Yes, as it stands now, all frontier models are still downright corny. But a lot of elements of good storytelling are there: the story Opus generated used symmetry and circular storytelling, created tension and release, used metaphor appropriately and effectively... all of those things are there. But the actual execution was just corny.

But you should read the stuff I wrote when I was young. Downright terrible on all accounts. I think better training will eventually squeeze out the corniness and in our lifetimes, a language model will produce a piece that is fundamentally on par with a celebrated author.

Obviously, this means that patrons must engage in internal and external dialogue about the purpose of consuming art, and whether the purpose is connecting with other humans, or more generally, other forms of intelligence. I think it's great that we're having these conversations with others and ourselves, because ultimately it just leads to more meaningful art. We will see artist movements on both sides of the generative camps produce thought-provoking pieces which tackle the very concept of art itself.

In my case, when I see a piece of generative art or literature which impresses me, my internal experience is that I feel I am witnessing something produced by the collective experience of the human race. Language models only exist because of thousands of years of human effort to reach this point and produce the necessary quality and quantity of works required to train these models.

I also have been working with generative algorithms since grade school so I have a certain appreciation for the generative process itself, and the mathematical ideas behind modern generative models. This enhances my appreciation of the output.

Obviously, I get different feelings when encountering AI slop where in places where I used to encounter people. It's not all good. But it's not all bad, either, and we have to come to terms with the near future.