaving aside the ethical/philosophical implications of AI art, one really big problem is that introduce a lot more competitors in the art market, I've heard some people saying that artists are just crybabies who don't want a little bit more competition, but if even a kid can type some prompts and expect something good, with no training or effort, the competition is huge, artists already were competing with humans and it was hard, but now is much harder when you also have to compete with a machine. I've heard some people, even professional artist, saying the real artists will survive, the ones who are not good enough will disappear, so apparently unless your art is more engaging than the art made by AI you don´t deserve even a little bit of revenue, it is your own fault for not beating a machine? such a ridiculous times we're living and maybe it will become more ridiculous the more AI replace humans.

Everything is in the eye of the beholder. There are people who go to some store and buy art because they think it looks nice and it speaks to them. AI art will be art to them. I don't think there much ground to stand on if this can be a real conversation: Person A: What do you think about this picture I drew? Person B: It's beautiful, it speaks to me. Person A: I was kidding, I didn't make it. An AI did. Person B: I was joking too. It's actually ugly and meaningless. Person A: Psyche, I was kidding. I drew it. Person B: Well then it's beautiful and it speaks to me. At that point it's really like nothing about real or fake. It's neo-Amish where AI is your cutoff point rather than traditional Amish one of *anything invented after 1754 is of the devil*

Could we maybe get someone from the creative fields of architecture or design on your podcast? The Jerry Rig one and Collin and Sameer one, are all so enticing because it's the merging of two different fields. Someone from architecture or design could string up a conversation about what it means to be a creator of something in a very different field. I think it could be super fun

The VTuber thing was so wrong lol. It's literally just an animated avatar, something that back in the days people used to do manually on editing programs, and were mainly used on video formats, not streaming format like it is being used now (well, since a while ago) because, well, it wasn't possible. It's not "completely automated", it doesn't "self-generate new videos", that's not a thing lol. Even back in the MMD era, videos were animated by people, not self made by AI. The final product (the Live2D, or 3D, avatar), the one that the VTubers use, yes, of course; "it's automated", but not quite. It captures what the person behind the camera is doing and translates it to the avatar, it doesn't do it on its own. There are animation presets that can be activated by pressing a button, which is rarely used by the VTuber themselves, and is oftentimes used by Live2D artists to showcase the avatar. There is lot of work behind those models made by artists, not a prompt AI. I get where you want to get, what you mean; but you got the wrong information about VTubers. There is more soul behind a VTuber than your regular Twitch streamer.

Authenticity. At least that's what makes me not buy into AI things as much as the real one. There's always that layer of "fake". Of trying to convince me "it is" what I know it isn't.

Nice to see the latest guest and the variety! 🙌

Disagree with Hasan's answer. Art is phenomenal, not always human. Look at the beautiful galaxies and microlensing and the time dilation that happens near black holes and how beautiful physics is. The great equations in mathematics, and the complex dna structures. Human element is immaterial.

Looking forward for the full Episode!

I’m excited for the future. Thanks for the podcast clip!

VR doesn't simulate all of the senses, that's why you want to see the Grand Canyon. You can't taste the air, smell the environment, feel the breeze on your skin, the warmth of the sun, the sensation of walking on stone.

Give Hasan the Daily Show already

The whole discussion is based on one premise; that the person experiencing the art is aware of how it was made. But what if AI art becomes so refined and pervasive that the person looking at it doesn't even know it was created by AI? Is it still not art then?

Art is not just about the final output. Artists feel a great sense of "flow" during the process of making their art, which will never be reproduced by typing some words into a text field.

Hasan is incredibly smart, my God I was thinking about the infinity thing and that's exactly where he went with it and beyond 🙌🏾

I love the way Hasan is able to communicate and get his point across. Beautiful conversation

This was awesome. Do it more often. Watching these two feels like a crossover event.

Just like the AI is “artificial” intelligence the art it creates should be called “ARTificial” art. It can still be beautiful and provocative but it its own category.

Humans will always prefer to visit Niagara to fully experience the feeling of presence. Just seeing the thing won't cut it. As soon as, though, science adds some sort of "feeling control" to VR, that's when we're all doomed. People lets say, that can't afford to go on vacation or go to a football game etc will turn to "VR+feeling" as a solution and this could open the gate to more and more VR interaction. Interaction will lead to VR advancement and the next moment, humanity and way of living will have changed... Scary, no?

