I don’t get this. AI bros talk about how “in the near future” no one will “need” to be a writer, a filmmaker or a musician anymore, as you’ll be able to generate your own media with your own parameters and preferences on the fly. This, to me, feels like such an insane opinion. How can someone not value the ingenuity and creativity behind a work of art? Do these people not see or feel the human behind it all? And are these really opinions that you’ve encountered outside of the internet?
One note I never hear sung is AI’s ability to jump-start creative works. EDIT: Proof at the end!
For example, I wrote a horror short that was stuck in my head. What if I had used AI to write it for me? I certainly would not have used the output verbatim, not even close, but it might have presented me some twists, vocabulary, structure, etc., that I had not thought of.
Same goes for code. I had an idea to automate Google Calendar entries with certain events at work. Couldn’t quite get it right, had ChatGPT write it. Did it work? Of course not, but I found the pieces I needed to put it together.
Maybe you just need the right words. “explain to my wife what depression is like” That worked well!
I’m extremely creative, but not in the typical artistic ways. What I’m good at is taking junk and upcycling it into useful end products. I could input garbage items I found, see what an image generator or chat does with it. Well, let me put my money where my mouth is.
(Pulled this idea out my butt just now, no planning, testing prompts, totally ad lib, input and output quoted as-is.)
Towed a large, sealed, flat, thick, plastic container out of the river last month. (Fuck me, about sank the canoe untangling it from the dead fall!) ChatGPT: “what can I make with a large, plastic gas tank?”
- Water Storage Tank
Repurpose the gas tank to store water, especially for outdoor activities like camping, gardening, or as an emergency backup. You can install a spigot at the bottom to make it easy to dispense water.
LOL, that was the idea! Going to hang it in a tree at camp, pump creek water into it with tiny chlorine tabs, make another shower. Or maybe use it for the bathroom I need to make? Hmmm…
- Compost Bin
With some modifications like drilling holes for ventilation, a plastic gas tank can be transformed into a compost bin. The tank’s large size provides ample room for organic waste.
Great idea, but I’ve got all the space for compost I need. Although… Put it on a frame so it can be spun?
- Outdoor Planter
If the gas tank has a sturdy base, it can be converted into a large planter. Cut the tank to create drainage holes, fill it with soil, and plant flowers, vegetables, or herbs.
Holy shit! I’ve been plotting on making floating, yoga-pad mats so I can grow in the creek without animals screwing it up. I have circular saw blades, can fit pots I already have or scrounge for free. I can make my own soil from local organic muck and sand. Let’s see, play around with the buoyancy. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow. Hot DAMN am I stoked!
tl;dr: AI will add to our creative endeavors, not replace them.
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Everything about this just feels really depressing. I’m guessing many people in the world are similar about only caring about consumption. As long as they deem it “good”, they don’t care how/when/where and by whom it was produced by.
Eh, I make my own music and somewhat play guitar, I don’t even use samples because it feels personally a bit like cheating myself out of the most challenging and interesting part, though ofc plenty way more talented and successful musicians sample all the way, so it’s just a personal stance.
I’d say actually it’s that experience, just making art as self-expression that has thoroughly inoculated me against artbro talking points.
I’m not against creative industries, nor am I pro corpos, but AI is just a tool and now that anybody can make images, the drawing people seethe, sorry not sorry, I’d rather make creativity more accessible than please egos of a select few rich kid narcissists.
Everyone already can be creative and make images you moron
Neither is true.
Elaborate
The vast majority of people don’t have a creative bone in their body. Most people are some variation of stupid. Intelligence and creativity usually go hand in hand.
Perhaps you disagree? Consider, just being here, in this space, having this conversation, puts you well above most people in intelligence. And your friends and coworkers likely reflect that intelligence. Still don’t believe me? Sign into Facebook with a new account, look around. And those are the people who can and do use technology.
I’m barely above average, 119 IQ, but I’ve got down in the trenches, at work and in interpersonal relationships. Yeah. Most people are dumber than me, and that’s scary. Odds are, you’re smarter than me.
And no, even among the smarter set, most people can’t make an image without a website to do it for them. I worked at a shop that was part graphic design. It’s appalling how clueless people are at creating the simplest thing. And I am no artist.
