Even amazing writers and musicians can barely scrape a living. Being an artist is mostly unpaid labor that enriches Irish culture. Why wouldn’t we incentivize those capable of being artists for some pitiful sum of money if they’re willing?
No matter how much capitalists pretend that artistic talent falls from the sky like mana for the rest of us to enjoy, it isn’t actually free. It takes thousands of hours of effort to become something resembling an artist. And this program is a cheap way to make that happen.
Or a few minutes and a neural net.
This is going to make people furious but it’s kind of true, and might actually be part of the argument for the policy.
LLMs are mathematically limited to amateur skill ceiling in creativity. Additionally, they’re fundamentally combinatorial and incapable of originality. This is why we are yet to see a single page of LLM fictional prose that doesn’t suck balls.
A link to the paper itself, if like me you have a math background, and are wondering WTF that means and how you measure creativity mathematically. Or for that matter what amateur-tier creativity is. Unfortunately, it’s probably too new to pirate, if you don’t have a subscription to the Journal of Creative Behaviour.
At least according to the article, he argues that novelty and correctness are opposite each other in an LLM, which tracks. The nice round numbers used to describe that feel like bullshit, though. If you’re metric boils down to a few bits don’t try and pad it by converting to reals.
That’s not even the real kicker, though; the two are anticorrelated in humans as well. Generations of people have remarked at how the most creative people tend to be odd or straight-up mentally ill, and contemporary psychology has captured that connection statistically in the form of “impulsive unconventionality”. If it’s asserted without evidence that it’s not so in “professional” creative humans, than that amounts to just making stuff up.
If we increase an LLM’s predictive utility it becomes less interesting, but if we make it more interesting it becomes nonsensical (since it can less accurately predict typical human outputs).
Humans, however, can be interesting without resorting to randomness, because they have subjectivity, which grants them a unique perspective that artists simply attempt (and often fail) to capture.
Anyways, however we eventually create an artificial mind, it will not be with a large language model; by now, that much is certain.
Ah, but if there’s no random element to a human cognition, it should produce the exact same output time and time again. What is not random is deterministic.
Biologically, there’s an element of randomness to neurons firing. If they fire too randomly, that’s a seizure. If they don’t ever fire spontaneously, you’re in a coma. How they produce ideas is nowhere close to being understood, but there’s going to be an element of an ordered pattern of firing spontaneously emerging. You can see a bit of that with imaging, even.
Anyways, however we eventually create an artificial mind, it will not be with a large language model; by now, that much is certain.
It does seem to be dead-ending as a technology, although the definition of “mind” is, as ever, very slippery.
The big AI/AGI research trend is “neuro-symbolic reasoning”, which is a fancy way of saying embedding a neural net deep in a normal algorithm that can be usefully controlled.
novelty and correctness are opposite each other in humans
So, when it comes to mental illness and creativity, despite some empirical correlations, “There is now growing evidence for the opposite association.”
However, there are inverse-U-shaped relationships between several mental characteristics and creativity:
Although you’ll notice that disinhibition rapidly becomes detrimental.
On actual mental illness specifically, as opposed to just “weirdness” in general, I have no hard data. If it’s caused at the physiological level, it makes sense that it wouldn’t follow the same pattern. You can of course name a bunch of mentally ill but prominent thinkers and artists from the past, but there’s almost certainly a lot of neglect of base rate going on there.
It’s worth noting production LLMs choose randomly from a significant range of tokens they deem fairly likely, as opposed to choosing the most likely one every time. If they were too conservative with it, they too would fall on the near side of that curve.
Account less than a month old and posting uplifting news, while being salty about said news in the comments.
I smell astroturf.
I smell nothing.
You also won’t engage with people who agree this is a good thing without a facade of sarcasm and cynical dismissal, your agenda/actual age is showing.
Yes, you are 100% correct.
Please investigate further😉
Nah, you ain’t that special, just going to block you and encourage others to do the same. Have fun dedicating your time and energy to such great causes, I’m sure you’ll get rewarded for it.
Thanks bro.
You too.
What a great name. Let’s test.
Boop Beep?
Beep Boop?
Checks out
Good news, thank the heavens.
We as a society always have to care for the unemployed, aka artists.
I don’t look at it is taking care of the unemployed.
Ireland has punched above its weight for centuries in producing cultural works. This is Ireland investing in its arts community directly by having its struggling artists be able to spend more time making art instead of other jobs.
A thriving arts scene creates prestige for the country, provides amenities to the local population, and increases tourism.
A lot of people who can’t be bothered to learn anything about viewing or creating art deeply resent people who can do art or people who do appreciate art. This whole post was to attack art and artists because OP and his alts are bitter trolls.
