AI Can’t Get You Garfield feat. Ryan Broderick & Elon Musk | Chapo Trap House

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Episode 686 - AI Can’t Get You Garfield feat. Ryan Broderick & Elon Musk (12/6/22)
Our old friend Elon Musk* calls in to give us some updates on company policy and future projects from Twitter HQ. Then we’re joined by Ryan Broderick, author of the Garbage Day newsletter, to discuss all things online, from the woes of politicized moderation, to a future without Twitter, to the many ethical & technological horrors presented by new AI technology.
Find Ryan’s great newsletter about the Internet here: www.garbageday.email/
buy our book: www.chapotraphouse.com/book
/ chapo-trap-house
Art/Animation by Emily Halaka @emilyhalaka
#chapotraphouse #chapo
*James Adomian

[@craigtrautmanjr9393]

I've missed James Adomian so much. His gorka and Jesse Ventura impressions are eternal. They should just have a video compilation of his appearances here.

[@c.m.bellman5721]

He and James Austin Johnson are the GOAT. The James's!

[@goodluck5642]

Yeah fr. This is comedy as medicine

[@BBQAndButter]

Oh, hell yes. I'd listen.

[@chetkayeable]

GORKA!

[@jordank5328]

If you love a good Jesse Ventura impression, the Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast may feature one of the best

[@mrpieceofwork]

lmfao it's hilarious when my brain keeps thinking thoughts

[@cleanremarks]

My pork skin has been specifically engineered to be hickory smoked and more delicious than any pork skin on earth.

[@colinwritesthings7445]

The boys are starting to sound a little old when they talk about technology. Which is fine by me, I'm 83.

[@crowboi4124]

james adomian is a national treasure

[@jb-kx3rk]

ai art is for people who wanna be matrix batteries

[@mrpieceofwork]

Maybe we DON'T need another addicting website...

[@Gum_Cuzzler]

Maybe we all need to go outside and roll around in the mud

[@JSTAR1991]

Elon's doing such a great job with Twitter bots that my follower count has increased 600% within the last week and a half, almost entirely by sexy models! Good job, sir!

[@jordank5328]

Damn Elon musk is doing lawn mower man for real, that's tight

[@asinglebraincell6584]

you haven't updated your tesla bleep bloop :3 *crashes you into a tree*

[@iluvmahname]

Might be the worst cold open I've ever heard from these fellas, it's not good folks

[@reallyidrathernot.134]

far out it's weird hearing people talk who actually cared about twitter.

[@emmy8526]

The Chapos left out the bondage teddy bears kids’ photo shoot part of the Balenciaga saga, so I’ll archive it here.

[@berdyderg900]

I really appreciate reality just manifesting my schizoposts directly into the daily news

[@aych33]

Catching up to this episode tonight after watching Elon going on a ban spree of any journalist covering Elonjet. Lol. Lmao.

[@crowboi4124]

29:57 Tinder with Twitterese Characteristics

[@Sneezes_LoL]

How come everyone just IS their name since like 2007? Chatterton talking about emails? Bankman-Fried fries your bank account? Madoff (made off?). I mean seriously can they just be a little creative?

[@Sneezes_LoL]

@@skiptoacceptancemdarlin what do you mean? The article was real.

[@capsuleboi]

You mean Sad Bankrun-Flees? Yeah, these things practically write themselves.

[@origamitraveler7425]

@@capsuleboi i would think "Bankrun-Fraud" is the more obvious sobriquet

[@hpalpha7323]

We should all go back to Web 1.0 where every individual had to have their own website if they ever wanted to post anything

[@justcommenting4981]

Return to tradition. Return to Cubism. Time is a cubic.

[@Washburn101]

@@skiptoacceptancemdarlin Time is a cube

[@BenjaminGlatt]

How could anyone accuse Carl "it depends on the child, doesn't it?" Benjamin of being a predator?

