“I have no math talent, but that’s ok I’ll use a tool to help” - absolutely no issues, math is hard and you don’t need most of it in “real life” (nonsense of course)
“I can’t code so I’ll use a web page maker to help” - all good, learning to code is optional, it’s what you create that matters right?
“Hey AI, break this concept down for me to help me learn it” - surprisingly, still good (though very ill advised, also built on plagiarism and putting private tutors out of work…).
“I have no art talent, but that’s ok I’ll use a tool to help” - society melts down because…?
I suppose it could just be a case of being happy to see talents we don’t have replaced by a tool? Then again, it might be artists are better at generating attractive looking arguments for their case.
“I have no math talent, but that’s ok I’ll use a tool to help”
What tools do you need to replace “math talent”? If you’re talking about calculators - first of all they’re for arithmetic, not math - and second they still do not help you to “solve math problems”. You need logic, experience and intellect to do that. The only “tool” thag can help you is an online forum if someone already solved it.
“I can’t code so I’ll use a web page maker to help”
You still need to do stuff, think with your brain and spend time to build the web page. You need to have taste and work your sweat (and some tears) into it.
“Hey AI, break this concept down for me to help me learn it”
No, not good unless you want to be misinformed and/or manipulated
society melts down because…?
Because the massive group of people were screwd over without their consent to make a tool that going to devalue their work. If you look closely on the examples you yourself provided, you can see that they all respect copyright of others and are themselves often a good and productive work. Ai on the other hand were made “at the expense” of us, and we are rightfully mad.
Yes, copyright owners, but not the rights of the creator. Mathematical research is part of the publishing industry, and that strips the rights from creators of such works. Their work is mislabelled discovery, and no protection offered.
That lovely tool you use to make a website? Yeah, £10 says there is open source code misappropriated there (much as AI generated code is pirated from GitHub, a lot of programs “borrow” code).
Surely the mathematician and coder have equal claims to anger? It is their works being stolen too?
The people who advanced mathematical research got their glory and pride and the attention of peers. All of them get credited in the names of their own equations and theorems. Also, they all got paid.
If the company is atleast somewhat creditable, it’s easier for them to license code properly. Besides, many open source code are licensed under MIT which permits fair use.
You never get the name of artist from the generated piece, even if it’s a one-to-one copy of their art.
I’ll pause you right there - I am a mathematical researcher by trade. We don’t get paid, or glory, pride or much attention XD
Trust me when I say, unlike in art, the folks who put in the legwork in mathematics tend to toil in obscurity. We don’t much mind it, the pay isn’t great but it does pay the bills.
I’ll leave this thread with a thought - since I think we’re a little too far apart on opinion to bridge the gap. All fields require creativity, not all forms of creativity are equally rewarded, and therein lies the true root of the AI crisis.
Never used a computer algebra system? Like wolfram mathematica or sage math or maple? Then we have proof assisting software like coq and smt solvers like cvc5 or Z3.
This is all software that can solve real math problems in an easy way.
What tools to to replace math work besides calculator?
Mathematica is one example that solves integrals and do some elementary proof run-down for you.
Granted that it is used mostly by STEM students. But I rarelly see someone totally forbiding the use of Mathematica as learning tool.
If you want a more High-school tool, then geogebra is another great example (and also opensource.
Pretty useful to plot the graphs and help you see what you’re getting wrong.
I’m answering just to show that there are indeed mathematical tools used for the inbetween of a full math major and a “paltry peasant” that only needs to compute a good enough function for his problem be it an engineer working beams load, a chemist working enthalpy reactions or an biologist trying to find an EDO that best fits the data of prey/predator in a given ecosystem.
So basically there are now a couple studies that show critical thinking skills are on the decline due to AI use which is bad because. 1. Makes you easier to manipulate. 2. How do you check if the AI is Right?
