Figure | pexels
Wen | Zhang Weifei
Source|Possibility of growth
"AI painting is on fire, is it necessary for my children to learn to draw?"
Recently, the discussion about AI painting in the circle of parents has been very lively.
In this era, whether it is AI painting or chatGPT, how to get along with new technology has become an important issue. What are the core competencies of children in the future? What kind of children will not be eliminated in the era of AI? This is a topic that every parent is concerned about.
"The Possibility of Growth" talked to Yang Shuai, the founder of the baby project, who mentioned that in the future, "imagination" will become the core competitiveness of this generation of children. Einstein once said: imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, and imagination summarizes everything in the world, drives progress, and is the source of the evolution of knowledge.
"In art, children with comprehensive literacy such as imagination, inspiration, artistic talent, emotional impulse and primitive creation are not easily eliminated by AI." Yang Shuai said.
In the era of artificial intelligence, how should children who learn to draw embrace AI?
(The following is based on Yang Shuai's dialogue)
#1
Will AI replace the role of humans in the field of painting?
At present, AI can not completely restore a human creation of the original painting in a short period of time, I give an example, that day experimented, I have a painting, the painting is a dialogue between two me, the real world me and the dream me dialogue, from our understanding, the dream I am the soul, which means "death". I trained the AI for about three days, trying to restore the artistic conception of the painting, entering key words, and the final painting that came out was me talking to a skeleton.
This is the part where machines cannot replace people, AI retrieves the keywords of "death" and "soul" through information, and automatically matches "skeletons", which is difficult to understand the oriental artistic conception. Of course, if you continue to invest time to train AI models, not three days, but three months or even longer, AI can do it, but the time cost invested is not worth it.
The subjective initiative of painting art is very strong, we can input instructions to the AI, asking him to draw different genres, different styles of painting, but this is still based on "human ideas", whether it is the past genre being imitated, or the current thinking of the creator, are human ideas, at present, it is difficult for machines to produce primitive impulses. For example, Raphael's "Academy of Athens", the whole painting depicts 57 scholars and celebrities, representatives of different philosophical schools discussing equally and elegantly in classical architecture, walking, talking, arguing, calculating, pondering, and with different postures. If we enter enough keywords, each person's school, biography, every detailed action, and detail enough, I believe that AI can be replicated. But the idea it realizes is still Raphael's idea.
Why paint such a gathering of 57 scholars? This was Raphael's original idea. Of course, there are also people who believe that with enough time and training to the extreme, machines can also generate primitive impulsive thoughts, but this is not the problem we are talking about now.
The current AI technology is a relatively replicable technology, and it is still lacking in creativity for the time being. In the future, it may be more creative, but for now, its creativity and imagination cannot replace humans.
Therefore, it is foreseeable that in the era of AI, jobs with low technology content, low creativity and high reproducibility will be replaced. Creativity, imagination, and work involving emotional and spiritual talents, such as art, are not easily replaced.
#2
Can children draw with AI? What do I need to pay attention to?
We encourage children to draw using AI technology.
Until AI is truly emotional, it is essentially a technology, a means to realize human ideas. People's real emotions, such as Raphael's "Academy of Athens", Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", Monet's "Water Lilies", the uniqueness of these people's bones, AI will not replace in a short period of time. Al can generate paintings similar to these masters, but not with the qualities of the masters themselves. Therefore, while maintaining creativity and imagination, children can give full play to the advantages of AI to improve their drawing level. Don't go against the times, think with the times.
Now learning to draw, not only focus on the "technique" itself, such as children who learn to sketch, know the light and dark junction, reflection, highlights, projection, light and dark gray and other knowledge points, which is the basis of sketching painting, before, every child who learned to sketch repeatedly practiced these techniques, such as line exercises, to express the above knowledge points. However, in the era of AI painting, these can be achieved or even replaced by AI, and if parents still force their children to practice line arrangement day and night, and spend time on it, it is not worth it.
In the era of artificial intelligence, parents pay more attention to the cultivation of "imagination", and the original impulsive emotional thoughts of people, such as "ideas" and "emotions" and "spirituality", are not easy to be replaced by AI.
The advantage of using AI painting is that it can stimulate creativity, but the disadvantage is that children may further deteriorate in technique and basic skills. It is important to pay attention to the solidity of basic skills, the ability to master the professional knowledge system, and the understanding of art history, after all, people who do not understand painting at all cannot give clear instructions to AI.
AI technology can help children improve their imagination, and the use of functions such as poor information, permutation and combination, collection and integration can help improve imagination. The application of AI at the technical level is worth learning from children, such as illustration, design, art, modeling and other art-related professions, as well as PS, 3D, CAD, Maya, electronic board painting and other software, can use AI to improve efficiency; In addition to improving efficiency, such as the "effect presentation" level, it is also worth learning.