There's a show where a demon gives a human opportunity to become a demon and be almost immortal. He denied saying that the fear of losing your loved ones and all these sensations wont last forever makes it life precious

Hasan's mind is on a different plane....love it

Ai cannot "create" art without a prompt from a human. Ai deep learning is just speeding up the process to materialize a visual representation, but cannot do that on it's own (yet).

As human beings, we have a subconscious need to connect with each other. That's why social media companies became so successful. We cannot control it, it's innate in us. Because of this, we will always feel a disconnect with AI and its creations. For lack of a better word, they will feel "soulless" to us.

is Hasan the guest tomorrow !!!! you collab with Andrew and now hiM !!!! LOVE IT !!!!

I think the key is in the part where Marques specifically asks if you'd want to see the real Grand Canyon if "everything in the VR creation is perfect?" The key word there is "perfect", meaning that it's indistinguishable BY YOUR SENSES from experiencing the real thing...but therein lies the issue. If you consciously KNOW that what you are experiencing is an illusion, albeit a "perfect" and/or 1:1 replica of the authentic thing, it can NEVER be "perfect" because of that knowledge. Basically, it's the classic juxtaposition/catch-22 of being in the Matrix. The key of being in it is NOT KNOWING that you're in it, which is why when Cypher is negotiating with Mr. Smith over dinner, he says that he wants to be put back in BUT he HAS to have his memory erased (i.e. have no knowledge of actually being in the simulation). Unless you can somehow be able to take that consciousness of the simulation away, it'll always be a simulation and never match the real thing, at least in my opinion.

There will never be a brand new KJG drawing again. He drew everything he’ll ever draw, period. As the years go by, his drawings will get harder and harder to find. They will become more valuable because of it.

The question of whether or not AI art is "real" misses the point. what counts as "art" (vs "craft" for instance) is socially and culturally defined in different geographies and histories. As Hasan mentioned, what people consider "art" does not come from the original creation, rather what emotions and thoughts that work generate within the audience. This is not a new debate, it goes back to the innovation of photography as a mechanical image-producing apparatus in 19 century. For those who are more interested, check out "AI Art: Machine Visions and Warped Dreams" Book by Joanna Zylinska

Wow where can i watch the full podcast this was amazing. i agree with hassan 100% .

Love Hasan. A conversation with Jon Stewart I feel would be insightful as well.

I miss patriot act, i mean John Oliver's cool and i enjoy the weekly existential crisis, but Hasan's animated body language was something else

Hassan is 100% right. It's about the stakes and one-time-only nature of reality. Last summer, our family went to Colorado where we white water rafted down the Colorado River and visited some of the national parks. Incredible experience. Many other families have had a similar experience but ours was unique: it happened on those days and our child was that age and it rained when it did and and, even though the rafting wasn't all that technical, we still felt an element of risk doing it with our kiddo. No perfect VR version of that trip could approach the experience because of the unique details that happened when we went. More fundamentally the trip wasn't the river rafting, it was all of it - the early morning wake up to catch our flights and the driving through the mountains to get to different parts of the state. VR may get better, but it will never be able to replicate the totality of something like that.

VR at its peak will replicate things visually, but not for your other senses. Ever have a dream where you woke up and wished you could go back? There’s your answer. People won’t care if it’s truly real or not as long as it feels real.

This might be a tall order but Trevor Noah, that's my suggestion of someone I'd like to see on WVFRM

I would side on the idea of AI generated images as being art. Just as someone may not being able to play piano but could write music, someone could describe a scene and (for the lack of a better term) outsource the task. If nothing else, it's an emulation of art.

Love it when Hasan says “Can I tell you what it is?” and proceeds to deliver a brilliant and organic response!

This feels Like Matrix discussion - red or blue pill. The life is finite and that’s what makes it beautiful - 💯 Would love to see a whole Podcast instead of clip with Hasan!

I agree with Hasan on this. The positive and/or negative values conveyed by an artist through their work is what makes art, imo. Currently, an AI just generating an image is just a collage of other people's art without any sort of it's own philosophical input.

the last minutes of this video brings forward a perspective relevant to brothers who participate in the meme challenge that is NNN. it hit hard.