I see creativity as an inherently human trait. I’ve known plenty of people who are smart and have very low creativity, and people who aren’t that bright who come up with very creative ideas. And people who are both and neither.
Making images and arts are only part of that creativity, there’s more to it than that.
Why don’t they then? And why do they now that AI is around?
Almost as if there’s a barrier to entry there for most people that’s been removed.
People do make art and be creative still so I don’t know why you’re asking why they don’t.
And people still do it because making art is a thing humans do and like to do. People still sew even though they can just buy clothing.
Acting like there’s a barrier for entry to make art is a flat out delusion. Humans were making art on caves with chalk and dirt they found. You can make art with a stick. Acting like artists are rich elitists is the most ignorant and incorrect thing I’ve ever read on the Internet.
You do realise a barrier to entry doesn’t mean that something is literally impossible for everyone, but that it’s an obstacle for some?
It’s disingenuous comparing art someone would want to look at produced today to literal caveman drawings.
And yes artists are absolutely rich elites, the often very literal top 10%, feel free to look at my other comments ITT for why I’ve found this to be the case.
Dude artists are some of the most broke people out there, to the point where the starving artist is a trope, what are you smoking?
I only
smokeconsume nicotine, water and food, cheers. I’ve heard of the trope but have never seen a contemporary example IRL or even not IRL if I think about it.See my response to a similar question here: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/15822412
I understand it’s “common knowledge” but I’ve been questioning it for a while.
I’m happy to be proven wrong if you’d be willing, but so far I’ve not been and as such I’m not sure this trope has any resemblance to reality in the modern day.
I honestly find it fascinating that you view artists as the “rich kid narcissists” in comparison to AI proponents as more of an everyman. My personal experience is those the most engaged in AI stuff are college educated, often in STEM fields, silicon valley with money types, whereas the generally the working artists I know come from middle income or poor backgrounds. I don’t say this trying to attack you, or invalidate your experience, I’m genuinely curious. Would you be willing to elaborate on why you view them this way?
My experience is simply the polar opposite of yours.
Most artists I’ve known are extremely upper class, at the very least they come from very privileged backgrounds, and usually had the safety net required to take gap years for unpaid apprenticeships or to start bands, have capital to invest and can afford to lose it, can live with parents and rely on them financially waiting for publishing deals or comissions money or adrev etc etc.
Come to think of it IRL I actually have never heard of a “working class” artist, other than in the strict Marxist sense in that they’re not an owner class.
Even if they work a low paying or shitty job part-time they almost always have very high QoL due to those privileged backgrounds. One guy who went into the arts I know has a day job that paid half mine out of the gate, but he had way more disposable cash because his parents paid his rent and bills.
A friend of mine who’s in theatre just bailed out after school, took a gap year, did an unpaid apprenticeship and later got a day job as a theatre tech, now swimming in cash from being a manager and her published plays, she’s the second richest person I know.
I’m not saying that arts are just a passtime of the rich mind you, (though I do think the rabidly anti-ai types have a “fuck you got mine” streak) I think it’s survivorship bias ultimately, those who can be full-time or even decently part-time professional artists in some capacity are the ones who have privilege.
Meanwhile 99.9% of “Techbros” aka people in CompSci at uni were the hustler-grindset type working folks trying to escape poverty or otherwise move up the ladder, either real career chasers who are all about networking or grifters/scammers/shady characters you’d see betting on horses and hanging out in money laundering candy/barbershops.
They were in it for the money alone because they heard the money is good and that’s because they def needed the money.
Most people had at least 1 job just to afford rent, many had 2 (uni is pretty much free here in the UK).
The only rich people were drug dealers in blacked out BMWs and Chinese immigrants with Rolexes and extremely strong spice vapes and no knowledge of English.
The remaining 0.1% were genuinely gifted kids who pursued PhDs or less talented nerds (me) and they were all usually not super well off locals or they were immigrants from shithole countries of families who could afford to send their kids overseas and not much else, where they prolly didn’t need to work semester time but they couldn’t fuck around either (also me).
Idk about Silicon Valley, I’m not American nor have been, from what I’ve seen people who talk about the “bay area” on Mastodon are either insufferable cunts or some kind of weird internet people/hacking savants/furries though.