Regarding "effect presentation", I will give you an example, for example, when we ask children to draw a dragon, the teacher must first introduce to the children that the dragon is the totem of the Chinese nation, which is not a specific animal, but a kind of auspicious rui that gathers a variety of animal appearance characteristics. Children may draw mostly snake bodies, horse heads, their cognition is limited, do not know what animals the dragon is composed of, have not seen so many animals, let alone well integrate these animals into a beautiful painting, even the teacher may not be able to do it, which requires a very rich knowledge reserve. Everyone draws dragons, most of them draw a general meaning. But in the process of our experimentation, AI can really draw a particularly powerful dragon.
AI will collect dragon information according to instructions, such as 20 kinds, it can really reflect 20 kinds of animals in the painting, such a picture effect, is very shocking, which is difficult for people to do.
Much like we can see the "positive rate" of Egyptian sculptures, the main display is "full", collected by AI, and displayed as much as possible. With the continuous development of AI technology, it will soon be able to express more beauty and others in addition to "full", like later Greco-Roman sculptures. The current stage of AI art is like Egyptian sculpture, showing you everything first, as for beauty, that's what needs to be done later, but it can provide you with inspiration.
In addition to the application of art, there is much more that AI technology can do. For example, the design drawings of housing decoration, you want the layout, orientation, favorite decoration style of the house, such as Nordic minimalism, Chinese classical style, tell it the color tone, furniture style, and finally generate a decoration rendering, take this drawing to let the master decorate, you can directly save a design fee.
#3
A child's core competency is imagination
For parents who still want to train their children to take the road of art, but are more confused about their children's future, Yang Shuai also gave advice: it is not necessary to take the route of artists and painters, the audience is too narrow, and people with certain talents are needed to come out. Parents can strengthen the cultivation of children's artistic literacy, aesthetics, temperament and other comprehensive abilities, art is the underlying logic, be a person who understands beauty, than being a professional painter is more grounded.
The painter Chen Danqing once said: "In the future, the profession of painting will become more and more niche, and the painting on the shelf may also disappear." Just like we use candles now, just to cultivate emotions, not for lighting. Before the invention of oil painting, people painted on the walls of caves, and the carrier of painting itself was constantly iteratively optimized, and the changes of these tools were inevitable.
But the only thing that cannot be replaced is the inspiration and impulse to paint, to express personal emotions and understanding of the world through the form of art, which is the most important education at the moment.
Don't force the child in painting technology, entangled in the child's painting realistic is not very unnecessary, painting technology is artificial intelligence can be replaced, the real important thing is to cultivate him in feelings, especially pay attention to the cultivation of imagination, creativity and aesthetic appreciation.
If parents take their children to the Louvre to watch the Mona Lisa, guiding their children to have the ability to appreciate famous paintings is far more useful than letting him sit in front of the painting and copy a painting with a similar degree to fake the real thing. The ability to discern beauty is also difficult for machines to replace.
The advice to parents is to cultivate children's "eyes are high and hands are low", and improving children's vision is far more important than improving the ability of hands. In today's developed science and technology, if our "hands" are not high enough, but we have rich ideas, we can help us realize ideas through technical means, such as AI painting. But if the child's vision is not high, he does not have the primitive impulse to express, he cannot give instructions to the AI, and without inspiration and creativity, the AI cannot help you.
Take your children to see art exhibitions, sketch, and feel real architecture. For example, when I took my children to paint at the Temple of Heaven before, the children would ask me, what does the pillar of the Temple of Heaven represent? I will tell them that the four pillars in the middle represent spring, summer, autumn and winter, the twelve gold pillars in the middle represent the twelve months, and the outer perimeter symbolizes the twelve hours. The sum of the middle and outer periphery symbolizes the twenty-four solar terms. After they learned about the history behind the Temple of Heaven, the paintings were more emotional and had their own thoughts.
If they sit in the classroom and draw in front of a picture, the children will not ask such questions, they will not feel the magnificence of the Temple of Heaven at all, and they will not be curious about the pillars of the Temple of Heaven. Therefore, taking children out to see art exhibitions, see the customs and architectural structures of various places, and enhance their vision is much more meaningful than copying a realistic painting.
To sum up, real feelings and rich knowledge reserves, higher vision are more likely to stimulate children's original creative impulse, "imagination" will become the core competitiveness of this generation of children, children with emotional impulses and original creation are not easy to be eliminated by AI. Whether artificial intelligence will replace humans is a consideration for scientists and sociologists, will AI really have emotions in the future? We are all afraid and confused, but what can we do? From the perspective of art and beauty, we can embrace everything new and encourage children to use tools to improve efficiency and broaden their horizons.