Have they isolated the reality that we are also living in times where there are a plethora of factors that are decreasing people’s life outlooks? Depression also affects critical thinking skills. People are less inclined to practice critical thinking when most of their time is spent working for billionaires that are eroding our standard of living daily. I’m not going to be practicing how to be my best when the output of my work goes towards some rich societal parasite. And if that is taking most of my time when do I get to do this for myself when I’m tired after work? What about the fact education as a whole has been going into the shitter? If anything AI is masking how bad our current working conditions, work expectations, and dwindling education standards are truly affecting our falling critical thinking skills. I’m sorry but with all the external factors here I am extrenely skeptical of the results those studies are claiming to demonstrate, the controls to really isolate this down to purely AI being the root cause seems nearly impossible given the state of the world right now. But if you have links to these studies instead of random hearsay, I’d like to see how they isolated this down with controls on their study.
Edit: i see you posted down below and yeah i think this underscores my entire point:
“Furthermore, higher educational attainment was associated with better critical thinking skills, regardless of AI usage.”
So it’s not a factor of AI use its the fact our educational standards have gone to shit. And further more they are drawing results by comparing different generations and ai tool use dependence between them. Which doesn’t isolate this decline to be just due to AI. I don’t know this seems like a flawed study that’s claiming correlation to be causation.
Except that being good at math or being good at designing a web page have nothing to do with memorising formulas or coding. It’s about being able to break down the problems into manageable pieces and applying your knowledge to bring structure to them. Which isn’t something you can replicate with a tool, if you don’t know how it’s done in the first place.
If you know nothing about the general principles of math, you won’t be able to solve problems even with tools, because you won’t know which tools to use and how.
Same applies to AI tools. Try to make a coherent program with it without knowing how to program. Try to make a pretty picture without knowing. You’ll end with very bad results.
But if you know the base of a topic any tool can enhance your efficiency at it.
This isn’t about the intrinsic value of the skill, or a deep understanding, it is a utilitarian application to solve a problem.
In this respect, tool using is seen as valuable. Mathematical tools (because of their ease of coding) have been popular for decades. Similarly, web page creation tools have existed for a long time - a complete novice can create professional looking pages with them.
The results from these tools may lack substance and nuance, these being given only by deep understanding, but the same can be said of AI generated images.
In much the same way a person can evaluate an art style and say “this is what I want”.
Often, when people without knowledge attempt to create web pages, they’re not the best, they look good but aren’t well made. Much as AI art isn’t superior to a skilled artist.
The thing people seem to forget in this argument is that art is more than making pretty pictures. Art is used to convey emotional messages -it’s a unique act of human expression.
To create art (whether it be through image, writing, or something else) brings a cathartic sense to the artist, and if done well, it can communicate intended emotions to a viewer. Are there people carefully programming modern AI to make art that fits that concept? Maybe - I have heard people talk about that scenario, but I haven’t seen any such art yet. Rather, the vast majority of modern AI images lack the nuance and emotional impact that real art carries. It’s hollow, uncoordinated, and lacks the “soul” people connect to in human-made art.
You really don’t see the nuance to that? A human uses art to satirize the way other humans use art. A message is being conveyed. The message might be, “Fuck your idea of art,” but that’s still a message being sent from one human to other humans, through the medium of art.
An AI can’t do that. An AI can’t understand the emotions underlying the concept of protest art. You can ask it to make up some absurd idea, or even to generate a realistic image of it, but it’s not likely to resonate with humans as well as human-made art does.
It’s okay if this all sounds like gobbledygook - not everyone connects to art in the same way. But those that get it know exactly what I’m talking about.
A human uses art to satirize the way other humans use art. A message is being conveyed. The message might be, “Fuck your idea of art,” but that’s still a message being sent from one human to other humans, through the medium of art.
An AI can’t do that. An AI can’t understand the emotions underlying the concept of protest art.
The AI art doesn’t appear out of nothing. Someone sets the actual content of the art in motion, and it’s not the fault of the AI that the stupid human controlling it typed in “big titty goth gf” instead of something that illustrates a better concept.
What’s the excuse of the banana guy for making a shitty piece with no effort?
What’s the excuse of the banana guy for making a shitty piece with no effort?
You’re talking like there’s some rule about the effort required in order for something to qualify as “art,” as if the time-saving aspect of AI-generation is what disqualifies its images. That’s not how art works, and that’s not the issue with AI.
