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?
Why do AI bros and other staunch AI defenders seem happy about the potential of killing off the creative industries?
Submitted 3 days ago by Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com to [deleted]
Comments
kadup@lemmy.world 3 days ago
[deleted]Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
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.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
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.
fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
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.
whatalute@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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?
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Everyone already can be creative and make images you moron
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 days ago
These are people without talents who have to pay creatives for cool things. All they are thinking is that they’ll be able to get the creative assets themselves for free from now on. That’s it. They don’t care about the cow when they believe they’re going to get the milk for free.
randon31415@lemmy.world 1 day ago
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.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
We don’t mourn the loss of blacksmiths who put time and skill into creating a pan or pot. We don’t care about the glass blowers who are no longer hired to blow drinking glasses. We don’t miss the portrait artists who painted not just for art, but to create an historical record.
History is filled with jobs performed by skilled labor that were made redundant with technology. AI is just a point in a long line.
FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I think the difference is that blacksmiths created things that were tangibly useful, that people needed, and that they needed in large quantities quickly and cheaply. The whole point of art is that it does not have real-world usefulness, past the enjoyment of it for the sake of the enjoyment of it.
For example, people frequently refer to cars as “art”, because they are beautiful, but “beauty” isn’t necessarily the same as “art”. Cars are beautiful because they invoke the principles of art, whatever they may be. The base principles themselves are complex and intangible, and you’d be hard-presses to find a book that explained what art actually is, because it is not well defined.
Only people can do art, as far as we know. AI can only produce things that resemble art, and they have only been able to do so by copying what real people have done. If real artists stop outputting material, there will never be an original artistic expression created ever again.
AI may be able to generate clip art and pretty text, but nobody is going to flock to the theaters, or attend auctions to acquire what is basically clip art.
This is not at all like creating a metal blade, imo. The tech bros just don’t understand art.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
I mentioned painters as portrait artists and artists of historical record; their work has been replaced by photography.
Most animation today is done via a computer instead of being hand drawn. Some of the techniques to reuse sprites come from hand-drawn techniques from Hanna-Barbera.
Art Deco is filled with architectural elements that are mass produced with machines instead of created by skilled labor.
We’ve mechanized art to make its construction easier. AI is part of that.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 2 days ago
There are still blacksmiths and portrait artists
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
Yeah, and I’m sure there will still be human writers and artists. There just won’t be as many of them employed compared to today.
Apepollo11@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The invention of production lines didn’t mean that nobody appreciated hand-built cars any longer - it just meant a cheaper option was now available to more people.
The invention of phonographs, records, cd etc, didn’t mean that nobody appreciated live music anymore - it just meant that there was now a more accessible option available.
Every job in arts and engineering can, has and will be automated to some extent - it doesn’t mean the death of those industries, or a lack of appreciation for the creativity involved.
I think the real benefit comes from when the creatives use the tools to do the heavy lifting. Every new innovation sees a glut of low-effort money-saving cash-ins. After a while, however, these fall to the wayside as the people who actually have the skills take over again.
More than ten years ago, I wrote a song for my daughter. I recorded it, animated a little video, and uploaded it to youTube. I’d written several more songs for her, but had never found the time necessary to actually record the songs and create videos for them. Because of AI tools, I’ve finally been able to make significant headway on a couple of songs that I hope to upload within the next fortnight.
We’re just in a transition period. Like George Lucas’s over-reliance on CG in the prequels - although it looked pretty great at the time but now looks thoroughly artificial.
scarabic@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The invention of phonographs, records, cd etc, didn’t mean that nobody appreciated live music anymore
I’ll argue with this one. The only live music anyone appreciates now is going to see world famous commercial artists made popular by their records, cds, etc.
Live music used to be: if you have some friends over and want to liven it up, one of them plays the piano. A pub has a live set of musicians who can read the room and play what people want at the tempo they want depending on if they want to dance or not.
You can say that people still appreciate live music because some of them still go out to the symphony, but the world of music from before was absolutely killed off by radio, records, etc. That world is alive in tiny pockets at best.
EndlessApollo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Remind me how much electricity production lines, phonographs and CGI use, or how much they rely on art theft simply to exist, or how they pose as an expert on a subject and feed people misinformation, or how they allow people to literally stop thinking and let it write everything and form every opinion for them?
