You gotta let go of stuff you want to do in creative work to make something amazing. You gotta shave off some marble off the statue to give it proper form. It’s hard, it takes forever, but eventually you get something true and so good.
"Furthermore, it’s supposed to be hard. Pain is part of the path"
Reminds me of something from The Oresteia (specifically Agamemnon):
"Wisdom comes alone through suffering"
Also much of what you talk about is portrayed in detail in Rainbow's End. Its a great sci-fi about this sort of topic, creativity in the future, cheating on such stuff, the ease of creating certain things in the future, all from the perspective of a old poet who was going to die from Alzheimers but was brought back. Really good essay!
An excellent piece - and it's funny you cite The Matrix, because it contains exactly the contradiction you're talking about.
You have Neo at the beginning of the film, being fed kung fu by data tape and looking for absolute answers. And he is told by the Oracle that he is *not* the One.
But the journey is intrinsic to the outcome. As Morpheus says to him later in the film, "sooner or later you're going to realise, just as I did - there's a difference between knowing the path... and walking the path."
Excellent essay! Love it, and I agree with all the points. But I also like to see the full half of the glass. Art is about conveying ideas in the mind of the artist. Throughout history there has been a barrier to entry. To express your ideas, you have to learn to paint, to play an instrument, to write well, to become proficient in graphics software. And while I agree that the process of becoming proficient in the tools you use also enhances the end result for all the reasons you pointed out, I also think there are ideas out there that are removed from any medium, which are worth having them expressed. And these AI tools are a way for more people to become artists.
Of course, the danger is what you pointed out, but I think a distinction should be made. Whether the tools are used to replace the process entirely, or just used to enhance the process. Lucas comes to mind: he considered editing to be the most powerful creative tool at his disposal, but he absolutely hated the editing tools he had to use, and sought to make better tools, ones that streamline the process. If possible, editing should be instant, just think of the change you want to make and have it. AI tools would enable this. It would allow one to simply try out thousands of possibilities in the same time frame that they could try maybe a handful.
I think good artists will realise the power they gain by using AI tools in this way, and they will distinguish themselves from the artists that just use AI to make generic content. I think this is where you stopped short with the Tolkien example. A mediocre writer would have stopped at Hobbit 2, but Tolkien would have tried a thousand other possibilities, some far more radical that he could have without an AI. The pain would still be there, but it would be pure creative pain, instead of pain dealing with the rigidity of tools and medium. (Note: I do agree that you would lose some creativity, the type that comes from playing around with the instruments, like fooling around with the guitar, but you would gain a higher-level creativity. Something like instead of playing with various paints, you would simply play around with brightness and contrast levels modifying the whole picture at once.)
You gotta let go of stuff you want to do in creative work to make something amazing. You gotta shave off some marble off the statue to give it proper form. It’s hard, it takes forever, but eventually you get something true and so good.
"Furthermore, it’s supposed to be hard. Pain is part of the path"
Reminds me of something from The Oresteia (specifically Agamemnon):
"Wisdom comes alone through suffering"
Also much of what you talk about is portrayed in detail in Rainbow's End. Its a great sci-fi about this sort of topic, creativity in the future, cheating on such stuff, the ease of creating certain things in the future, all from the perspective of a old poet who was going to die from Alzheimers but was brought back. Really good essay!
An excellent piece - and it's funny you cite The Matrix, because it contains exactly the contradiction you're talking about.
You have Neo at the beginning of the film, being fed kung fu by data tape and looking for absolute answers. And he is told by the Oracle that he is *not* the One.
But the journey is intrinsic to the outcome. As Morpheus says to him later in the film, "sooner or later you're going to realise, just as I did - there's a difference between knowing the path... and walking the path."
Looking forward to your LOTR essays!
Excellent essay! Love it, and I agree with all the points. But I also like to see the full half of the glass. Art is about conveying ideas in the mind of the artist. Throughout history there has been a barrier to entry. To express your ideas, you have to learn to paint, to play an instrument, to write well, to become proficient in graphics software. And while I agree that the process of becoming proficient in the tools you use also enhances the end result for all the reasons you pointed out, I also think there are ideas out there that are removed from any medium, which are worth having them expressed. And these AI tools are a way for more people to become artists.
Of course, the danger is what you pointed out, but I think a distinction should be made. Whether the tools are used to replace the process entirely, or just used to enhance the process. Lucas comes to mind: he considered editing to be the most powerful creative tool at his disposal, but he absolutely hated the editing tools he had to use, and sought to make better tools, ones that streamline the process. If possible, editing should be instant, just think of the change you want to make and have it. AI tools would enable this. It would allow one to simply try out thousands of possibilities in the same time frame that they could try maybe a handful.
I think good artists will realise the power they gain by using AI tools in this way, and they will distinguish themselves from the artists that just use AI to make generic content. I think this is where you stopped short with the Tolkien example. A mediocre writer would have stopped at Hobbit 2, but Tolkien would have tried a thousand other possibilities, some far more radical that he could have without an AI. The pain would still be there, but it would be pure creative pain, instead of pain dealing with the rigidity of tools and medium. (Note: I do agree that you would lose some creativity, the type that comes from playing around with the instruments, like fooling around with the guitar, but you would gain a higher-level creativity. Something like instead of playing with various paints, you would simply play around with brightness and contrast levels modifying the whole picture at once.)