For a lot of people, art is about expressing themselves. If you have an absurd idea to troll art by doing something inane like taping a banana to a wall, that is still expressing one’s self even if it seems low-effort. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, just as you don’t have to like or agree with what another person says.
The AI art doesn’t appear out of nothing. Someone sets the actual content of the art in motion
And unless the human takes great control in the generation of that image, other humans may feel something lacking in the result. At best, AI art resembles something made by someone who has the hand-eye coordination and technical skill required to make visual art, but who lacks the passion and training that allows them to connect emotionally with an audience.
What’s the excuse of the banana guy for making a shitty piece with no effort?
You’re talking like there’s some rule about the effort required in order for something to qualify as “art,” as if the time-saving aspect of AI-generation is what disqualifies its images. That’s not how art works, and that’s not the issue with AI.
The banana art resembles something made by someone who has no hand-eye coordination or technical skill required to make visual art, and also lacks the passion and training that allows them to connect emotionally with an audience.
And unless the human takes great control in the generation of that image, other humans may feel something lacking in the result. At best, AI art resembles something made by someone who has the hand-eye coordination and technical skill required to make visual art, but who lacks the passion and training that allows them to connect emotionally with an audience.
Yeah, and that’s because the people using AI art generators are just expressing base shitty things, and the AI haters don’t see the pieces with effort put into them. This also goes against your other statement of
The message might be, “Fuck your idea of art,” but that’s still a message being sent from one human to other humans, through the medium of art.
An AI can’t do that. An AI can’t understand the emotions underlying the concept of protest art.
AI art can do that, since it’s still a human generating the message in the end.
EDIT : Can you meaningfully differenciate between a person writing a “plan” for a curator to tape a banana to a wall , and a person writing a “prompt” for a computer to generate an image that has a certain composition, lighting, colour, etc?
No man, that doesn’t mean that. I’m saying the artist for the banana piece is depending on the curator to do the actual creation of the piece, just like the guy writing the prompts for the AI is depending on the AI to create the piece.
the vast majority of human art lacks the real nuance and emotional impact real art carries.
It by-definition does not. The fact that you can’t see this I think makes you an inhuman monster.
If this were true, why would I want any of it? Do you seriously consume art you think is garbage for no reason? Are you not busy? Is your life really so boring?
The top 40 charts of music? 35 out of the 40 are pure crap, manufactured by people that are playing it by the numbers based on market studies, all in the pursuit of money. Now on top of that, imagine the majority of amateur fluff that people produce that are just low quality, or things that people make that aren’t full of gravitas, nuance and actually emotionally impactful.
The top 40 charts of music? 35 out of the 40 are pure crap,
Wow. This is a very old-man opinion.
imagine the majority of amateur fluff that people produce that are just low quality,
Are you comparing people’s weekend projects to, I dunno, Marvel movies?
I like amateur fluff, you know? I look for niche indie games on steam or itch.io just because I want to see what people are up to—what fun ideas they have. That it seems to bother you they’re not Casablanca is very strange to me.
Ok, so why is the visual idea that some computer hobbyist came up with but didn’t have the artistic capability to create not something interesting to you?
AI images lack the nuance and emotional impact that real art carries. It’s hollow, uncoordinated, and lacks the “soul” people connect to in human-made art.
This exact same criticism was used in the past but aimed at digital art, and, before that, to photography.
This may shock you but you wanting to see something bears no relevance on whether that something is considered art. Your opinion is not that important.
So, from a mathematician’s perspective, mathematical operations are careful constructs. Their validity and creation being an effort in creativity and, indeed, final catharsis.
To separate the two, one need only dictate the medium of expression.
As I understand it, the core purpose of art is communication. Using a graphical editor to create web pages is still honest art in my opinion, because although you’re assembling it out of larger primitives, you’re still communicating a substantial message. It’s similar to collage; the pieces you’ve assembled aren’t your work, and the viewer knows that. The important part is how they’re arranged and the message that arrangement communicates.
AI-generated art feels deceptive and hollow to a lot of people because when we see art, we expect it to communicate something substantial, but in the case of AI art, the model can’t magically add more meaning beyond the words of the prompt. Not to mention, the cultural grand larceny involved in creating AI art tools leaves a bad taste in most honest people’s mouths.