[@aguysomewhere8277]

@50:40 How terminally on-line does one have to be to spend *hours* trying to come up with a literal incantation to get an AI to produce the *exact* ass size you want in an anime drawing when 2 minutes on Photoshop would yield the same (or likely better...) results?

[@avialexander]

That would require learning how to use artistic tools like photoshop, which is "beneath" these tech fans' opinions of themselves. So instead they'll spend their time learning how to use a tool that will be broken the next month when a new text-to-image model comes out and none of their prompts work right anymore.

[@Duhya]

I don't want to learn how to art thats for the elites with access to things like youtube tutorials and a 50 dollar graphics tablet. No. I want to tell the computer to make me an art with big titties and I want you to thank me for it.

[@quadabyte8933]

Furaffinity banning ai art before this can get out of control proves furries will save us from the dystopian future we are heading towards.

[@howilearned2stopworrying508]

individuals can only be saved by looking to Christ

[@justcommenting4981]

@@howilearned2stopworrying508 I've only used Dall-e. Is Christ better?

[@genxerfool9797]

Musk is sounding a little Irish, disconcertingly.

[@raeroa7982]

A strange side effect of his pork skin

[@steelersguy74]

A mix between that and German.

[@brightorangepants]

I feel like a digital gardener

[@howilearned2stopworrying508]

posting about posting - I like the observation that modding is a boring job (for boring people) I legit pity people addicted to twitter, especially in this decade - my prescription is play WarioWare and read Heaven's Gate

[@martinezee4704]

Garland Nixon still banned. Same for Scott Ritter. Not for hate speech.

[@Hud23]

They just banned Jackson Hinkle yesterday

[@martinezee4704]

@@Hud23 He got reinstated but not Garlan

[@ThaTruFily]

TLA: Twitter's Liberation Army

[@wesshiflet2214]

will needs to learn about stochastic generation lol

[@berdyderg900]

Stochastic other stuff also

[@Fuwuzworsh]

Youve got to go bleep bloop to you know stop for the schoolbus.

[@YTwoKay]

Good points at 50:15 . AI has completely become a tool at this point. Entire fields exits like in "Her" where authors and artists "prompt" AI for private companies and customers. How is this much different than coding or even something like private tutoring of autistic children?

[@CippiCippiCippi]

virtual champagne

[@OstrichRidingCowboy]

16:25 MAPping™!

[@justcommenting4981]

I'm 90% sure that episode 6(I think) of Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix was completely written by an ai. It's the one with a talking rat. They don't name an actual writer I don't think.

[@Gum_Cuzzler]

Wasn’t it written by the lady who directed Twilight? Either way it was awful. It was like Lovecraft if done by Disney.

[@justcommenting4981]

@@Gum_Cuzzler I'm seeing it was written by Mika Watkins...and allegedly Del Toro. Has anyone actually seen Mika and confirmed they are actually a real living human?

[@Gum_Cuzzler]

@@justcommenting4981 Honestly, I doubt Del Toro had any hand in writing that. The guy is a massive HP Lovecraft fanboy. No way he’d adopt one of his stories and remove all the cosmic horror.

[@reallyidrathernot.134]

fuck it's weird hearing people talk who actually cared about twitter.

[@raeroa7982]

For all the handwringing have you guys seen anyone actually leave and stay off? I'm barely a casual user but haven't noticed anyone leave for good yet idk could be wrong.

[@romanmanner]

What do you get out of it?

[@John_Malka-tits]

I didn't know that Elon Musk was a North Irish boxer. Here I was thinking he was south African. Thanks chapo for revealing the truth- that Elon is really a Brad Pit from Snatch type guy.

[@TerrenceNowicki]

He's slowly morphing into Dieter from Sprockets!

[@reallyidrathernot.134]

I've been study8ing Ai ethics and Ai art in particular for the last couple years, and this guy has some fire points.

[@showbeaut]

nice

[@thepants1450]

Dear God clear your throat Ryan

[@xizor1d]

Nah this to real. 😂

[@xizor1d]

@@skiptoacceptancemdarlinmy bad. you right, you right. 🤭

[@alistercaddy1208]

29:55 an app we're not even thinking of as a Twitter competitor? I've got one word for you: *in Trump voice* Trowth Cential.

