“the gays” in Russia:

Well, to shorten everything down, there are few original building blocks. “Original art” can absolutely be original but, at the end of the day, is usually made up of large blocks of existing stuff. How those blocks function as a whole could be considered the “original” bit when talking about my specific arguments.

I mentioned music because there really aren’t many methods that haven’t been discovered and used hundreds of times over. If I had a nickel for everytime I sketched out a four-to-the-floor drum variation, I would be a wealthy man. (Nearly every EDM/House/Techno beat uses something like it.) Chord progressions and transitions are best learned from the classics: Beethoven, Mozart, etc… (Hip-hop/Pop artists are notorious for trying to sue each other over sample theft even though the samples are generally common musical phrases… Eesh… That is a mess of a situation, btw.)

But. Original art made with original components can still be made. This is a big world, after all.

To clarify though: I do not support the theft of data for the use of training AI. Period. I also don’t particularly care for AI art, personally.

I actually agree with that. I don’t actually appreciate AI generated stuff more than what we see on the surface. It’s not highly complex and I never said it was.

(I was just arguing AI generated stuff can be a means to an end and still carries a hint of creativity as stated by the original prompt. It’s a tool. Personally, I detest nearly all of these LLM parlor tricks. I think people who were giving counter points thought I was pro-AI stuff when I really am not.)

Cool. I just realized how many definitions there are for the word “creativity”, so I posted a reply to another comment that explains which one I was using. It may help frame a response for you, it may not. This is just an attempt to keep the forks in this road to a minimum. ;)

We are talking about a word with multiple definitions and it’s getting philosophical now. Depending on where you look or what context you use, creativity is how you choose to define it. (I hate saying that here because, well, its philosophical and any back-and-forth rapidly becomes subjective. On the intertubes, that usually doesn’t work out very well for discussion.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity - Creativity is the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one’s imagination.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/creativity/ - We may ask the same question not just of artworks but of any creative product, whether it be a new scientific theory, a technological invention, a philosophical breakthrough, or a novel solution to a mathematical or logical puzzle. (There is more to this regarding creative process, so feel free to read more.)

https://dictionary.apa.org/creativity - the ability to produce or develop original work, theories, techniques, or thoughts. A creative individual typically displays originality, imagination, and expressiveness.

A discussion about a definition is usually fruitless. I just have to cap this saying that I simply maintain that AI can be a tool for creating original art. (Art doesn’t need to be a painting or a picture.) We, as creative humans, can create art with any tool we are given.

If you want to get philosophical, please do. I won’t argue my point further that it still takes a human to provide creative input to get some kind of unique output.

Sorry if you couldn’t see my points, but that is OK.

I’ll go off and create some corporate logos then…

Example: My picture of the Lemming.

I knew exactly what I wanted before I even typed in the prompt: My vision was for a nervous, burned-out lemming to be sitting on a log, hunched over a laptop smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes surrounded in crushed beer cans.

That is not creative? Saying I have no imagination or creativity is kinda rude and giving all my credit to AI is downright insulting. Sure, I didn’t draw it and I absolutely do not have the ability to draw it. However, you cannot (reasonably) deny that the idea is mine. I’m not exactly the most creative person in the world, but damn… (The image will show up under my username over at least two instances over the span of 1-2 years? It’s mine, is my point.)

If you saw my edit, you should know exactly what I thought when you said “artistic process”.

However, my underlying point about derivative process or technique was to shoot a hole in the arguments of “cobbled together bits from wherever” and why I specifically used music as an example. Drum lines are openly copied. Not derived: blatantly copied. It’s considered a compliment in many cases, actually. Progressions and transitions are all just copies. You don’t even need AI to “statistically generate” music patterns. With every chord I choose to start a progression, there are only X number of chords that will work correctly after it.

I believe there have been some projects to generate (within reason) every chord progression possible and every kind of melody that would fit it… statistically. Almost every bit of popular music you hear is a derivative or a copy or reused or whatever, is my point. How many times have you heard the “Amen break”? More times than you actually know, unless you know your music, then you do. Much of music is just, for lack of a better term, math.

Creativity is an idea or multiple ideas. It’s anything that exceeds the sum of your existing knowledge. AI by itself isn’t “creative” and it is impossible for AI to be creative, we both agree. Again, from my perspective, AI can be used as a tool to fill in the gaps between two different ideas. It’s the assembly of different ideas or components that is important. The sum of the key bits.

In my CAD work, I use formulas and simulated physics to automatically generate connecting features or structures. Are the designs I create exempted from “art” because of that?

Putting creativity and art into a box and saying you must follow “creative process” or “artistic process” is just odd. You can think that way if you want, but it’s very limiting. The artists I study make a habit of saying “fuck the rules, fuck the process and do what makes you feel good.”

Just for lulz, I was wondering what another machine would think of my Lemming. It kinda got it, but kinda didn’t. Statistically, it figured out the parts, but you should know darn well what my intent was:

Just playing devil’s advocate here. Let me lay out some counter points … (it’ll take me an edit or two to format this right, btw.)

