Comment by tinfoilhatter
3 days ago
So if I hire an artist and am a motivated individual, have an idea for a painting, have background knowledge about paintings and have taste in paintings and can offer a critique of the painting as the artist paints it, then somehow I created the painting?
Absurd logic. The AI built the website.
Nothing absurd about that. What do you think an "Executive producer" is? A "Director" ? Does Peter Jackson get credit for creating the Lord of the Rings Trilogy films? Christopher Nolan for his films? But did he make them ? No, it was the collective effort of thousands of individuals all working under their direction.
Just like if somebody creates software today, and the end result is generated by the collective effort of thousands of agents, the "Director" still gets credit.
The director receives accreditation for directing the film, not creating it.
Doesn't the director generally receive more credit than the producer?
How many films do you remember the producer above the director?
3 replies →
That’s an interesting way to look at it, and still generous to the llm.
By which I mean it puts the llm in the role of actor and such… people practicing an art. It seems harder to make a case that the llm is actually making creative decisions rather than aping a synthesis of past human decisions and expressions of taste, strictly, at every turn.
Though I guess it’s all “shades of grey”. I never felt like I was contributing a ton when I was essentially wrapping a large, capable library that some smarter person or people made, either.
Tangentially… remember back when we used to see headlines like “12 year old made a web browser!” and we all thought, “No. No they didn’t.”
It all feels a little like that, again.
I think in that case it's fair to say you created the painting with the artist, even if the artist should get majority credit. I don't like the analogy though, to me it feels more like you're a project manager directing a team of genius but single minded interns.
I've never encountered a project manager who has said: I built this thing, after a project has wrapped up. I have encountered ones who've said I managed this project.
I've heard some variant of "we built this thing", which I think is valid. I'm not sure how I feel about anthropomorphizing a coding agent at this point though, which is what you're implying.
I just read through a couple of your posts that weren't dead or buried, and it seems like you're pretty anti-AI. You should really start to have an open mind towards it. It's going to be the future (if it isn't already), and as you continue to get older, you're going to really wish you spent your time right now learning and embracing the technology instead of being so against it. A lot of the skills and things that you're holding on to right now might not be relevant by then, but you'll be at a disadvantage from not keeping up with the industry and need to play catch-up.
I'm not sure that typing messages to a chat bot requires much catching up, but since you think this is what I should do rob, I better listen!
> I'm not sure that typing messages to a chat bot requires much catching up
Lol, yeah I'd wager AI tooling skills are less relevant than knowing your way around a shell. It doesn't help that all of the AI tooling has event more churn than js libraries and package management systems!
I think there's probably some value in understanding how LLMs work, but beyond that it's the same boring skills that matter the most... Critical thinking, design chops, attention to detail, perseverance, etc.
If you don't get reliable results, but others do, then maybe you should indeed. But your choice.
You know how many pieces of art Damien Hurst creates himself Vs his studio assistants creating them under his direction?
For example, of his 1500 spot paintings, he only actually made 5 of them.
It's not uncommon at all for artists to work this way.
He still didn't create the paintings, he offered instructions / feedback to the artists that created them. Whether or not he is credited with authoring them is an entirely separate issue.
There have been plenty of workshops where artists hire assistant painters while maintaining authorship over the works themselves, from Rembrandt to Warhol to Hirst.
Sure - and a factual statement would be, these artists hired assistant artists to help them create their paintings. Just like it would be factual to say that the person directed a LLM to build an app for them.
Sure. So does this diminish the role of Rembrandt? Or is this some semantic black hole you’re drawing us into?
no, because there is another human involved.
llms are not human.