[@reallyidrathernot.134]

"garbage day" = something awful reference?

[@Hamun002]

its from a movie about a kid dressing up as Santa and murdering people, then the people that made the movie getting their movie banned from distribution because people protested, so they took the first movie, shot a bunch of new shit with the same actor, and made a second movie. And Garbage Day is in the "sequel"

[@TerrenceNowicki]

@Disposable Email Indeed. That's where SA got it from, though it is probable the Chapo crew and Broderick first learned about it that way. Kind of like how a lot of people saw The Simpsons reference to that crying Indian anti-litter PSA before seeing the actual PSA.

[@johncor9616]

Red Letter Media reference

[@comment_section4766]

"Art" shares the same root as "artificial" or "artifact." It's something, by definition, people create. BUT is art "made" by a creator or by an audience who appreciates it? At the end of the day, if AI creates an image that moves you to tears, and you want to hang it in your bathroom, it's "art" to you. Other people may or may not agree with your taste.

[@janosmarothy5409]

noting the narrowly/trivially true etymological roots of "art" tell us little about aesthetics, but let's set that aside.the whole fucking point being made is that getting bogged down in uninsightful and superficial discussions on what is or isn't art, or if it's good or bad art distracts from the more serious social, political and economic implications of creeping tech rentierism

[@gOaTcrackalac88]

hearing about all of this just makes me want to die. will silicon valley not rest until we are all enslaved by skynet?

[@MrKYT-gb8gs]

Horrifying, cthuluesq Garfield

[@justcommenting4981]

A Garfield comic in the style of unknowable cosmic horror and it's just Jon looking dead center towards you in the panel expressionless.

[@MrKYT-gb8gs]

@@justcommenting4981 sorry Jon

[@reallyidrathernot.134]

Broderick seems so knowledgeable. I guess the plagiarism was just a really weird time.

[@idklol4197]

could you grow a spine

[@NightmarishWaltz]

Thirst comment everybody

[@mrpieceofwork]

Thurd

[@alexjohnson9798]

Most soy guest of all time?

[@octogirl555]

The Musk bit isn't very funny and goes on way too long

[@willywonka7812]

On the other hand, no

[@Mark-jr6ld]

Ten minutes of my life wasted I have so many podcasts to listen to oh my fucking god and I can't post comments on other youtube videos until this one is over!

[@nathanmaidlow1327]

@@Mark-jr6ld 😂

[@Matt-ru5rw]

Nah, pretty spot on.

[@Matt-ru5rw]

@@Mark-jr6ld 🤣🤣👊

[@jayanti2371]

The worst takes i've ever heard from Chapo. Will's dismissal of AI-generated art was just old-man wishcasting. And Matt & Felix dismissing the Balenciaga story as a PR stunt (no shit, really?) without addressing the designers' creepy history is... weird. Especially from the podcast that introduced me to adrenochrome and Moloch.

[@centuryresearch8744]

More and more, what I notice is that the interpretation that they have of current events isn't meant to be an honest dissection of the topic at hand. It's more like an amalgamation of talking points, and an attempt is being made to lead their listeners by the nose to the correct rhetoric. Especially with the twitter stuff in this episode. "Well, this is what we always knew about twitter" flies directly in the face of anything that they would have said about the app before Elon took over, right? But now that there's concrete proof of how much suppression was going on, it's "Eh, well, this isn't news. We knew democrats run twitter," as opposed to before when it was "lol, these republicans are such hogs, saying that democrats run twitter. You aren't getting engagement because you're lame, unlike me, the cool 36 year old democratic socialist." It isn't meant to be a good faith take on the news. Its basically just propaganda. Sometimes the jokes are pretty good though. I like the mean-spirited stuff, where they really dig into neo-con articles and personalities.