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My guy, we live in a world where we are required to have a job to live. Most of those jobs are not essential for society to function. Some of these jobs make people happy and passionate, many others are soul grating and awful. This technology makes some of those enjoyable jobs much less lucrative while the product becomes worse. We simply lose things that bring people joy and for what? Like seriously, I cannot think of something an ai can bring to the table that a human cannot in terms of art.
Why would you want to remove the jobs people enjoy and are passionate about just for the sake of it? Why would you campaign to strictly make people less happy? If it wasn’t for the horrible system we live in I’d be all for this kind of advancement, but it does not make life easier, it does not get us better things, and it almost exclusively makes life worse for millions of people with nothing to show for it.
I think this is the big contention point. In a world without a need for jobs, AI would be a neat alternative method of art generation, and a fascinating advancement of technology as a whole…
but UBI is not yet real and jobs still need to be had. Without some form of life-securement for those who provided the art to be trained off of, we’re just using tech to really fuck people over. It’s definitely a moral grey area - very dark grey.
We simply lose things that bring people joy and for what?
Why would you campaign to strictly make people less happy?
I disagree completely. Idk but creating brings millions of people joy, anything that democratizes it more accessible is a good thing. AI has absolutely brought many more people joy.
A world where a technology exists that can query the sum of human knowledge and skill to translate ideas into form but is gatekept because few people like feeling special is a horrifying dystopia and I can’t imagine how someone could be so fucking evil as to really wish for that.
Like really, I want to keep giving y’all benefit of the doubt that you simply don’t consider a perspective outside your own, but you don’t make it easy.
This technology makes some of those enjoyable jobs
Technology is what made those jobs enjoyable and accessible to those who do them now in the first place.
Nobody is forcing you to use AI or any technology, you can still farm goats and use them to make drums before you lay out a beat, people will probably be pretty impressed if you did that.
Why would you want to remove the jobs people enjoy and are passionate about just for the sake of it?
If they are passionate about their craft for the sake of it they will keep doing it, if they are doing it as a job then like with any other job market when new technologies or trends arrive they will have to adapt.
To put it in perspective with an analogy: It’s an absurd notion for instance that new programming languages should be banned not for their quality but simply because not every developer will learn them, and it’s an absurd notion that someone who loves programming in C for the sake of it cannot do so just because Java exists.
Having DAWs did not make it illegal to mess around with an old rompler and a step sequencer for the sake of it, nor did orchestra plugins eliminate violins, but market demands orchestral music done quicker, you either do this or don’t.
If it wasn’t for the horrible system we live in
This would be the case for every system that still has some market demands, even something like anarcho-communist cooperative based market economics would favour technological advancement and efficiency every time and some jobs would simply not be in demand any more.
There is simply no economic system that makes any sense where someone would need to hire an orchestra for every sting on kitchen nightmares instead of using a VST or sample library or now in the not too distant future - generating one.
I fully agree that we need to change the system to ensure when these technological advancements happen that people don’t end up on the street.
However, I’m sure most would agree that even though it was not fair to e.g. human computers, the move to electronic calculators is a net positive for society.
Similarly endlessly distributable digital copies of books etc. democratized media to a massive degree even if it put libraries at risk.
but it does not make life easier,
It definitely does make life easier for many artists, for instance you can upscale old media or restore media where the original was lost to time, game devs can use AI-generated assets for background stuff like adding nigh-infinite variety to textures that would be impractical for an indie dev to do or a sole dev can compensate for whatever skills they lack manually etc.
it does not get us better things
I think with regards to quality it’s completely value neutral, I’ve seen plenty of dogshit AI art, but also some really good unique stuff. I think it just follows Sturgeon’s Law as everything.
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Maybe the real problem is the AI slop, which is really just humans being lazy.
In my immediate neighborhood there are two pastry bakeries. One has lines of people summoned by the TikTok/Instagram, who take videos of themselves eating. The other is known to locals, but never self promotes.
You can imagine, that the non-promoting one has amazing pastries. The best I’ve ever had. The TikTok one does have a trendy fancy interior, made for videos.
People want to be seen at a pastry place. That fake pastry place wants to be seen as an awesome bakery, even though really, without the marketing they are below average. Some guy wants to be seen as writing pop music, even though he can’t. Another wants to draw, even though I won’t spend the thousands of hours required.
Art is really about understanding the effort. Human effort.