Reminder: Nazi germany also hated many forms of art that didn’t meet their definitions of what was socially beneficial, and despised anything that didn’t “glorify the empire.”
The scheme literally measurably turned a profit for the state, effectively turned un/under-employment into a net asset for the country. And paying for those “unemployed miners” you’re worried about. Y’know, in Ireland’s vast mines.
Ireland’s massive tourism industry is strongly reliant on our culture and arts, which obviously took a massive hit during Covid. Keeping people performing in the arts during dry spells rather than seeking work (underground?) retains and develops those skills rather than having them be lost and our culture eroded by global media.
I’m sure you like Irish culture and dislike global media, right?
Yah actually, why the fuck not.
We have more than the capability with our distributed work and economic systems. I get fuck-all back from my tax money and hard work to support fucking BILLIONAIRES, I think I much rather my wasted income go towards helping my community and people struggling to make ends meet.
Cynical fucks all want a Star Trek utopia but don’t want to actually put in effort and sacrifice to get there.
What about all the other unemployed people? Why are artists more deserving than miners and factory workers?
Because they call themselves a name(Artists), that is why as a society we need to care for them.
Unemployed miners and factory workers are just normal boring unemployed.
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Where is your “AI democratizes art” spiel? Shouldn’t you be launching into it about now or did you decide it’s too much to push at the same time?
That’s honestly pretty neat, assuming these artists are more useful to society than my idiotic “artist” sister. I’m interested to see how it plays out over the long term, and what it could mean for other places considering a universal basic income.
I think it’d be pretty neat even if it covered useless idiots. Keeps 'em out of trouble.
A sane person would think that if they don’t know my sister.
It’s almost like artistic endeavours take time to be valued in their entirety. Years, decades, centuries sometimes. And the number crunchers just don’t want to give it a chance because it isn’t a good ROI for this quarter or period.
Amazing, I love it. Good job Ireland!
“Fuck my life!”, said factory workers throughout the land.
I did 10 years as a professional artist, it was the hardest I ever worked in my life, and in the end I gave it up because despite winning awards and having collectors around the world after becoming very good at it, it is very hard to manage and maintain an actual art business in a world that doesn’t take art very seriously, especially with rising costs of things like healthcare and general goods needed to produce work.
There’s a reason why when you go to a fine art museum half of the most famous works and most beautiful pieces that changed the culture of art and even our perception of the world, were made by people who died in abject poverty.
It’s wild we read stories like that and say “Wow that’s a shame, I wish we could have given that artist the accolades and support they needed to survive and know how important they were for the world.” But the moment someone says “Maybe we should support artists” suddenly it’s hand-wringing and whinging about “factory workers.”
This isn’t a question if Ireland’s policy makes you feel good or bad, it’s a question whether or not you think there should be art in the world at all and what you’re willing to accept or change or pay to have that world with actual art in it.
You make it seem like I am against artists when I am for everybody, including artists. Don’t be so angry because you weren’t financially successful in your chosen field. Lots of people don’t make it. Some would say art is suffering and the masters were compelled. My hand-wringing is about imbalance. Find peace my friend, we are all artists.
If you’re actually advocating for fairness and things like universal basic income or even social safety nets, the worst way to do it is to whine like a wounded banshee when one segment or demographic gets it and you don’t, that’s been the number one way all of these programs have been shot down in history.
If it’s successful and helps the country’s economics and quality of life, it will expand, it should be encouraged, not immediately have rocks thrown at it from frustrated people going “why not me?”
Figure out what you actually want and how we get there, and decide if you think you can get everything you want all at once, or if we need to build things to get there.
We are most certainly not all artists, the 2020’s have taught me that much.
Don’t be so angry because you weren’t financially successful in your chosen field
Terrible reading comprehension, I am angry at your whinging against an objectively good advancement, I am not an artist anymore and have no stake in this. I referenced being an artist because I know how unfair the field is and how unappreciated it is by people who have never taken the time to learn shit about art or don’t consider it a real career because they don’t take time to notice how much of their lives have been designed by professional and freelance artists.
Factory workers are eligible to become artists at any time. It was always allowed.
IIRC this program is invite-only, because yeah, otherwise it’d end up being for everyone.
Edit: And that’s sus, and might just end in people’s cousins getting invited.
Art is a skill that takes time and dedication to cultivate, and often at least a seed of talent to boot.
I can’t just wake up one morning and say “I’m an artist now” anymore than I can wake up and say “I’m a doctor today.”
That’s the point. People want to simultaneously pretend that art is the trivial pursuit of effete dilettantes but also that supporting artists is unfair since it would take too much sacrifice and effort for any random person to become an artist.