[@Matt-ru5rw]

@@centuryresearch8744 You're am obvious simpleton if you read Bar Bar and not yet killed himself Taibbi's 2000 tweets and came up with all the suppression stuff. Please spend all your money on crypto and help out the autistic one, Elon.

[@centuryresearch8744]

@@Matt-ru5rw ESL? The fuck is Bar Bar? I honestly have no idea what you're getting at. Maybe this has to do with the screenshots that prove shadowbanning and suppression, keeping things off trending and targeting users on an individual basis even when they don't violate policy? I don't know, you're being really unclear and not stringing thoughts together very coherently. Drunk? Foreign? I don't give a fuck about a South African billionaire or any of these celebs, and I'm not a crypto guy, but please keep fighting the demons that exist exclusively in your mind while you tell me that I'm the one who is simple, please.

[@Matt-ru5rw]

@@centuryresearch8744 Because you are a simpleton, the second twitter dump was from the Toadie, Bari Weiss. Now you obviously can't read because you would have picked up on the fact that the info given out was hand selected by muskrat to feed a narrative. Also, if you made any attempt whatsoever to use your brain you would have seen where Taibbi said the actual Trump administration did the same thing in asking for tweets to be removed. Along with that, the nonsensical "proof" of a Dem pipeline was how much was given to Dems or Cons which tells absolutely nothing about how much access was available. I hope I have cleared up your confusion. You can go back to your moronic outrage now.

[@TerrenceNowicki]

Adrenochrome isn't real. It was a joke made up by Hunter Thompson and his pals.

[@heidimelcarek3677]

I love how you re-write history. Parler was TAKEN down. It didn't fail.

[@tgreaux5027]

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaha i literally dont know a single person who signed up for parler, talk about rewriting history. Parler didn't fail? LOL How were their youth demographics? If and its a HUGE IF they didn't fail, they were going to as soon as the morons who used it died off.

[@wesshiflet2214]

lmao i’d call that a failure

[@heidimelcarek3677]

@@wesshiflet2214 - That's because it aligns w ur politics. If the shoe were on the other foot, u'd be the one complaining. Because ur a hack. Just like all the rest of Chapo fans, it seems, these days.

[@wesshiflet2214]

@@heidimelcarek3677 I’d be complaining, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t still be a failure. If something can’t overcome the challenges facing it then it fails

[@heidimelcarek3677]

@@tgreaux5027 - Gee, then why didn't they allow it in the app stores? See, if they'd let the market decide, we'd know that, wouldn't we? But since they had to put their thumb on the scale, y'know - like how they do w global finance n such, we'll never get to see what would actually have happened. Coz people like you know - you're not as popular as you think you are.

[@markrudolph3660]

Why is he so convinced that AI art generation isn't really art generation. "It only samples from things it's already seen." Yeah, that's how all art is made. You learn what things look like and then you reproduce them. The AI isn't literally copy pasting things it's already seen, it's learned to understand what are the necessary features for something to be recognized and replicates them. Exactly what a human artist does. "A five year old can make a picture of Garfield but an AI can't." The point was that the AI has never seen a picture of Garfield. A five year old who doesn't know what Garfield is also can not draw Garfield. Chapo's skepticism of tech companies has turned into outright luddism.

[@horny4violence]

If you can't use it for tax evasion, is it really art?

[@Black_pearl_adrift]

Quick… everyone hide the fantasy and speculative art form Mark Rudolph No not all art is based off things you’ve seen. You can… use your imagination surprisingly

[@TerrenceNowicki]

The difference is AI is not capable of developing anything new and meaningful from its "inspirations." It will not be capable of doing so until it's capable of thought. As is, it is quite literally mindless.

[@markrudolph3660]

@@Black_pearl_adrift There's a difference between creating art about something that doesn't exist and making art without any visual inspiration. Like, dragons don't exist, but reptiles do. When an artist wants to draw a dragon they will need to learn what features lead people to recognize something as a reptile. Most artists do this by studying photos or other people's art. Since there isn't really any separation between the art itself and what people recognize in it, this is always part of the process. but this and other responses are getting away from the point of my original comment, which is to say art made by the machine is as novel as art made by a person. I'm not trying to say it's as creative or artistic. I don't think that's true. Art's probably not even a good word to use; it should just be called image generation.