Somehow, I can just imagine having AI slop music, and AI slop movies, and AI slop everything.
If a movie house is going to be Steve Jobs Pixar, they are going to hire the best real artists and the best real writers, and do something that means something to be human. They aren’t interested in slop.
If a movie house is going to be just for profit, are they going to even pay for the generative AI to do a few more iterations. I think they will keep it at slop.
Anyhow, a bit too much babble. Must sleep.
This is truly my exact worry.
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But the prompt is the creative aspect. It’s always the idea, and the rest is convention and form. And lol, modern poor aren’t going to have access to charcoal, paper, time or a deathbed, but they’re going to have a smartphone, hence it does indeed make creative expression more accessible.
I’d never have even tried music if I couldn’t pirate a DAW, plugins etc etc. Sure, cheap eBay fender clones and bargain bin amps help too, but like AI, piracy met me where I was. Shit ain’t cheap but once you know how to sail the high seas the possibilities are endless and it encouraged me to explore more.
Heck I’d actually gotten better at drawing too thanks to AI, I don’t have the time or energy as a wageslave to hone those skills, I’m not a millionaire like PewDiePie, but I can at least draw some basic shapes now because using that with controlnets and img2img in SD to produce ideas from my imagination was just encouraging enough to get me going and more realistically attainable. As with music, it brought me great joy.
Creativity isn’t to be gatekept and those select few privileged enough to practice it in lieu of something more materially useful aren’t to be put on a pedestal, there’s no such thing as talent for most people, just barriers to entry and accessibility.
People being able to enjoy art and artistry, especially not just by brainless consumption, but by producing it themselves will always be a good thing in my book. That’s what generative AI does.
All the artbros seething are just landlords of the art world feeling their houses lose value to new buildings that belong to everyone.
All the arguments about power use are null and void because if it wasn’t this it’d be something else, most advances in computing would require more power, we need to solve that problem with nuclear & renewables, not by artificially placing a cap on scientific advancements.
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So do you have a rebuttal or? Because this is the way I see it, using music because it’s what I know more:
I get an idea in my head for a melody or piece of music -> I either lay it out on an instrument or in a DAW piano roll or on paper -> I tweak and refine and add/remove elements -> I export the file and upload to a website.
The actual creative spark is the first step, the rest is a matter of speaking the language and skills at using the tools of choice to convey ideas clearly. Both are skills in and of themselves but one is about technique, the other is about a well-trained imagination and analytical mindset.
Prompts in that case are just another language like notes and scales, used to put ideas into form.
Then you add onto that LoRAs, controlnets, refiner models, custom refines of existing models, embeddings, weights, sampling steps, classifier-free guidance scale, and it’s quite a lot to actually learn and use effectively.
I don’t see how it’s any less creative whatsoever. Less skilled? Sure, absolutely, it can be. No denying there. Understanding that notes fit into scales and what a key is in music is a much bigger learning curve than simply typing in what you want, but in both cases that’s not all there is to it.
Maybe you could say it’s also less intentional, but plenty of art has unintentional elements which doesn’t make it any less creative.
I’m sure every amateur musician had that one experience where you make a piece of music that you think is sad, show it to a friend and they say it sounds cheerful, it doesn’t happen because you’re uncreative, it happens because your ‘musical language’ needs work.
Eventually you make that one track with a clear intent and show it to someone and they tell you exactly what you meant by it and it is the best gosh darn feeling on earth.
Proompting may be goofy, but it’s just another language, and it doesn’t invalidate the creative spark that starts it all.
If I commission a human artist to paint me a picture or write me a song, did I create it? I gave them the prompt to generate the work with their skills, so I must be as creative and skilled as any work they return, right?
You’ve asked something else to make your art, and then claimed that because you were really specific with your request that you deserve the kudos for the creativity and skill of the art. Pick up a pen and stop stealing existing artists’ work in order to force a computer to stroke your delusional ego.
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That’s hype. AI is just another sort of hammer. In the hands of a talented artist, they can churn out masterpieces in hours instead of days. Polarising people is modern marketing. Threating peoples bread and butter is a good way to do that.
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There seems to be two ways of viewing generative AI. The first, which many anti-AI people take is that Generative AI will be captured by big business and will decimate the creatives financial streams. The outcome will be less art with less meaning and shallow profit seeking art will rule the world.