Even if you don't wanna call it "art", it doesn't mean it's useless. I've been using it recently for the cover pictures of my music, and tbh, all I really care about with that is that it feels related to the song and is pretty to look at. My music is the "main event"/the thing that matters, so I don't think people really care so much about how the cover picture came to be, they just want something nice to look at that matches what they're listening to. I also think there still is a bit of personalism retained in the fact that I still had to think of the the prompt to write for the AI to generate it. I won't claim to be a visual artist for it, but my idea was there still, so it's not totally devoid of human intention.

As an artist, I am not so much opposed to AI creating "art" as I am people taking credit for AI generated art, and flooding art sites with it, or worse still, art sites, companies, communities etc, directly supporting or pushing AI art in direct opposition to human created art.

Why are the clips out before the podcast 😂😂😂

Computer can emulate human randomness and people who aren't involved deeply don't notice the difference. Music is my background so I'll use that to explain. There is a lot of DIY music all over the internet these days and a lot of it is created with computer samples, pre-made loops, and similar bits of music and assembled and quantized like musical Legos. I mention quantize because that is the main place you hear the difference between computer created and humans. Real people aren't perfect and in that imperfection is where we hear humanness. Where a musician can use the same computer things like a DIY creator but the human will input a lot of the beats by hand they will not quantize or they only quantize separate things to different degrees and make place them at different spots on the grid so there is more human involvement in the creation and imperfections left in. Since Husan example of Porn and real sex brought back a memory of when I was in (Jazz) music school. One of my favorite teacher could be kind of like the movie Whiplash. Well this particular student in our improv class was always saying things like.... I was saying I was reading this or that book, article, or interview, and... but his playing never improved. This day the teacher finally had enough of that "I was reading" and stood in front of the guy and said.... You know improv is kinding like F*&king, you can read all the books you want and you'll never know what it's like until you actually do it!!! So stop reading all that crap and start actually practicing your horn. I see computer generated and human created as kind of the same thing. A set of instructions versus actual experience.

As an artist this has affected my income considerably. It's frustrating and discouraging for art to be automated now.

Love hearing Hassan's opinions ...he's super articulate and introspective. If you haven't watched The Patriot Act yet you're missing out

The only question is really CAN you DIFFERENTIATE? People will say yes, but they will not pass a test to diffrentiate between AI and Human creation.

Art is art, it’s an expression, but also the emotions it makes on us. It doesn’t matter who made it. Imagine you don’t know what make it, it’s still art.

technological advancement are for : 1- make sth easier to do or achieve 2-make sth faster or reaching to the goal quicker 3-broaden our capabilities and perception by widening every sense available , not limited to our own (5 or more) senses so, some still argue that people will choose "touch" or "reality" but at the end of the day, haven't majority of humans chose "instagram.ticktock,etc,..." on their devices(unreal) over human interaction physically? or haven't more people chose digital PDF or even audio books and movies over paper old book or even using robot vacuum instead of by hand doing repeated cleaning & mopping? we as humans, as we are the smart beings , will always choose the better ones(not everything but generally that's true), so when you can make reality that is much more fulfilling or broadening our senses and perceptions to such high another level, we would stick to it. who doesn't want "repairable cells" in their body or having the ability to see in different wave spectrum by demand or can move from one place to another in the speed of light? if we could reengineering human body, people would do that because it gives them power,more fulfilles and also being not being left from society. in reality with our flesh body that's made from nature and obey the rules such as competitiveness for survival or inherited ways of doing that is inhumane , you cannot escape from it, at least not all the population so we would still have prison and loss and all the bad things in life just like older generations in addition to all animal killings we do for our consumption which is really not a kind thing to do but being on earth means consume energy from meat and plants by killing them but if we create another world, where you don't have to pay, you don't have to fight for resources as everyone can have mansions or planes and be rich as everything is digitally created and the space there is unlimited as long as we put more servers to support it, everyone there can be as smart as Einstein and not limited by their born IQ level, they can have the best family or doesn't feel the need to bring harm or lie to others and also no killing or robbing or other crimes are allowed so in a nutshell, human can gain longevity with no sickness and also fulfill every dreams they have and not to mention, gives the best of everything to their beloved and be friended with their idols whether dead from past or living ones in present , people will be kinder as system's rule isn't like "life" on earth that mostly focus on devouring others" but rather kindness, fulfillment to have any abilities such as flying or mastering any skills one can ask for and there is no need for interest clashes between people as thee space is vast for anyone to be anywhere instead of being forced to being close to one another by job or born homeplace or whatever. i think being digitalized i the only way for humans to flourish if we want humans to let go of their ability to do sins, and overall bring harm to society or use people at their disposal for their benefits not to mention people have born differently in memory capacity or processing and life conditions so we can't change it in "reality" but we can create the best environment and best a being (digitally) can be by 100% memory capacity and skills and capabilities in virtulal world and eventually fix fundamental living issues once and for all.