[@centuryresearch8744]

The anti-AI stuff is such twitter-brained nonsense. I wouldn't buy a text prompt that someone spent their time tweaking because I enjoy using the tech myself, but people buy blender assets all the time if they want to make graphics or a simple 3D animation without having a dedicated pro putting things together, and that market is going to evolve in a similar way here. Is photoshop art? What would artists have said when photoshop just emerged? The good artists who were savvy probably found a way to integrate it into their skillset. Is photobashing art? The people bitching about AI generated images probably don't know what photobashing even is, or maybe they're embarrassed by it, lol. Will artists and graphic designers suffer because of AI? Well, most magazines don't have a team of draftsmen working around the clock to do their layouts... They have a couple guys who know how to use Adobe tools like Indesign, illustrator, and photoshop. The market is always evolving, and that's why ads don't look like they did in the 50's and 60's anymore.

[@John_Malka-tits]

It's okay, John Henry. I'm sure someone out there still thinks you're valuable.

[@centuryresearch8744]

@@John_Malka-tits Lol, good reference. The ironic thing is, if these artist want to get ahead of the AI, and probably never worry about it making them obsolete, all they have to do is start working on an actual canvas, with real paint. Imagine that?

[@John_Malka-tits]

@@centuryresearch8744 as someone who was an artist before the Era of enlightened technology. In the dark days of phones with no caller ID and no answering machine, as it is now- The value of a commodity as impractical as art, is mostly due to its "desireability". Right now in the early days of AI, in certain parts of the market it WILL drive down the value of the "work" of making art. But as AI art gets more and more ubiquitous, the subtle flaws of Van Gogh and gaugin will again sense to be imperfections but will be true reflections of true humanity in contract to the unfeeling unblinking eye. If you're a working artist today, understand that we are living through something like the invention of the camera. Cameras didn't do away with painting and sculpture- they did change how we look at things and the desirability of art- But Art especially is not like growing grain or working in a factory. A barely corn from a poor farm can make the same beer and get the man just as drunk as the barely corn of the rich farm- Art is not a corn- a true van gogh is worth millions- a faithful copy of van gogh is worth the materials it's printed on and the overhead of selling that picture. I honestly wish people would go ahead and do the of labor and saturate the art market with robo art It will be the cgi to the practical effects of the human hand. Stay true, starchild

[@centuryresearch8744]

@@John_Malka-tits Lot of assumptions... I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I think that AI is going to push us into a golden age of content generated by average people who have skill sets that don't include drawing or painting. I still want to see what those people have to say, and this is another tool that will let them say it. Even if we assume that AI is going to be analogous to the invention of photography... I think that might be overstating the case, but none the less, the dawn of printing, photography and then film made it easier for artists to flourish, and for their work to reach a wider audience. Picasso became a celebrity in a way that other artists weren't able to be in the time before he was alive. Right now is a great time to be a digital artist. People who already have skills with photoshop and illustrator have a huge leg up in using stable diffusion (will definitely make it a lot easier to fix those fucked up hands and crossed eyes.) It's also a boon for animation. Imagine millions of people potentially having an easy to use tool to create animations that would have taken a huge team before this tech was available. Being against this new technology is short-sighted, in my humble opinion, but time will tell.

[@Black_pearl_adrift]

Such is the march of modernity

[@user-md9ok2wv6r]

December 12Th I turned 73 Years Old. Elom Spissturd is Because Elon MusK.K.K.

[@unreasonablyagreeable1081]

imagine saying the Ye, Fuentes, and Alex Jones interview was the funniest thing you seen this year then posting this after Gavin McGinnis interviews Ye and has Hasan copywrite strike for watching the live feed.

[@DoItLikeDat450Splat]

matts tweet continues to be true

[@steelersguy74]

The onslaught of stupidity and hilarity never ceases.

