This guy hit the nail on the head in regards to this whole AI art kerfuffle.
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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I'm not sure I buy into the idea that the AI is violating anyone's IP, because it's basically just going into public spaces and memorizing pictures.
I've always had a problem with "intellectual property" because it doesn't actually conform to how normal property works. Especially in the digital age, it has a nasty habit of being inherently unlimited in supply, and therefore should be considered worthless because it has no scarcity.
Value has to be conferred by producing or doing something that is inherently exclusive to the people that purchase it. If it's not being purchased and given away publicly, then there's no value. If there's an unlimited supply of something and you're still charging money for it, it's effectively a monopoly of a worthless good, and is basically a market manipulation.
As for the issue of "what is art?". I don't accept than AI can make art. I don't think computers can make art at all. Artistry is not about reproducing an accurate depiction. To produce art, one must be able to confer some metaphysical conceptualization to the audience, no matter what it is, whether it is "meaning", or "emotion", or "story", or "narrative", or "symbolism", etc.
Computers, by their nature, are perfectly materialist and exclusively quantifiable. No metaphysical concepts can exist or be conferred by the machine that has no capacity to understand them. The best a coder can do is make a machine mimic something it has no capacity to understand. The most an audience can do is deceive itself into finding a metaphysical expression, where there is none.
Put it like this: a sunrise or a sunset has been depicted in art many times because of the metaphysical expressions humans interpret from this daily event. However, the sunsets and sunrises themselves are not art. They can't be. They are merely the regular motion of our planet combined with atmospheric and weather conditions. It is the presentation and interpretation of the event by humans that begins to create art for humans. Because art can't even exist without humans.
Similarly off of IP, it is not the idea which has any value. It is the production of that idea that confers any value.
You're fairly close to my own definition of art, which I'd summarize as: a product of self-expression that is not shallow. Since computers cannot have a "self", they cannot express themselves, and so cannot make art.
Though I have argued with some artists about this, and their definitions sounded a little better than mine, objectively. It was something about how art is composed of both self expression (which they consider guaranteed when a human creates anything) and the skills of a medium (the skills differ by medium, and different portions of the "idea" are brought forth because of that). I liked my definition more because I've seen a lot of "art" that is depressingly soul-less or shallow. It is a natural response to the demand for art-like products, to strip some of that depth. But the common consumer loves the idea that they are consuming art, because art appreciation is sophisticated while product enjoyment is philistine.
Intellectual property, I have settled on being largely nonsense, by trying to treat it like property; that one can only own an idea if they never share it with anyone. While I'm not sure if property rights must be inherently exclusive, it makes a lot of sense here, with ideas.
Perhaps we could have some freedom of creative sharing (allowing derivatives of stories and characters, etc) while still having some protection for small-time producers who can't compete with the material processing of corporations. If we can't have both, I say fuck it, let's get rid of IP laws altogether.
Any artist who wishes to protect the ideas present in their art (as one would wish to protect their physical property) may do so easily: just keep it locked in the attic. By sharing art/ideas, it gets interpreted and copied to each other person sort of automatically. If one of those people then makes a derivative work or further pursues the ideas, then that's just a net positive. Trying to forbid this process is foolish and likely evidence that the source creators are unable to compete with their past selves. We may never be allowed to have a free market, but let's at least get a free market of ideas, damn.
This is far too technical of a definition. Humans don't consciously try to express themselves in things they create. However, you the care someone puts into their work is demonstrable, and if that desire to do good work is an element of self-expression, then so be it. But that doesn't make it actually art. This would include things that are clearly not art, like q-tips, well-written lecture notes, and speed-runs.
When you're only adding skills in the medium, you've now asserted that low skilled people aren't capable of art. That's utter nonsense, and wreaks of artistic intellectualism. "Children's art" becomes a literal impossibility.
They are trying to express that the metaphysical element of the art (the idea) has to be brought forward from the skill of the artist, but this has never been true. It helps to be skilled, but skill is not necessarily part of it. In fact, part of the problem is how you would even begin to try measuring skill in artistry.