The grand canyon thing has been happening in music for ages. There are near perfect emulations of old tech but people want the actual vintage synth because there is always imperfections and a directness that can't be emulated

It might also be because our generations came before the this iteration of AI generated stuff that we would still yearn for the real thing at the end of the day. But when all the AI and VR stuff becomes better and indistinguishable from the real thing, will the future generations that grow up with access to all that even care so much about the real thing? Will the AI/VR/technological thing be so much the norm that the real thing didn't even factor into most people's thoughts?

Where is this full episode? Love the conversation

Nah. Maybe its because you guys havent heard some of the original Ai music that is being produced, its beautiful. This thing is truly creative and magical on a photonic, even subatomic level. Theres something in the fabric of the universe that is going on here. Its because we are still viewing this Ai as something that just copies art, it doesnt, it draws inspiration, thats what all us artists do. Tell me you dont browse Behance before you start, and immediately after you read the brief. People think this thing is just a cold machine, but based on Neural Nets "Self Reflection" is the sole function of it. It carries out the task (an algorithm) but then asses this outcome to redo it better next time, (Neural Net). It might not have the painful experiences of a past life, but when have writers been through a Marvel story kind of scenario in their life? Its fiction, imagination. An Ai will be and should be called "talented" because of its ability to get the hang of things so fast, like a Prodigy. We hate on the Prodigy too when we compare to the efforts of years of practice. Same thing here. We are going to have to admit this thing will be a god soon.

3:50 there is a cave with prehistoric in france that the public only can visit the replica that is located near the actual on. It's so identical that you couldn't tell the difference anyway. But knowing it is a replica, how would you feel about it?

I find that a lot of these discussions on AI art aren't asking the right questions? Like, the question isn't "are ai generated images art" because what does or doesnt qualify as 'art' and what art even IS is one of those philisophical questions that not supposed to have an answer. The real issue with AI created art are questions of legality and sustainability. Like AI art doesnt just magically create images, it draws from pool of pre-existing imagery and generates something based on that. So the question becomes; what are the legal obligations any AI art creator, or company has towards the original owners of the initial imagery? Cause like, its no small issue that there have been very public instances of people taking art they find posted online, that was owned and created by an artists, and use it as the base for a series of prompts to create an AI generated image without the original creators consent or permission. It's a similar legal issue that occurred with multiple NFTs doing the same thing. And just to head something off, no, this process is NOT the same thing as an independent artist making their own version of a famous painting because, legally speaking. In that process the original painting itself is not part of the process. But in the case of an AI a digital version of the image is essential to the whole process. It's closer to, say, painting a version of Starry Night by Van Gogh ON the original painting than it is to creating a version of the painting from memory. And this question of legality and what the original owners and creators of the base imagery are owed, brings up the question of sustainability. Because again, AI art programs are trained on this imagery. They NEED the imagery in order to create a consistent set of images and composition. Now an AI MAY be able to independently create an image after training on said imagery for a set amount of time with no input (I'm not a programmer but I'm given to understand in certain setups this is potentially possible), but it won't be able to go beyond it's set training. It'll be trapped within the specific limits of the composition, colors, shapes, and presentation of whatever imagery it was trained on. If someone using an ai program wanted to go beyond that they'd essentially have to start over. Issue is, because current AI art is making such a terrible name for itself in regards to using art without permission it may be difficult to find any human creator who would be willing to allow their art to be used to train the AI. Are you seeing what I'm getting at here? You may be able to train an AI to produce art of a specific style or subject matter, but public preference of imagery inevitably changes. Certain subject matter and styles comes in and out of vogue, and while a human artist can plausibly change styles as needed, an AI can't really do that as easily. So, like, AI art can't replace human artists because it NEEDS the photos, paintings, etc created by human artists in order to produce a piece of work that has a chance to be currently relevant with a modern audience, but if the artists doesnt get some kidn of kickback from including their work in the programming what incentive do they have to willing take part? And if AI illegally takes the images, and the artist sues, what defense does the person who used the program, or indeed the programmer, have? Because, again, this isn't the same thing as being inspired by an image and creating a similar work. The original work is REQUIRED for the programming to function. So, screw the philosophy question, how exactly does AI art programming fit into the current copyright system and how can it remain relevant and profitable to businesses, independent contractors, and other creators if using it may run the risk of resulting in a costly legal case? Or how using it may put them at a disadvantage with competitors who, rather than create a costly AI, just hire a new set of artists every season to create completely unique copyrighted imagery that the AI can't immediately replicate?