[@kingofsting19]

The most annoying people in the AI art debate are, to me, the Twitter artists with an average of 2.5 commission links in their bio who act like their jobs getting automated is more uniquely evil and dystopian than anyone else's. When McDonald's replaces real, flesh-and-blood human cashiers who have real thoughts, feelings, smiles, etc. with a touchscreen kiosk, that's just automation. But apparently, any and all hand drawn art is some sort of transcendent, important, sacrosanct thing that AI art removes the "soul" of. I've seen people regurgitate the old 2004 "You Wouldn't Download a Car" ad campaign to tell people why they don't deserve art if they can't afford it. "You don't understand, you have to support my specific line of work, because I've spent my entire life laboring under the delusion that it was more important than any other skill, and couldn't have ever possibly been automated, and now that I see that capitalism subsumes all, I'm going to cry and beg until the Internet collectively decides that my job can be an exception to this reality."

[@MrAlziepen]

Sure it’s annoying if you don’t like someone's art who has that kind of reaction, but if it's an artist who you like and respect and they are worried about the future job space for younger artists then maybe the concern trolling is more warranted. But maybe that dynamic doesn't exist because the financially successful artist doesn't need to worry about job security as much because they’ve been embedded in the industry for a long time and are now an art director. I know lots of artists who try to experiment with the image generators to stay relevant in their skills and social media because it's hard to post every day, plus if you have a job with lots of work under NDA it makes it easier to poop out an image. But you’re argument I think brings up an interesting point in that yes, maybe the digital art market would become esoteric like coal miners and we’ll all need to learn to code or something to remain productive under capitalism, but it makes me wonder if the most made fun of physical arts and crafts like basket weaving be the last of the arts to be automated. Or will all art become free and will value only be extracted from viewership like twitch streaming and tutorials who knows.

[@kingofsting19]

@@MrAlziepen I sympathize with all of them on some level, the same way I sympathize with all workers under capitalism in all industries on some level, whether I know them or not. With the concern trolling, on some level, it's like watching a grown adult having a 5 year old's tantrum because they just found out Santa Claus isn't real. Only in this case, Santa Claus is the myth that capitalism considers anyone irreplaceable. I spent years learning tax law and procedures and then proceeded to watch as TurboTax subsumed my ability to turn that knowledge into an independent job, (to vastly less sympathy from my fellow leftists than I'm seeing for these people, I will add) and I've never demanded people not use TurboTax just for my own personal sake. And all the while I was learning to do that, and after as well, also working as a cashier in grocery stores, actively watching the push toward more self-checkout stations in real time. Presumably, most of these same artists haven't stopped eating food for the sake of these jobs. Certainly, they wouldn't ever describe the acts of me or my coworkers scanning items, bagging them, even making small talk and smiling at people, as having some sort of transcendent, creative "soul" behind them, which a machine could never hope to replicate. It's incredibly patronizing.

[@MrAlziepen]

​@@kingofsting19 I think your reaction to that online reaction is warranted for sure, and I definitely sympathize with you and any working person. It's difficult to get a sense of what people are going through online which doesn't help and so it's hard to show solidarity to everyone else this has already happened to when someone's bubble bursts, but I'd talk to any friends you have who do art just as I'd ask any of my art friends to talk to their friends about their jobs because yeah, it is patronizing to insinuate that people who don’t do art as a career aren’t creative. I went to art school but know people way more creative than me who never went. Like what was mentioned in the ep that convo about art having a soul or not isn’t really important, it’s solidarity among workers, so that we can all eventually get to a place where we can all do what we want career wise.

[@TwentyNineJP]

Agree 100%. It's awful that people's livelihoods are (at least felt to be) at risk, but this isn't unique and the AI generators themselves aren't the problem but rather a catalyst.

[@DeadBoneJones]

i feel like you've invented a person to get mad at here. all the full-time artists i know are left leaning and dont' at all think of themselves as more important than retail/food service workers

[@johnthomson3070]

Worst episode in a long time.