Then there is the flip side. Everyone in them has a story they want to tell. Everyone has a artistic vision they want to produce. Everyone has a song they want to write and sing. Everyone, if given enough time, talent, practice, resources, and yes, money, could produce something beautiful, deep, and unique to themselves. But they don’t. Why? Because there are barriers. Barriers among barriers. It is the hope of the “AI bros” that AI will tear down those barriers and allow more people to create.
But because these people have never created before, their work will obviously not be up to pair with professionals. Just give it time. In the words of Randall Munroe: If we want to write Ulysses, our generation might not be sexting enough.
They’re high on their own supply.
People who are divorced from the fallout of their creation. More corporate-think where they chase the objective that costs jobs in favor of the bottom line, even if it’s a shitty idea, and just let it “sort itself out”. The “sorting out” part being not having to deal with any moral, emotional, or financial consequences personally for the result of their pursuits.
with ai making content they will never have to worry about some sort of original content upsetting the selling of continous reboots.
Hello,
Let me chime in as someone who would probably fall under your definition of an AI defender.
How do I defend AI? Well, I think AI really flips the world on it’s head. Including all the good and the bad that comes from it. I still think the industrialization is a good metaphor. Things changed a lot. A lot of people were pissed. Now we don’t mind as much anymore, because it’s the new normal, but at the time, most people weren’t happy about it.
Same with AI. I think overall it’s a plus, but obviously it comes with new pitfalls. LLM hallucinations, the need for more complex copyright and licensing definitions, impersonation, etc. . It’s not entirely great, but I totality, when the dust settles, it will be a helpful tool to make our lives easier.
So why do I defend AI? Basically, because I think it will happen, whether you like it or not. Even if the law will initially make it really strict, society will change their mind about it. It might be slowly, but it’s just too useful to outlaw.
Going back to industrialization metaphor, we adapted it over a longer period of time. Yes, it forever changed how most things are made, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just a thing. And even though lots of logistics chains are streamlined, there’s always gonna be handmade things and unique things. Ofc, not everything is handmade, but some important things still are. And for both of them, there’s some stuff that’s totally fine to be automated, and then there’s some stuff that just loses it’s value if we just gloss over with automation.
Now I don’t want AI to just roam free (ofc not, there’s some really bad stuff happening and I’m not pretending that it’s not) but what we need is laws and enforcement against it, and not against AI.
Imagine if most countries outlawed AI. It would make all AI companies and users move operation to that one country that still allows it, making it impossible to oversee and enforce against. So we better find a good strategy to allow it for all the things where it doesn’t do damage.
Now let me address some specific points you brought up;
In the near future no one will “need” to be a writer
But isn’t this already how it’s going? Only people who wanna be a writer are one, anf it’s good that way.
Also, AI can only remix the art that’s already there, so if you’re doing something completely unique, AI won’t ever be able to replace you. I find that somehow validating for the people who make awesome and unique art. I think that’s how it should be.
Do these people not see or feel the human behind the art at all?
I do. And that’s the exact reason I’m not concerned. Everyone who puts in the work to make something very particular to them should not be impacted in any way.
Now there’s an argument to be made how consent for training data is given (opt-in / opt-out) and what licensing for the models can and should look like, but this is my very basic opinion.
Are these really opinions you have encountered outside of the internet?
I may have about one friend out of 30 who thinks like me.
I mean I am living proof we exist, but I can’t say this is a popular opinion, which is fair.
I don’t want people to mindlessly agree, I want them to come their own opinions because of their own research and presumptions.
I also don’t expect you to agree with me, but I hope some people will understand my perspective and maybe this brings a bit more nuance to this bipolar conversation.
In addition to this, the current state of AI is basically just advanced algorithms. Id would be extremely difficult, but in theory you could still trace the connections between bodes and run the optimization calculations yourself.
Soon enough, we will have AGI. Im not a big fan of LLMs, because theyre a fundamentally flawed idea. The only way to get that much data is without consent, and they will always be prone to hallucinations. AGI on the other hand is fundamentally different. It’s capable of learning just like a human, and capable of doing tasks just like a human. By all measurements it will be able to do anything a human can do, and by most measurements, it will do it better.