I think there's a huge problem between art and design. Graphic Designers are not the same as a Graphic Artist, in my mind. Humans like aesthetics without caring much about art. Technically excellent design is what most consumer's buy: see wolf t-shirts. They look fine, but they actually express nothing metaphysically. They're not designed to. They are just designed to be mildly aesthetically pleasing to someone who likes wolves. This is not art. In fact, it's the lowest possible form of philosophical aesthetics that you can have. But it is graphic design. There is genuine technical sophistication and skill required into making those t-shirts, but there is no aesthetic or metaphysical quality (until you go onto Amazon's review page and see people inserting metaphysical qualities via the reviews)
I think your artist friends were probably being trained as designers in college, and that's how they got to that perception (that and the likelihood of having a Leftist materials underlying philosophy). Art is different.
Yeah, to correspond with that, I don't think "intellectual property" is property in and of itself, and it actually relies on the establishment of a regulatory structure to invent the property by recognizing that it exists. Normal property, and property rights, appear to be natural rights that people tend to simply assume. They assume ownership of objects they create, as well as other people understanding the concepts of these assumptions. Other implicitly understand that it's your bowl, certainly while you are eating from it. The fact that the idea hasn't actually been manifested into a material form, means that it's not really a property. That's why the government doesn't just innately accept intellectual property rights and regulate arguments between property owners who's contracts and obligations seem violated. Instead, intellectual property has to be asserted by the state in order for those property rights to exist, meaning that intellectual property is a positive right.
At least when you create a song or something like that, there is an expression that brings the idea into the material world from the metaphysical. The manifestation of ideas into property makes sense to me, but I don't think that ideas themselves are property.
I did try to address this with them, but it did not get resolved. The direction they were going had to do with critique, and how one should strive to give criticism of art that follows specific guidelines of medium and asthetic. Kinda reinforces what you say about it being "artistic intellectualism"; buncha fancy theories and words when it really is fine to give simplistic criticism, and that the most an artist should expect is for critique to come with an explanation of some kind. Ironic, since they bemoaned academic gatekeeping.
I might even go as far as to say that low skill art is a little more artistic. If I go on Deviantart, it's not very interesting, but it's a bunch of technically good pictures. If I look at some literal children's drawings, sometimes it's very interesting. I wonder if some capacity for creative self expression might be sacrificed during the pursuit of technical skill. At the least, a person with low skill will be forced to lean on creativity and innovation, where a high skill person would just use a polished technique.
Hahaha, this example troubles me. I consider those to be cringey because of the people who get really enthusiastic about like, the spiritual significance of wolves and such. I understand your point, though, I think. Some of the base terms I still haven't really internalized/memorized, like "aesthetic". Probably gonna have to refresh some philosophy stuff to get that done. So I can't really agree or disagree with the part where you say design can be good while having no asthetic.
Hmm. Is there some way to determine whether something is a right? If government support of IP magically vanished right now, we'd definitely still have people who believe it's a real right. I am also reminded that whenever lefty slogans pull out the "human rights" card, that it's very unclear what rights are being referenced.
There's a, uh, large esoteric essay I'm working on that asserts a lot of things about the properties of ideas. So I can't agree, but I can't really make a coherent argument against it. I realize now that my hobbies are leaking out a bit, so to speak. I will need to be more mindful of this in the future, as opportunities to discuss IP as a concept come up.
The value of IP is protected only by judicial fiat, legions of corporate attorneys, and the government's monopoly on force.
I don't entirely agree on the definition of art. My variation would be that yes there has to be some "metaphysical conceptualization", but it is entirely in the eye of the beholder. No intent by the artist/algorithm is required. In fact even if the artists intends to invoke deep themes in his work, it isn't really art if everyone else only sees it as a banana taped to a wall. I apply the same consumer-rule to canon in fictional works. Ultimately we the audience decide what derived works are canon, not the author.