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
They absolutely do all those things though? Like render farms consume fucktons of electricity and they absolutely rely on theft because every artist uses references not to mention asset packs etc. and you are absolutely posing as an expert on the subject feeding people misinformation without any AI (probably). I’m sure someone editing film would consider your optimised premiere stream deck a device for someone who’s “stopped thinking” as well, without any AI at all.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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
QubaXR@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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
fsxylo@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
They absolutely hate anyone who is better than them at anything. They hate programmers. They hate artists. They hate their secretary that knows more about them than they do.
Getting rid of everyone would soothe their egos.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 2 days ago
What a cynical view to live under.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Why do people who post loaded questions enjoy tearing the legs off live kittens?
mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 3 days ago
approve of pedophilia and torturing kittens?
what the actual fuck?
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Doesn’t sound like a denial - I thought so!!!
rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Probably put the TP on backwards, too.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 2 days ago
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.
Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
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 as you also kind of point out, 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.
Free_Opinions@feddit.uk 2 days ago
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.
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
CurlyWurlies4All@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
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, 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.
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 3 days ago
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.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Completely agree, I think of industrialization as well when comparing it.
Steel plow comes to mind.
Scubus@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
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.
ClamDrinker@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
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.
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.
ClamDrinker@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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 tight 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.
Grimy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The general scene can do much more now. It’s a tool and silly to stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. Understandably, it brought up the bar for entry level work but it will bring up the quality and the sheer amount eventually.
All facets of gen ai are a real boon for things like indie video games and animations once you get past the constant pessimisme. I’m insanely excited for llm driven npcs and things of that nature as well.
IndiBrony@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’ve seen LLM NPC’s and whilst they’re still far from being convincing, I don’t imagine it’ll take too long for them to get there.
I can’t wait for a GTA style game (maybe even GTA itself) where I can just walk by someone on the street and have a completely normal dialogue with an NPC. Or even just start shit by yelling at people or causing beef between two of them by suggesting one insulted the other.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
What would be the point of AI replacing people to create art?
The essence of art is that it came from the mind and talent (or skill) from another human being. It’s a thread connecting our humanity through time and space.
No one will be looking back at AI art the same way we look back hundreds or thousands of years at paintings, sculptures, musical compositions, or even real photographs.
We might enjoy some AI generated content for the novelty, but it’s soulless.
Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Fully agree, but I’m afraid market forces will just allow the most common AI slop to exist. And I’m sure people will still consume it, and like it. Unfortunately.
Rhoeri@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Becau$e rea$ons.
whatalute@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Because AI bros love the smell of their own farts and they get off by convincing other people that they should also smell their farts. (Only partly /s)
But more seriously, I’d say it’s just a symptom the world we live in where there is tremendous pressure to commodify and commercialize everything in the most “efficient” way possible, including creativity.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s legitimate to question why we would want to replace human artistry with AI. Somebody might have asked the same question about replacing hand tools with power tools - I wouldn’t be a longtime woodworker if all I had to work with was hand tools. The work would be far too time consuming and the learning curve much too high. Or ask content creators who are able to get their ideas in front of the public without learning HTML, CSS or Javascript. Enabling millions of people to jump traditional entry barriers is a good thing, even if it means we no longer look at the creative process as being reserved for people with natural talent or years of training. TBH you might as well object to Bob Ross teaching people easier ways to paint, or to people who teach breadbaking on YouTube - it turns out bread is dead simple btw, you should try it.
But more to the point, the genie is out of the bottle, and no amount of objection is going to stuff it back in.
spujb@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
Enabling millions of people to jump traditional entry barriers is a good thing
False :( look how bad Google search has gotten, overrun by AI blogposts and advertising slop. Enabling millions of people to jump traditional entry barriers dilutes the hard, real, work that people do.
But more to the point, the genie is out of the bottle, and no amount of objection is going to stuff it back in.
We regulated the assembly line and gave laborers compensation and safety rights when power tools increased their capacity. So too, we could force OpenAI et al to compensate the copyright holders from whom they scraped data. No one is calling for the genie to got back in, only for the capitalists to stop being the ones with all the wishes.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
So too, we could force OpenAI et al to compensate the copyright holders from whom they scraped data
Fuck expanding copyright’s power in any way. Effort better spent on making AI content illegal to sell or another way of ending corporate profit off of it
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 days ago
One note I never hear sung is AI’s ability to jump-start creative works.