The issue most people have is that they do not understand that the current state of AI is like the OG printing press. It’s crazy to a layperson, and it has its uses, but since most everyone is illiterate farmers, its not that useful. But to claim that transcribing text is pointless is ignoring an entire world of possibilites, to the point where people who rail against AI almost seem malicious or willfully ignorant. Why do you not want us to be able to almost instantly diagnose new diseases? Or have a nursebot babysitter that is literally a better parent than you are, and doesnt have to sleep or eat? Whats the issue with making cars safer, making construction more efficient, and taking corruption out of the government? Why do people hate the idea of people no longer having to be alone, or having a therapist that is available at all times, perfectly tailored to help you with your specific issues and no biases?
Yes, these things are impossible with modern AI. But to claim that AI is useless… It’s either malice or ignorance.
Completely agree, I think of industrialization as well when comparing it.
Steel plow comes to mind.
I absolutely don’t agree with your perspective.
AI is just another way to ensure control of the means of production stays in the hands of capitalists.
It empowers the techno-feudalist monopolies to put further pressure on more industries. Not content to own a portion of every retail purchase, every digital payment, every house, and every entertainment property. They now get to own a portion of every act of creation, every communication that could possibly challenge their power.
They can subvert any act of independent impactful art by copying it and remanufacturing lesser versions over and over until the original’s impact is lost. And they can do it faster than ever before, cashing in on the original creative’s effort and syphoning returns away from creators into their own pockets.
You might think it’s inevitable and inescapable, but that’s what people once thought of the divine right of kings.
You’re basically saying AI can’t be used in any other way than it’s being used right now. I think you are the one who’s taking the current state of things as inevitable and inescapable.
I mean, he basically said industrialization is bad. Not sure why he’s saying that online, via his computer.
There’s nothing wrong with opposing technology as it currently stands. Maybe there’s room for nuance in language, but that doesn’t break their argument.
As it currently stands, the user above is right, and the labor of human artists is being siphoned into corporate profit with zero compensation. In the same way, at the beginning of the industrial revolution the labor of children was siphoned into profit with low compensation and deadly work conditions.
The way the textile industry was “fixed” was by opposition: speaking about the issues related to the technical developments and advocating for better treatment of the laborers. The only way AI as it currently stands can be “fixed” is also by opposition. Being critical of AI doesn’t mean “turn it off,” it means speaking about the issues related to the new technology and advocating for better treatment of the laborers.
Everyone’s frame of reference is their own IQ…
So for some people AI seems as smart as their frame of reference, or even better.
They assume their frame of reference is everyone’s, so we’re in that weird period where dumb people are super excited about AI, and smart people still think it’s a gimmick.
Those people who find AI impressive, see it as a means to level the playing field, and it will eventually.
It just means the smarter you are, the longer it’s going to take to be impressive. Because your frame of reference is just a higher standard.
They’d never be as creative as a creative person, so to them it’s switching from relying on a person they have no control over or influence on, to a computer program that will do whatever is asked. To them it generates the same quality as a person, don’t forget the most popular media caters to the lowest common denominator, this is the same thing.
Like, it makes sense from their perspective. You just need to realize everyone has a different perspective.
It’s human variation
Pretty good points there, though i’d argue it’s not just pure numerical IQ, but mostly life experience. The more variety of life you experience, the more you know of human history, different cultures, ways of thinking and seeing the world - the harder it is for you to get impressed by something as shallow as AI.
Tech bros live in a bubble of their own creation and don’t understand the true richness of the human condition.
it’s not just pure numerical IQ,
We talk about IQ like it’s a single number, but it’s like SAT/ACT, a bunch of different specific scores averaged into one number. So yeah it’s not as simple as a single number. I was thinking mostly processing speed and associative memory, but obviously you need the general knowledge as well.
The more variety of life you experience, the more you know of human history, different cultures, ways of thinking and seeing the world - the harder it is for you to get impressed by something as shallow as AI.
This is a very specific and easily fixable problem. It’s trained by a certain class of people, so it’s going to regurgitate stuff from that class and ignore everyone who hadn’t trained it.
Tech bros live in a bubble of their own creation and don’t understand the true richness of the human condition.
Nobody is gonna argue with that tho
How can someone not value the ingenuity and creativity behind a work of art?
Their point of view is that if people do actually value this then there will always be a market for it.