You don’t need to understand the binary level to make a web page though. At some point you probably don’t need more than a basic awareness of the processes a few levels above/below what you will be using.
“I have no math talent, but that’s ok I’ll use a tool to help” - absolutely no issues, math is hard and you don’t need most of it in “real life” (nonsense of course)
“I can’t code so I’ll use a web page maker to help” - all good, learning to code is optional, it’s what you create that matters right?
“Hey AI, break this concept down for me to help me learn it” - surprisingly, still good (though very ill advised, also built on plagiarism and putting private tutors out of work…).
“I have no art talent, but that’s ok I’ll use a tool to help” - society melts down because…?
I suppose it could just be a case of being happy to see talents we don’t have replaced by a tool? Then again, it might be artists are better at generating attractive looking arguments for their case.
What tools do you need to replace “math talent”? If you’re talking about calculators - first of all they’re for arithmetic, not math - and second they still do not help you to “solve math problems”. You need logic, experience and intellect to do that. The only “tool” thag can help you is an online forum if someone already solved it.
You still need to do stuff, think with your brain and spend time to build the web page. You need to have taste and work your sweat (and some tears) into it.
No, not good unless you want to be misinformed and/or manipulated
Because the massive group of people were screwd over without their consent to make a tool that going to devalue their work. If you look closely on the examples you yourself provided, you can see that they all respect copyright of others and are themselves often a good and productive work. Ai on the other hand were made “at the expense” of us, and we are rightfully mad.
Oh dear…
Yes, copyright owners, but not the rights of the creator. Mathematical research is part of the publishing industry, and that strips the rights from creators of such works. Their work is mislabelled discovery, and no protection offered.
That lovely tool you use to make a website? Yeah, £10 says there is open source code misappropriated there (much as AI generated code is pirated from GitHub, a lot of programs “borrow” code).
Surely the mathematician and coder have equal claims to anger? It is their works being stolen too?
The people who advanced mathematical research got their glory and pride and the attention of peers. All of them get credited in the names of their own equations and theorems. Also, they all got paid.
If the company is atleast somewhat creditable, it’s easier for them to license code properly. Besides, many open source code are licensed under MIT which permits fair use.
You never get the name of artist from the generated piece, even if it’s a one-to-one copy of their art.
I’ll pause you right there - I am a mathematical researcher by trade. We don’t get paid, or glory, pride or much attention XD
Trust me when I say, unlike in art, the folks who put in the legwork in mathematics tend to toil in obscurity. We don’t much mind it, the pay isn’t great but it does pay the bills.
I’ll leave this thread with a thought - since I think we’re a little too far apart on opinion to bridge the gap. All fields require creativity, not all forms of creativity are equally rewarded, and therein lies the true root of the AI crisis.
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Never used a computer algebra system? Like wolfram mathematica or sage math or maple? Then we have proof assisting software like coq and smt solvers like cvc5 or Z3.
This is all software that can solve real math problems in an easy way.
What tools to to replace math work besides calculator?
Mathematica is one example that solves integrals and do some elementary proof run-down for you.
Granted that it is used mostly by STEM students. But I rarelly see someone totally forbiding the use of Mathematica as learning tool.
If you want a more High-school tool, then geogebra is another great example (and also opensource.
Pretty useful to plot the graphs and help you see what you’re getting wrong.
I’m answering just to show that there are indeed mathematical tools used for the inbetween of a full math major and a “paltry peasant” that only needs to compute a good enough function for his problem be it an engineer working beams load, a chemist working enthalpy reactions or an biologist trying to find an EDO that best fits the data of prey/predator in a given ecosystem.
I can’t believe I have to say it on Lemmy of all places but fuck copyright.
So basically there are now a couple studies that show critical thinking skills are on the decline due to AI use which is bad because. 1. Makes you easier to manipulate. 2. How do you check if the AI is Right?
Ooh, links please! Might be worth throwing a few cogs into the university’s strategic goals.