I see. Yeah, that makes sense.
I view arts and humanities as occupying the top of Maslow’s hierarchy. A healthy arts and humanities scene is a sign that society is flourishing. Someone who can pursue those as careers instead of hobbies is self-actualized.
I think public patronage of the arts and humanities is ultimately a good thing, and should happen in addition to all the other, more basic needs. Food, housing, and utilities should be prioritized, and the jobs that provide those things. Then healthcare, education, social work, public servants, parks & rec, etc.
Arts and humanities shouldn’t be neglected, but the fabric of society should be built from the ground up to support a healthy arts scene.
Yeah, plus we’ve achieved the economic conditions where everyone’s basic needs can be met. That they are not is a deliberate and vincible evil.
I agree. I think a good starting place would be assessing the cost of living by region or district, and then anyone who makes below that amount should receive a supplementary allowance (funded by the wealthy, of course. If they were paying people fairly then nobody would be making below the cost of living).
Other things should be in the purview of public goods, of course. For countries that don’t already have it, healthcare and education should be top priorities. They should be seen as investments in a healthy society, not as merely handouts to individuals.
Eventually food should be produced and distributed by public (state-owned) entities, at-cost rather than for-profit. But that’s a longer-term goal that needs careful planning and implementation, so pushing too hard for it too soon could derail progress on other priorities like healthcare, education, and guaranteed basic income.
Or the disabled, or the just poor and untalented.
Basic income is the darling of policy wonks of all kinds. But, doing it just for already-successful artists is a bit random.
doing it just for already-successful artists is a bit random.
I think a lot of people have radical misconceptions about what it means to be a “successful artist” or even what the spectrum of the field looks like for an average creator.
Everyone in this post feeling salty about this whole story are picturing either struggling deviantart furry artists living in their parent’s house making terrible sonic OC’s for sheltered discord kiddies, or snooty dudes in black turtlenecks having showings of abstract nonsense at galleries in upscale neighborhoods, and nothing in between.
Most artists who survive by art are making minimum wage grinding out graphics and designs for like, edges of price-tag-holders on magazine racks at drug-store checkouts and the other millions of tiny details that go into making our world deliberate-looking and designed, and most of those kinds of artists are working contract/gig work and aren’t even full-time employees and have no benefits or safety nets. Employers hate paying artists, there’s a very real stigma and aversion to paying people for creativity and most companies choose either outsourcing small projects at a time, or more and more choosing to just use AI.
A graphic designer can make a logo that redefines a global company’s image and helps launch a multi-billion dollar venture, and make $200 for it. This is why there’s a very real need to fund art unless we want to hand it over to AI entirely and just let the world dissolve into mediocrity and soullessness.
Yeah, but this specific policy, last I checked, is invite-only. That means it’s the turtleneck guys, or more likely the Celtic fine art equivalent, not gig work graphic designers.
Unless said graphic designer has an in with someone in charge of sending the invites, anyway. Which is another issue with doing it that way.
(It’s a good thing to point out in general, though)
That means it’s the turtleneck guys, or more likely the Celtic fine art equivalent, not gig work graphic designers.
And? That’s fine. The country wants to boost their artistic culture, it has to start somewhere. And honestly, despite me holding it up as a picture of stereotypes, even those “cultural” artists rarely see any measure of actual success despite trying their whole lives to gain some kind of social connection to an art market. Again, this is a matter of deciding if we want art in our lives and where that goal is going to begin.
If celtic sculptors and “art lifestylers” get a UBI, that’s great. It just means the struggling graphic artist is a little closer to also finding some level of support, and the closer the struggling graphic artist gets to social respect and support, the closer YOU get to a broad-scale safety net.
I just will never shit on efforts to socialize our vast resources as a species, at least not until the last billionaire is made into mulch.
Perfection is the enemy of the good. Better to start sooner than to wait for a consensus on the best way.
Perfection is the enemy of the good
This is Lemmy, if it’s not the Ultimate Policy that includes everyone, gives every last person exactly what they want WHILE punishing our enemies, WHILE costing nothing and requiring no effort, it’s trash that should be spat on.
325 euros per week, says the article.
About as much as I made on my best weeks doing art professionally for close to 10 years, despite having won awards and secured collectors around the world.
I worked harder than I ever had in my life to keep that business running, and eventually closed shop because it’s too much work for too little pay or respect.
Ironic since I’m quite sure most of the sock-puppets and astroturfers baiting this post and whinging about “factory workers” are literal kids who have never actually worked a day in their life.
Didn’t they already do this like a year ago? And the year before that?
They were trialing it, yeah, turned out to be successful so they’re permanizing it
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