If they don’t, there won’t.
I suppose a long time ago the radio and gramophone looked like they’d been the end of live performing musicians but they still exist, everything’s just continually changing…
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I did read Superintelligence ages ago, might take this on. Thanks
"Hey, there’s Evan. "He’s a young guy. “He likes the Stereophonics.”
AI can only replace creative industries if the content it produces is better in which case it’s a win for the people consuming that content. When it comes to creators themselves, it’ll be harder to earn a living that way but on the other hand, none of the artists I know are making it for the money and they would continue making it even if AI was better. Myself included.
However, I don’t think it’s either-or situation. AI will just come alongside human made content. There’s a ton of content creators I’d continue following no matter how good AI would get.
Is it really a win for people to consume soulless AI poetry or prose? Even if the objective qualities (of which are hard to define anyway) makes it “better”, in the eyes of the masses than a human author like Baudelaire or Mary Oliver? One could say it’s up to the consumer, if they’d rather buy an AI work, then that “decides it”, but market forces are really bad at deciding what’s worth consuming or not.
These are the things I’m worried about, especially when I see the act of creative creation being based on everything that have made us and shaped us in the past. Our experiences, memories and the paths we’ve taken. I feel like what makes something art, is the humanness poured into it.
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I still hear you implying that, in one way or another, AI content wouldn’t be as good as - or better than - human-made content. If that’s the case, I agree with you: replacing human artists with AI would be a net negative. However, my point is that when the day comes that AI content genuinely surpasses human-made work on every metric we care about, resisting it simply because it’s AI-generated doesn’t make much sense to me.
I still empathize with human artists who may no longer be able to compete, but I see that as part of human evolution - some professions inevitably become obsolete.
That said, as I mentioned, this wouldn’t prevent anyone from continuing as an artist for the joy of it. It would just make it harder to monetize their work.
I’m someone who talks about AI a lot on lemmy, people might call me pro AI although I consider myself to be neither pro nor anti, but admittedly, optimistic about AI in general. I work with people in the creative industry, artists, writers, designers, you name it.
As others have mentioned already, your question to my knowledge does not reflect most people’s view on AI neither online and even less so in real life. And I talk and participate in communities that are overwhelmingly pro AI. The “AI bros” you mention sound like caricatures to me.
There are some who have become bitter by lies and misinformation spread about AI that are intentionally hateful as a kind of reverse gotcha, but thats about it. You have those on the anti AI side as well for different reasons.
I dont consider AI to be anywhere close to being a threat to the industry, other than indirectly through the forces of capitalism and mismanagement. Your question indeed seems very insane to me. Most people that use and talk about AI to me seem more interested in using it to make new creative works, or enhance existing works to greater depth in the same time. Creative people are human too and have limited time, and often their time is already cut short by deadlines and their work has been systematically undervalued even before AI.
AI as it currently stands on its own simply has no feeling of direction. Without much effort you can get very pretty, elegant, interesting, but ultimately meaningless things from it. This cannot replace anyone, because such content while intriguing doesnt capture attention for long. It also cannot do complex tasks such as discussing with stakeholders or remaining consistent across work and feedback.
With a creative person at the wheel of the AI though, something special can happen. It can give AI the direction it needs to bring back that meaning.
This is a perspective a lot of people miss, since they only see AI as ChatGPT or Midjourney, not realizing that these are proprietary (not open source) front ends to the technology that essentially hide all the controls and options the technology has, because these things are essentially a new craft on their own and to this day very little people are even in the progress of mastering them.
Everyone knows about prompts, but you can do much more than that depending on the model. Some image models allow you to provide your own input image, and even additional images that control aspects of the image like depth, layout, outlines. And text models allow you to pack a ton of pre existing data that completely guide what it will output next, as well as provide control over the internal math that decides how it comes to its guess for the next word.
Without a creative and inventive person behind the wheel, you get generic AI material we all know. And with such a person, you get material at times indistinguishable from normal material. These people are already plentiful in the creative industry, and they are not going anywhere, and new people that meet this criteria are always welcome. Art is for everyone, and especially those who are driven.