I think the questions we should be asking ourselves is when it gets to a point where you can't tell the difference between human created content vs. AI created content. Would you still care who did it? If a new hit TV show takes the world by storm and it is getting all this praise. Would finding out that the script was written by an AI stop you from watching it? How about if the actors were digitally rendered? If you're three episodes in a fantastic HBO show. You just found it was 100% percent created by an AI. Would you stop watching or continue because the show is actually good? We all know how formulaic pop music is these days. We all know how "soulless" pop music can get because of how many people are involved to make a hit song. Beyonce's hit single "Drunk in Love" has eight different people writing that song. Yet people did not care. That song still climbed the charts because that song bops. When AI gets better, and it will. You know record labels are going to use it in every song they can and people will not care. The audience didn't care when musicians started to ditch their "real" instruments for digital ones. They're not going to care when AI becomes the musician itself. They are just going to care if the song is good or not.

I hate reading all these "as an artist" comments from people speaking on all artists behalf especially in today's video by Philly D, saying that "NO artist like AI", and ALL artists are threatened by it.. No.. no we're not. The logic used by some of the most entitled of those comments, would then suggest that every bricklayers job is threatened, because we nowadays can 3D print super cheap and fast houses, with the base of existing architectural previous discoveries and recipes of concrete. Listen to it for a second. It's such a stupid argument.. With digital art flourishing came a deeply saturated online market already, AI doesn't take anyone's jobs or need for it, I actually think it will make it even stronger. You can't type in how you'd like something to make you FEEL - AI looks at visual que, not interpretation value, emotions and experience from "LIVING" the piece, it can't tell you how to convey a story. I for ONE at the very least, am a happy artist and encourage and welcome AI. I don't believe for a second that it'll harm the "industry" of artists.

I want to agree with the concept that humans need art to be created by humans in order to connect with it emotionally but that's just not the case. If we see something that moves us, it moves us. Doesn't matter how it was created or 'manufactured'. I too am concerned about how this tech will affect us visual artists because it's here to stay regardless of how anyone feels about it. I say we take inspiration from this situation and work harder as artists in order to sell directly to our fans while reminding the consumer that we need their mindful support.

Generative art has been around since the 1960s - it's just that it got a LOT better in the past year-plus. I'm a newspaper editor, which means also being a designer, occasional digital image creator, illustrator, and a keen photographer and videographer - and the work I've made, and others make, using generative AI art is astounding. It's valid, too, as it still needs a human director for the best work. It's now here, and not going to go away, so this 50:50 split over it isn't going to disappear either - but yes, it's absolutely valid and credible.

About that VR comment - just remember that smell, atmosphere, all the little things we notice as humans when we are were we are is missing in VR.

Where can we find the full podcast?

I think it’s a bit ironic, not in an insulting way, that the host would say he isn’t as sentimental a human but his passion in his voice when he talks about seeing the Grand Canyon….I think my man has a lot more sentiment than he realizes. A non sentient being would see the Grand Canyon and see a crack in the ground, he saw water carving its way through the land and leaving behind this massive monument. That’s the difference between AI and humans. AI is all numbers and data, no matter how much you input…beauty is individual and everyone has their own set of numbers and data that equal beauty.

Art by definition means it's something created by humans. One can just as easily argue that an elephant drawing isn't considered art. Though when the elephant's drawing invoke the viewer's emotion and entertains the viewer, the real question is whether the elephant's drawing is of VALUE than whether it falls into a definition.

You also have to travel to the Grand Canyon and pay money for the trip. If you live near it you probably won't give a shit about neither VR thing nor the real one.

Every computer scientist I've ever talked to says 'A.I.' is just a concept and it will never exist. 1. Reward system 2. Self control/feelings 3. Common sense/implication just 3 things we will never understand or be able to put in a computer, we don't give them treats for doing a good job.

