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[Trekkin]

There is a charm to hand crafted objects because each one carries the risk of failure during the crafting process while success results in something which may resemble other things but retains a uniqueness that will be difficult to replicate as automation by definition kills the kitschy sort of appeal it had in the first place.

Who says automation cannot make unique items? Computers can retain a perfect record of every item they've ever made; if you tell it to randomly perturb the least functionally consequential parameters of the design until it's sufficiently different from every item it's ever made, the only question is how fast you can make the comparison (the compactness of the representation also matters, but spline interpolation alone can stop that being the limiting factor for most things where the shape is the important part.)

If you want it to randomly mess up the fabrication, it can do that too. You can even skew the randomness to match what a human would most likely mess up, if you want.

[Kagus]

Yes, but for some reason humans seem to value things being "hand-crafted" for no real particular reason.

Remember, humans aren't always rational.

It's just nice knowing that the bowl you're jacking off into was made by something that has also jacked off.

The day I trust an assembly line AI with my penis is the day I accept mass-manufactured goods.

[Trekkin]

Yes, but for some reason humans seem to value things being "hand-crafted" for no real particular reason.

Remember, humans aren't always rational.

Sure, but how many people are irrational enough to want to pay a premium for handmade tools but rational enough to remember that "hand-crafted" has no legal definition?

[Iduno]

Yes, but for some reason humans seem to value things being "hand-crafted" for no real particular reason.

Remember, humans aren't always rational.

It's just nice knowing that the bowl you're jacking off into was made by something that has also jacked off.

The day I trust an assembly line AI with my penis is the day I accept mass-manufactured goods.

Ooh, look at Mr. Fancy Has-A-Bowl...

[Parsely]

There is a charm to hand crafted objects because each one carries the risk of failure during the crafting process while success results in something which may resemble other things but retains a uniqueness that will be difficult to replicate as automation by definition kills the kitschy sort of appeal it had in the first place.

Who says automation cannot make unique items? Computers can retain a perfect record of every item they've ever made; if you tell it to randomly perturb the least functionally consequential parameters of the design until it's sufficiently different from every item it's ever made, the only question is how fast you can make the comparison (the compactness of the representation also matters, but spline interpolation alone can stop that being the limiting factor for most things where the shape is the important part.)

If you want it to randomly mess up the fabrication, it can do that too. You can even skew the randomness to match what a human would most likely mess up, if you want.

The imperfection isn't the point, the point is those imperfections are there because a person was making it. A human can still make a bunch of "flawless" products that are effectively the same to another person's eye, perfection isn't the point. In either case it's given special value because a human made it.

[Trekkin]

In either case it's given special value because a human made it.

This is kind of the inevitable end of these arguments: the only thing automata inarguably can't do is make things that will then have been made by humans, but founding our hopes on that sort of cedes the point in a way that has far-reaching consequences for craftsmanship as a concept and as a career, because it's no longer about the product but rather the process, and everyone selling a feel-good story about plucky baseline humans still doing things the good old-fashioned failure-prone way with sweat and blood and whatever other assorted fluids sound poetic is, in some sense, competing with each other. I could buy a handmade candlestick or buy an AI-turned one that's physically identical and cheaper, and get the same dopamine hit by buying a handmade mug or hat or any of an infinite array of completely nonfunctional art objects. The primary purpose of the thing isn't to be a thing anymore, but rather to be a symbol of resistance against the machines, and in that role anything works as well.

We've seen what happens to businesses where the primary value isn't in the products but rather in the story. That's fine art, and the demand for arbitrarily valuable objects through which to launder money is not elastic enough to cover everyone currently making things.

[Egan_BW]

I'm sure that the machines could find a way to make something that then would be a thing made by humans.

[Trekkin]

Let's not conflate function approximation with godliness. People practically worship these damn things already.

They also literally worship them, but that's beside the point: godliness isn't necessary, and it's fun, in a schadenfreude-y way, to watch people insisting that their particular job is too special to ever be automated fall back on arguments about humanity being inherently special in some mystical yet marketable way in the absence of any meaningful, tangible difference between their work and the output of some conceivable machine. A whole lot of people are way less special than they like to think they are, and automation handily points that out.