Really the only threat to the creative industry in regards to AI is that some wish to bully and coerce those who use the technology into submission and force them to reject it, and even avoid considering it altogether like dogma. This creates a submissive group that will never learn how to operate AI models. Should AI ever become neccesary to work in the creative industry (it currently doesnt look like it) these people will be absolutely decimated by the ones that kept an open mind, and more importantly, the youth of tomorrow that always is more open to new technologies. This is a story of the ages whenever new technology comes around, as it never treats those that reject it kindly, if it sticks around.
The loom and the Luddites, cars and horses, cameras and painters, mine workers and digging machines, human calculators and mechanical calculators, the list goes on.
So no, being pro AI doesnt neccesarily mean you are participating in the downfall of the creative industry. Neither does being anti AI. But spreading falsehoods and stifling healthy discussion, that can kill any industry except those built on dishonesty.
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This is not something taken out of thin air. While of course it’s an hyperbole, as we’re on the internet, it’s still an opinion that I’ve come across more than a handful times on e.g., reddit.
I see and understand your point of creatives using AI to alter/improve/whatever their own work. I have no problem with that. The thing I’m scared about, which I arguably could’ve phrased better in my initial post, is that we’ll reach a future where human-made work isn’t valued at all. That what we get when we go into bookstores, or stream music, or go to the cinema, is work that’s 99% made by an AI and only “tweaked” by humans. You say “Without a creative and inventive person behind the wheel, you get generic AI material we all know.”, but at the same time I’m seeing people literally saying: before 2030 we will have the first AI movie blockbuster made completely by an AI (even though maybe someone has put in a small prompt).
As I said in another reply, these are the things I’m worried about, especially when I see the act of creative creation being based on everything that have made us and shaped us in the past. Our experiences, memories and the paths we’ve taken. I feel like what makes something art, is the humanness poured into it. Complete AI works will promptly devalue the art of human creation and replace it with something else that I have no doubt people will buy into (as market forces and capitalism are just another side to this that’ll make this possible), but of which will degrade our society to begin looking like something from Brave New World. That consumption is the only thing that’ll matter. Now, on whether this is an intrinsic danger of AI or whether it’s a consequence of capitalism, I’d lean towards capitalism being at fault. But seeing as how our world is structured, I doubt the negatives will outweigh the positives once the technology develops and CEOs sees more possibility of “endless growth” using AI in this way.
Thanks for clarifying. I get your point, I honestly dont doubt someone or a group with such opinions exists out there, I just dont think it represents anywhere near a critical mass.
Sadly, when there’s big money to be made such as for blockbusters, even some human work before AI was already pretty ‘sanitized’ or ‘toned down’ in terms of human creativity, as it must be as uncontroversial and mainstream appealing as possible. So yes if AI got good enough it would definitely be used by some of those companies.
However, I dont see any path for current AI technology to get there without at least 1 or 2 breakthrough similar to the advent of current AI technology.
I also dont think it will replace anything beyond the works of companies with great profit incentive. We have a massive amount of communities where human creativity is central in all shapes and forms, producing works that arent appealing to everyone, but to the people it resonates with, it is so uniquely special that its irreplaceable. This kind of art thrives on it’s human creativity rather than it’s ability to make money. The human desire to produce and consume art that resonates with them is so strong it wont go anywhere as long as people have the time and ability to produce it.
Rest assured, there is basically no talk of replacing anyone with AI in my corner of the creative industry.
Should the day come that AI truly becomes that good it can compete with human creativity, its likely that AI will have become far more human in terms of how it creates art, and would start exhibiting the same tendencies to share human experiences and memories. Then the difference will start to fade and indeed we might go the way of the horses, but such a scenario is essentially sci-fi right now - we may never even get close and art might have made many radical shifts before we get there. And like the camera didnt kill hand painted portraits, there will still be a place for human creativity, just less.
But so long as the incentive is there, it might eventually happen. And so we should be ready to safeguard creativity in some manner along the way. But currently the most effective ways of doing so entail mostly to curb our capitalistic society, and not at the technology. Because doing so could in the worst case lock creatives out from the technology and start a race for the capability to keep up, and large companies would surely win out if we let them.
They have more means of doing things and more data than smaller creators, and AI does seem to pull some of that power back to smaller creators, hence why even thought it might seem big companies are all pro AI, dont be surprised if they are totally fine taking a powerful tool away so they can take it just for themselves.
Same reason why Israelis are fine with doing genocide in gaza