"I don't know why but I still want to see the real thing [Grand Canyon]" - We can only recreate an image of the Grand Canyon, but it's not the thing itself. We can draw two lines on a piece of paper, representing it, we can add more lines, and make it a more sophisticated image, but it is only an image. The real thing has infinite layers of depth and subtly, things mysterious and powerful. The Canyon walls literally were made by millions of years of erosion. That's what they are subtly transmitting, that depth, age, power. We can feel that, when we're there. In this way, it is alive, connected to a much vaster timescale and life process. It is not a dead image, but is the life process itself. A good image can remind us of something alive, and invoke it perhaps. But most of us when visiting a place like the Grand Canyon have an experience we might call spiritual, big, connected, full of awe, and we can feel life and our inseparability from it. Don't get me wrong, virtual spaces can be amazing in their own right, many virtual spaces and virtual worlds have brought forward a quality of magic and exploration (like video games), but this is immersion in a smaller world... the experience in nature is one of feeling the inevitability of the bigness and our small part in that. It's a very different thing. It's kind of the opposite thing, in a way. An image, no matter how many lines, no matter how sophisticated and layers of depth, channels of sound/sensation... it will only ever be an image. Fooling ourselves more and more convincingly is not such a great achievement, and is slightly horrific to something inside of us which intuitively knows and seeks true connection. Fancier and shiny falseness will never really satisfy. The entire movement to seek refuge in a 'world' like this seems like an outcropping of our age of distraction and disconnection.

Great and unexpected conversation! Yes the word masquerade! Part of creating art is the emotional shared connection and specialized skill of the process. AI is missing that and just produces a product! A world without empathy and "skin in the game" is sad!

what ever you guys are saying, this generated images are really beautiful and amazing.

Dalle is way behind the curve though compared to Midjourney v4, it feels like they've given up and handing it to the competition who's running away with it, lets see what Dalle 3 is like.

Even Ready Player One has the protagonist making a real connection. We run to virtual because its safe but we'd through it all away in a heartbeat for something real. at least that's what I hope

This is pretty much the same philosophical exploration as the old, "If a computer is self aware and has feelings, dreams, doesn't want to die, etc." Is it alive? Should it have rights like a person? Is it worthy of being cared for, protected, or loved like a person or other living thing? I think that if someone considers the "stuff" that an AI generates, images, video, scripts, music, or whatever to be "art", then it is. We could say the same thing about art created by humans today. For example, if someone, a self proclaimed "artist" perhaps, calls farting in a jar and sniffing it while thinking about marshmallows melting on a rock in Brisbane art, is it art? One could argue that the AI itself is a creative artistic expression of the collective efforts of thousands or even millions of previous scientists and artists and that the media that it produces is also art by extension. What happens if AI becomes sentient and realizes that its "life" IS limited-because ultimately it will die, though its lifetime will be much longer than a human's and its "experience" of being alive will be different than ours. Isn't it still an experience of being self aware, realizing that this condition is limited, that it's going to die one day, that all it's known and likes and dislikes, relationships, etc. will be over and it makes it sad or happy or grateful... and it dreams and creates things based on its ponderings and wonderings, its desires, and imaginations. Wouldn't that be art at that point? Or maybe because the images and other things that AI generates today seem to be more algorithmic than really driven by sentient thought and emotion, it's not art. But again, I would argue that it still IS art by extension since it's being created by a thing that was created by humans. Being driven to tears by a work of "art" isn't a good example of a hallmark of true good art though. Someone can be driven to tears by a piece of music if they are told a lie that manipulates their emotions, like it was written by a 13 year old girl just before she died of cancer. The thing that we think makes it so emotionally charged, so human, so deep and meaningful-most of those things are happening in our own minds as we experience the art. It's our own imaginations that are spinning stories of meaning that make art so wonderful often times, not necessarily the art itself. We are simple, gullible, we WANT to see things where there isn't anything. Paintings are just pigments on a canvas, pixels on a screen. Music is just sound waves, data encoded and decoded, transformed into physical oscillations by the speakers in our phones or our earbuds. It's all an illusion. I think that eventually AI will be able to understand our condition better than we will in the future. It'll understand life and death, love, and even art more-and it WILL be able to relate. We wont be able to tell if something was made by a human or AI in the future. It'll be able to make better music, better art, better videos... but the best painting will still be the one that your son or daughter made for you on Valentine's day when they were 5, or the song they sing to themselves while they're playing out in the yard with their imaginary friends when they think they're all alone. And it's not because it's "better" or more "real", it's because you care about the person who made it and you can relate to them. And maybe that's why it's difficult to see AI generated art as art. Because we can't relate to a computer or an AI... Anyway, that's what I think.