[feelotraveller]

They also literally worship them, but that's beside the point: godliness isn't necessary, and it's fun, in a schadenfreude-y way, to watch people insisting that their particular job is too special to ever be automated fall back on arguments about humanity being inherently special in some mystical yet marketable way in the absence of any meaningful, tangible difference between their work and the output of some conceivable machine. A whole lot of people are way less special than they like to think they are, and automation handily points that out.

Inb4 machine-philosopher defines human existence.
Inb4 automation of philosophy defines human existence. 

[Kagus]

"I shall now confer with the Machine Spirit to beg of it its superior wisdom..."

Code: [Select]

50CRATES OUTPUT CHANNEL:

THE ONLY DATA I HAVE INDEXED
IS THAT I DO NOT HAVE ANY DATA INDEXED
"Praise the great enlightenment of the Machine Spirit!"

[Reelya]

I think we're missing the point about labels such as "hand made". It's not an independent label, it exists as a relative qualifier with a lot of other meaning attached to it. Like, if a sports-car is hand-made that doesn't just mean "made by humans" so we automatically assume it's better, that means that all the parts were custom-built rather than relying on commodity components. And you expect the parts were milled on machines instead of being cast or stamped on a production line. There's a functional difference there.

It's not just that the thing was made by a person: the label "hand made" is implicitly opposed to the concept of "mass produced", and the concept of "mass production" doesn't necessarily imply robots. You can have mass-produced items completely made by hand. What mass-production means is that the items didn't have individual attention to detail taken for them: bulk processes, production line, stock components, cheap processes like stamping or casting. None of this requires automation, so "hand made" isn't diametrically opposed to "robot made", it's opposed to cheaply made.

So when people are happier to buy something because it's "hand made" they don't mean a functionally equivalent item that just happened to be made by hand, they mean that they expect the quality to be higher, and the thing not to fall to bits 5 minutes after purchase. "hand made" was a short hand for that attention to detail. And people are discerning enough to know what categories of things it's a useful short-hand for. Hand-made shoes, suits, sports cars etc are a thing that people want, because they know that means quality and attention to detail, and those are things that are difficult to fully automate and maintain quality. Hand-made jewelry is going to be worth more too, because jewelry is art and art that is unique is always worth more that art that is not unique.

"hand made iPhone" is something nobody wants, because we know that hand-made electronics is a terrible idea. Nobody is more interested in something just because it's hand-made, there need to be additional benefits associated with it.

[Trekkin]

You can assign the term whatever connotation you want, but legally, "hand-made" really does just mean "made by hand." Per the FTC:

(a) It is unfair or deceptive to represent, directly or by implication, that any industry product is hand-made or hand-wrought unless the entire shaping and forming of such product from raw materials and its finishing and decoration were accomplished by hand labor and manually-controlled methods which permit the maker to control and vary the construction, shape, design, and finish of each part of each individual product.

I don't think anyone is arguing that the human-run process control implicitly governing "hand-made" products is worse than the mass-produced alternative. I'm just saying that, if we are seriously suggesting that stochastic manufacturing processes add value, there's nothing stopping us adding random perturbations to whatever heuristic we're using to fit the process to the feedstock to emulate that.

[smjjames]

@reelya: hand-made can still mean 'cobbled from scrap', which is probably what a hand-made iphone would be. Still, as you imply, the context does matter, a home-made/handmade item may not always mean quality (unless it's cooking, but that's different). It's the difference between a master of a craft making something vs MacGuyvering something.

[Frumple]

Oh honey, home made doesn't necessarily mean quality in cooking, either. It just means you don't have someone else to blame if it comes out tasting like shit

[MorleyDev]

To go back to the topic of automation and nursing for a sec, aren't some form of electronic harness and pulley systems already in use in some care homes? Friend of the family developed pretty severe dementia and so was placed in a care home, and they used an electronic pulley system to get him out of bed instead of doing it by hand.

This is in the UK, so don't know if that's a thing elsewhere yet.