From an interview with a16z: > “I think there’s a misconception that the computer now does the work, but really the computer is another tool. It’s like a guitar or a sampler; it’s another tool in the artist’s arsenal. The reason we go to the artists we go to, or the writers we go to, or the filmmakers we go to, is for their point of view.” > > "The AI doesn’t have a point of view. Its point of view is what you tell it. You can have a great script for a film, give it to five great directors, and you’ll get five very different movies. It’s true with everything. If you give the same song to different artists, they interpret it differently.” > > "AI gives you the ability to take your ideas, feed it into this machine, and then get back different iterations that you would normally do, but it would just take you much longer. It’s more of a modeling process,. You’re not just asking it to make art. You’re asking it to bring your dreams to life, in the same way that you would in a woodshop.” I'm not sure I agree anymore. When inputs are less & less connected to outputs (i.e. I just say "give me an image of a cat" and an image comes out), the authorship relationship is less clear. Or to put a more precise point on it, authorship is spread across many people (via training data, RLHF, etc. — [[AI is a cultural technology]]). Now, one-shot generation is a blunt instrument, and yields pretty uninspiring results. This can be counteracted with better steerability for the creator – the ability to wield and sculpt content with more fluidity and ease, to direct the model's outputs as if they were making it directly, like magic. To create with taste. I think that's the hopeful future Rick Rubin sees. However – this can also be counteracted with an upgraded algorithmic model with a fast feedback loop to audiences (akin to [[Recommendation algorithms]], a kind of generative TikTok). If this happens, it's not clear there's an author at all apart from the human-AI system itself. Content fills the gaps in desires from an audience, its abstracted to an economic layer. And that kills art.