Great list as usual, only starting to read thru the recommendations. I've read Ted Chiangs article and I come to a different take away, which is that Mr Chiang is a writer who takes himself and his craft too seriously. I like his point about "making choices" and "putting in effort" - no doubt that's true and comes from someone who does it for their craft. But the rest? AI doomerism. It's not really creative because you haven't worked hard. It's not creative because you didn't make choices. You kids with your fancy computers are not as creative as me!
Well. Do I think that typing a few words into an LLM or image processor is the same as writing a novel or painting an image? No, and I don't like to label this as "(my) art" in any case. And yet, I can produce images that are visually interesting and even tell a story with them, or I can get ideas on how my characters could look, or what environments I haven't thought of. Anyway, I respect Chiang for writing iconic science fiction stories. I think he is elitist about AI tools and creativity and I don't like that.
Thank you for the shoutout Lynn! I wish Substack had a better system for seeing where your publication gets mentioned since I would've missed this if I hadn't been snooping through some of my analytics.
I've always felt that AI tools would need to end up being the assistant rather than the artist. There's just something hollow about seeing AI "make" art, games, and music, but if a person can take what an AI spits out and make something from it, it can unlock a whole new layer of creativity. Thanks for sharing all of these great links!
Great list as usual, only starting to read thru the recommendations. I've read Ted Chiangs article and I come to a different take away, which is that Mr Chiang is a writer who takes himself and his craft too seriously. I like his point about "making choices" and "putting in effort" - no doubt that's true and comes from someone who does it for their craft. But the rest? AI doomerism. It's not really creative because you haven't worked hard. It's not creative because you didn't make choices. You kids with your fancy computers are not as creative as me!
Well. Do I think that typing a few words into an LLM or image processor is the same as writing a novel or painting an image? No, and I don't like to label this as "(my) art" in any case. And yet, I can produce images that are visually interesting and even tell a story with them, or I can get ideas on how my characters could look, or what environments I haven't thought of. Anyway, I respect Chiang for writing iconic science fiction stories. I think he is elitist about AI tools and creativity and I don't like that.
More comments on the other links tbd 👀
Thank you for the shoutout Lynn! I wish Substack had a better system for seeing where your publication gets mentioned since I would've missed this if I hadn't been snooping through some of my analytics.
I've always felt that AI tools would need to end up being the assistant rather than the artist. There's just something hollow about seeing AI "make" art, games, and music, but if a person can take what an AI spits out and make something from it, it can unlock a whole new layer of creativity. Thanks for sharing all of these great links!
Oh yay, glad you saw it. I need to spend more proper time with your newsletter and add you to my recs list :)
I am interested in travel travails but only if writing it doesn’t add stress for you.
Enjoyed the article, I have three or so links queued up.
There isn't overwhelming request so far, so unless i hear from more people I probably won't :)