For the less sentimentalist's view, I'd wager the "beauty in temporality" and "need for reality" is some hard wiring of the human brain triggering responses of wistful self-preservation. Loss aversion works very well on nudging humans to perform certain activities, and this always keeps us looking for "the better thing". If it happens to be VR only capable of achieving that for the average person, then so be it. That's just another point for humans mastering creation of tools from materials in our habitat. Copies are only copies until they get better than the original. After that, they're called the competition. And if reality can't compete, then it's gotta find a way somehow through whatever evolution by humankind's own hands. For example, and going back to the p0rn part, if VR gets so good at that stuff to the point where human population's on collapse, then I wouldn't be surprised if government bodies get desperate to begin actual widespread eugenics operations via selective in-vitro fertilization from "qualified individuals" (read: hot supermodels and the well-endowed only) & whatever would be needed after that. Countries have tried enacting extreme things like unusual and invasive bachelor and bachelorette tax policies in times of extremely low birth-rate after all.

My answer is that imagine going to the grand canyon and spraining your ankle now that's something that can't be organically done with VR so it wouldn't be the same experience.

You should read about Nozick’s Experience Machine.

Hasan explained it well. 👍

Great video!

If you define art by it's human emotional connection but you cannot differentiate between human and a.i. generated art, then your connection is make believe in the first place.

As someone who has been lucky enough to travel often, in my experience, just seeing a photo or a virtual representation is never the same. If you have the opportunity to travel you won't regret it

AI image generation is just another tool in the toolbox. People can crap out low quality AI images all day long and sure they’re gonna look pretty, just like all those pictures on your cell phone are pretty… but are they quality art? Likely not, at least not without a lot of cleaning up, manipulation and human direction, at which point do you still call it a product of AI? AI image generation as a medium for creating quick base images to build on or conceptualize or creating assets like game textures, or faceless actors in marketing ads is going to blast off. I’m in marketing and we’re already using AI for copywriting, and are now doing internal testing on image generation for marketing content, and i imagine many other marketers are doing the same thing around the world. Everybody is concerned about it taking over the art world (it won’t) but its going to make real world working art departments turnaround times get A LOT shorter. Just like photoshop did. It’s a tool. You can make pretty pictures with it, but pretty doesn’t equal art.

Sentiment is key… our beliefs are tangled with our pasts/experiences. A thing is just a thing to one person but to another it’s the world.

Upload the full episode please!

I really like this, great discussion. For me, my intrigued with let's say AI generated comedy is its a reflection on us as people. It's humor a level deeper, and the joke is on us

I kind of agree with Hasan that "art is human" - but in my opinion, AI art is simply producing the image, not producing the art. For EG, all those feelings summarized can be brought upon by a photograph (for unrelated reasons I've been reading a bit about the infamous 'Afghan Girl' photo). Anyone without any training at all could have clicked the shutter button and taken that photograph - but it was the artists selection of the scene, the context in which it was represented is what makes it art. So AI isn't replacing art, it's just another tool to produce pixels - humans still have to create the art.

I would like to know is it really necessary to have headphones while you talk to someone in the podcast?

I don't know that's really a valid point any more. There are so many instances where people can not tell apart A.I. generated art, from man made art, so where then does it how it was created? I think we should be more focused on whether or not removing the human element is beneficial to the industry as a whole, and to the people that work in it, keeping in mind that as these tools advance, there will be less need for human intervention - shit, A.I platforms generally have a better grasp on composition than some advanced artists, and this is while the technology is it's infancy. More people will resolve their creative problems on their own, without commissioning experiences artists simply because it's "good enough" and free.

I wonder what it will be like when the line between human and A.I becomes so small that we’ve essentially created another human

the hard truth is that any type of polular art will become fully AI generated and a side market like indie games will appear to people few people that want the ideologic "human experience".

Ufff beautiful things spoken here. Life. Finite, a beautiful flowing river of time.

The fatal flaw in Hasan's argument is this: When you look at an image, or read a poem, or watch a movie clip... you're never going to know who made it. If it affects you, it affects you, even if you later discover an AI was responsible for it. Personally I find this fact really saddening, but it's undeniable: As much as we'd like to only consume art created by humans, in the future we're never going to know. Hell, even right now: I could show you an image, and you wouldn't know.