1. Instructing a machine to assemble bits in a specific way takes creativity. My prompt to AI is that creativity and without it, you can’t even get much of a copy of anything. Even though AI is generally assembling stolen bits, the end result (ignoring copyright law) can be original.

2. Music has been mostly “figured out” and many songs we have heard over your lifetime use many of the same exact chord progressions. I-V-vi-IV being one of the most common and used in the following songs:

Journey – “Don’t Stop Believing”

James Blunt – “You’re Beautiful”

Black Eyed Peas – “Where Is the Love”

Alphaville – “Forever Young”

Jason Mraz – “I’m Yours”

Train – “Hey Soul Sister”

The Calling – “Wherever You Will Go”

Elton John – “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” (from The Lion King)

3. Musicians may use patterns or progressions from other songs. Painters may use the same colors and brushes designed by other artists. In both cases, techniques that have been known for thousands of years are being used in self-expression.

I assert that given the correct instructions, you can still give someone plenty to analyze, via prompt, that has enough detail to extract a deeper meaning:

FWIW, I am extremely fed up with this AI hype now. “AI” is just a tool, and that is it. I could go on for hours about this mess, but I am trying to make a valid point: Regardless of how you interpret copyright, art is just self-expression.

There are endless examples I could give about technique re-use when it comes to creating art with machines. From my perspective, a particular brush stroke might be the same as using a specific bit at a particular depth of cut on a CNC. The art theft for AI training is one aspect, for sure. The biggest issue I see is that many people don’t understand how to create original art and the AI just spits out a copy of something it was trained on and something the user already saw.

Edit: After reading many of the other comments here, many people have a strange definition of “art”. Yes, art can be about communication, it can be about sending a message, it can express a style of creativity or hundreds of other things.

Art is just… art. It’s something a person sketches, composes, speaks, signs or farts. You don’t have to like it or agree with it. Hell, you don’t even need to recognize something as art for it to be art. Art is just self-expression. It’s a feeling that is converted into some kind of other medium that others might happen to see, feel or hear, smell, taste or a combination of all of those things.

As much as I hate to admit it, a banana taped to a wall is art. Someone eating said banana is also art. I think it’s fucking stupid, but who am I to not call it someone’s self-expression?

Conspiracy theories were supposed to be fun and not really taken seriously. Once “groups” like Q-Anon showed up, all the nutters quickly linked everything to politics and the conspiracy theories that may have had a believable hint of truth just got destroyed by complete bat-shit crazy rambling.

Sorry if it sounded like my rant was directed at you as it absolutely wasn’t. Your comment triggered me, because I absolutely fully agreed with yours as well. ;)

setenforce 0 is much cleaner, I have found.

Its just complex

When a security mechanism becomes more complex to manage than what it is supposed to protect, it becomes a vulnerability itself.

If you had a minimal system that you built from the ground up yourself and wanted to only have that system function in very specific ways, SELinux would be perfect. I would go so far as to say it would be nearing perfection in some ways.

Sorry, but in the real world, ain’t nobody got time for that shit. If you use auto configuration tools or pre-canned configs for SELinux on a system you are unfamiliar with, it’s more likely to cause application issues, create security gaps and will likely be shut off by a Jr. admin who really has no fucking clue what he is doing anyway.

It’s just easier to keep your system patched and ensure basic network security practices anyway.

It’s not impossible to manage these days. In the early days it was, but most everything is automagic now. If I am not mistaken, SELinux can be enabled to ‘log only’ which would give you data better handled by a HIPS anyway. (Don’t quote me on that.)

Holy fuck you are whiny. You really don’t understand the fundamentals of how these platforms work, do you?

I mean, sure. You are exploiting your whining for attention, so you understand that, at least. To everyone else, you just seem like you are stirring the pot because you like it. That is just toxic.

Unfortunately, AI has the creativity of a turnip.

Wild hogs live in “packs” (“sounders”, actually. Lulz.) as well. On all fronts, the hogs should win. Some of the bigger hogs could easily outweigh a wolf 5:1.

These creatures are what nightmares are made of and I wish I could say I was joking or being sarcastic.

Could a pack of wolves separate a hog from its pack and kill it? Sure. Not all hogs are hell-spawn. Regardless, we are also talking about mother nature’s true version of Medusa.

I admire your creativity, I seriously doubt that would help. You would only get really pissed off mutant hogs after the dust cleared.

Give the kids guns too.

That was intended to sound sarcastic, but most kids I knew in rural America have been around guns since they were big enough to carry them. I personally started shooting a .22 when I was in kindergarten and was just hardly big enough to shoot a 30-06 when I was about 10 or so. (I am very much the liberal gun owner type, btw.)

While I can’t change the past, I do find myself questioning the logic of my experience at times. For yet another direction shift, my girls are both trained in gun safety, but that started years before I let them even touch a gun.

A 9mm would just piss them off.

Wild hogs would destroy a wolf. These creatures are no joke.

Yes.