Gerlich 2025 AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/15/1/6
Lee 2025 The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-impact-of-generative-ai-on-critical-thinking-self-reported-reductions-in-cognitive-effort-and-confidence-effects-from-a-survey-of-knowledge-workers/
Have they isolated the reality that we are also living in times where there are a plethora of factors that are decreasing people’s life outlooks? Depression also affects critical thinking skills. People are less inclined to practice critical thinking when most of their time is spent working for billionaires that are eroding our standard of living daily. I’m not going to be practicing how to be my best when the output of my work goes towards some rich societal parasite. And if that is taking most of my time when do I get to do this for myself when I’m tired after work? What about the fact education as a whole has been going into the shitter? If anything AI is masking how bad our current working conditions, work expectations, and dwindling education standards are truly affecting our falling critical thinking skills. I’m sorry but with all the external factors here I am extrenely skeptical of the results those studies are claiming to demonstrate, the controls to really isolate this down to purely AI being the root cause seems nearly impossible given the state of the world right now. But if you have links to these studies instead of random hearsay, I’d like to see how they isolated this down with controls on their study.
Edit: i see you posted down below and yeah i think this underscores my entire point:
“Furthermore, higher educational attainment was associated with better critical thinking skills, regardless of AI usage.”
So it’s not a factor of AI use its the fact our educational standards have gone to shit. And further more they are drawing results by comparing different generations and ai tool use dependence between them. Which doesn’t isolate this decline to be just due to AI. I don’t know this seems like a flawed study that’s claiming correlation to be causation.
Except that being good at math or being good at designing a web page have nothing to do with memorising formulas or coding. It’s about being able to break down the problems into manageable pieces and applying your knowledge to bring structure to them. Which isn’t something you can replicate with a tool, if you don’t know how it’s done in the first place.
If you know nothing about the general principles of math, you won’t be able to solve problems even with tools, because you won’t know which tools to use and how.
Same applies to AI tools. Try to make a coherent program with it without knowing how to program. Try to make a pretty picture without knowing. You’ll end with very bad results.
But if you know the base of a topic any tool can enhance your efficiency at it.
I’d somewhat disagree there.
This isn’t about the intrinsic value of the skill, or a deep understanding, it is a utilitarian application to solve a problem.
In this respect, tool using is seen as valuable. Mathematical tools (because of their ease of coding) have been popular for decades. Similarly, web page creation tools have existed for a long time - a complete novice can create professional looking pages with them.
The results from these tools may lack substance and nuance, these being given only by deep understanding, but the same can be said of AI generated images.
You do need the skill to use the tools, though.
Not unless they already know what makes a page professional looking. Otherwise, how would they tell whether they’ve succeeded?
But… I know HTML, CSS and JS and my page still doesn’t look professional!
In much the same way a person can evaluate an art style and say “this is what I want”.
Often, when people without knowledge attempt to create web pages, they’re not the best, they look good but aren’t well made. Much as AI art isn’t superior to a skilled artist.
The thing people seem to forget in this argument is that art is more than making pretty pictures. Art is used to convey emotional messages -it’s a unique act of human expression.
To create art (whether it be through image, writing, or something else) brings a cathartic sense to the artist, and if done well, it can communicate intended emotions to a viewer. Are there people carefully programming modern AI to make art that fits that concept? Maybe - I have heard people talk about that scenario, but I haven’t seen any such art yet. Rather, the vast majority of modern AI images lack the nuance and emotional impact that real art carries. It’s hollow, uncoordinated, and lacks the “soul” people connect to in human-made art.
the vast majority of human art lacks the real nuance and emotional impact real art carries.
See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_(artwork)
You really don’t see the nuance to that? A human uses art to satirize the way other humans use art. A message is being conveyed. The message might be, “Fuck your idea of art,” but that’s still a message being sent from one human to other humans, through the medium of art.
An AI can’t do that. An AI can’t understand the emotions underlying the concept of protest art. You can ask it to make up some absurd idea, or even to generate a realistic image of it, but it’s not likely to resonate with humans as well as human-made art does.
It’s okay if this all sounds like gobbledygook - not everyone connects to art in the same way. But those that get it know exactly what I’m talking about.
The AI art doesn’t appear out of nothing. Someone sets the actual content of the art in motion, and it’s not the fault of the AI that the stupid human controlling it typed in “big titty goth gf” instead of something that illustrates a better concept.
What’s the excuse of the banana guy for making a shitty piece with no effort?
You’re talking like there’s some rule about the effort required in order for something to qualify as “art,” as if the time-saving aspect of AI-generation is what disqualifies its images. That’s not how art works, and that’s not the issue with AI.
For a lot of people, art is about expressing themselves. If you have an absurd idea to troll art by doing something inane like taping a banana to a wall, that is still expressing one’s self even if it seems low-effort. You don’t have to like it or agree with it, just as you don’t have to like or agree with what another person says.
And unless the human takes great control in the generation of that image, other humans may feel something lacking in the result. At best, AI art resembles something made by someone who has the hand-eye coordination and technical skill required to make visual art, but who lacks the passion and training that allows them to connect emotionally with an audience.
The banana art resembles something made by someone who has no hand-eye coordination or technical skill required to make visual art, and also lacks the passion and training that allows them to connect emotionally with an audience.
Yeah, and that’s because the people using AI art generators are just expressing base shitty things, and the AI haters don’t see the pieces with effort put into them. This also goes against your other statement of
AI art can do that, since it’s still a human generating the message in the end.
EDIT : Can you meaningfully differenciate between a person writing a “plan” for a curator to tape a banana to a wall , and a person writing a “prompt” for a computer to generate an image that has a certain composition, lighting, colour, etc?
If we can’t explain the difference, AI must be sentient? This argument reminds me of “God of the gaps”.
No man, that doesn’t mean that. I’m saying the artist for the banana piece is depending on the curator to do the actual creation of the piece, just like the guy writing the prompts for the AI is depending on the AI to create the piece.
Good thing they didn’t choose paints or acrylics, then, huh? That might have been embarrassing.
Why do you think this is a gotcha?
It by-definition does not. The fact that you can’t see this I think makes you an inhuman monster.
If this were true, why would I want any of it? Do you seriously consume art you think is garbage for no reason? Are you not busy? Is your life really so boring?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon’s_law
The top 40 charts of music? 35 out of the 40 are pure crap, manufactured by people that are playing it by the numbers based on market studies, all in the pursuit of money. Now on top of that, imagine the majority of amateur fluff that people produce that are just low quality, or things that people make that aren’t full of gravitas, nuance and actually emotionally impactful.
Wow. This is a very old-man opinion.
Are you comparing people’s weekend projects to, I dunno, Marvel movies?
I like amateur fluff, you know? I look for niche indie games on steam or itch.io just because I want to see what people are up to—what fun ideas they have. That it seems to bother you they’re not Casablanca is very strange to me.
Ok, so why is the visual idea that some computer hobbyist came up with but didn’t have the artistic capability to create not something interesting to you?
I dunno. What is it communicating to me?
That was actually a great article. Thanks for sharing it. There was a lot more context around that event than I’d thought.
This exact same criticism was used in the past but aimed at digital art, and, before that, to photography.
And then they proved themselves by showing they do have soul and wit.
Consider this a challenge: make something with AI I actually want to see.
This may shock you but you wanting to see something bears no relevance on whether that something is considered art. Your opinion is not that important.
As Royal Prince Clown of the High Appraiser’s Guild in Denmark, unfortunately, my opinion matters the most.
So, from a mathematician’s perspective, mathematical operations are careful constructs. Their validity and creation being an effort in creativity and, indeed, final catharsis.
To separate the two, one need only dictate the medium of expression.
As I understand it, the core purpose of art is communication. Using a graphical editor to create web pages is still honest art in my opinion, because although you’re assembling it out of larger primitives, you’re still communicating a substantial message. It’s similar to collage; the pieces you’ve assembled aren’t your work, and the viewer knows that. The important part is how they’re arranged and the message that arrangement communicates.
AI-generated art feels deceptive and hollow to a lot of people because when we see art, we expect it to communicate something substantial, but in the case of AI art, the model can’t magically add more meaning beyond the words of the prompt. Not to mention, the cultural grand larceny involved in creating AI art tools leaves a bad taste in most honest people’s mouths.
You don’t need to understand the binary level to make a web page though. At some point you probably don’t need more than a basic awareness of the processes a few levels above/below what you will be using.
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