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.
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.
I hauled a large, sealed, plastic container out of the river last month. (Fuck me, about sank the canoe getting it out of 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 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…
- 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 a;ready have or can scrounge for free. I can make my own soil for the rich organic much and local sand. Let’s see, screw around with the buoyancy. Hot damn do I have ideas now!
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
gaiussabinus@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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.
FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world 3 days ago
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…
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I can appreciate a sunset or a flower without needing these things to have “a human behind it all”.
With that said, art is far from the most important potential application of AI. I am merely amused that right now I can ask a computer to draw a cow in the style of Monet and get a pretty good result. The amazing thing is not present-day capability (which is remarkable but not world-changing) but rather what the rate of progress implies about the near future. I think that a computer better than any human at everything (or at least at every intellectual task) is likely within my lifetime.
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 days ago
The best example I can think of, and this is being very generous to the AI bros, is that they’re trying to compare it to obsolete creative positions. Think about animation. Each frame used to have to be hand drawn and colored entirely by hand. There was a lot of heavy lifting going on in the process that weren’t necessarily creative but still required for the final product. I think they’re trying to say that we’ll need less work like this.
I’m not sure I agree or how accurate their claims are.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 3 days ago
I’m no AI bro, but I do think this concern is a bit overblown. The monetary value in art is not in simply having a picture of something, a whole infamous subset of “modern art” commands high prices despite being simple enough that virtually anybody could recreate it. A lot is simply in that people desire art created by a specific person, be it a painting that they made, or commissioning a still active artist to create something, or someone buying a band’s merch to support their work. AI simply does not have the same parasocial association to it. And of course, it doesn’t at all replicate the non-monetary value that creating something can give to someone.
I can, at most, imagine it getting integrated into things like advertising where one really doesn’t care who created the work; but even then there’s probably still value in having a human artist review the result to be sure of it’s quality, and that kind of art tends to add the least cultural value anyway.
That isn’t zero impact obviously, that kind of advertisement or corporate clip art or such does still pay people, but it’s a far cry from the end of creative human endeavor, or even people getting paid to be creative.
canadaduane@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
My daughter (15f) is an artist and I work at an AI company as a software engineer. We’ve had a lot of interesting debates. Most recently, she defined Art this way:
“Art is protest against automation.”
We thought of some examples:
- when cave artists made paintings in caves, perhaps they were in a sense protesting the automatic forces of nature that would have washed or eroded away their paintings if they had not sought out caves–by painting something that could last, they expressed, "I am here!"
- when manufacturing and economic factors made kitsch art possible (cheap figurines, mass reprints, etc.), although more people had access to “art” there was also a sense of loss and blandness, like maybe now that we can afford art, this isn’t art, actually?
- when computers can produce images that look beautiful in some way or another, maybe this pushes the artist within each of us to find new ground where economic reproducibility can’t reach, and where we can continue the story of protest where originality can stake a claim on the ever-unfolding nature of what it means to be human.
I defined Economics this way:
“Economics is the automation of what nature does not provide.”
Some examples:
- long ago, nature automated the creation of apples. People picked free apples, and there was no credit card machine. But humans wanted more apples, and more varieties of apples, and tastier varieties that nature wouldn’t make soon enough. So humans created jobs–someone to make apple varieties faster than nature, and someone to plant more apple trees than nature, and someone to pick all of the apples that nature was happy to let rot on the ground as part of its slow orchard re-planting process.
- jobs are created in one of two ways: either by destroying the ability to automatically create things (destroying looms, maybe), or by making people want new things (e.g. the creation of jobs around farming Eve Online Interstellar Kredits).
Where Art and Economics fight is over automation: Art wants to find territory that cannot be automated. Economics wants to discover ways to efficiently automate anything desirable. As long as humans live in groups, I suppose this cycle does not have an end.
slowcakes@programming.dev 1 day ago
Art is subjective, AI is a buzzword, if statements are considered AI, especially in the gaming world.
And the current state of LLMs and what are the smartest and brightest in the industry have only managed to produce utter trash, while sacrificing the planet and its inhabitants. I like your daughter more, she will create more value and at the same time not be a total corporate tool, ruining the planet for generations to come, mad respect.
(not calling you a tool, but people who work with LLMs)
canadaduane@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I do work with LLMs, and I respect your opinion. I suspect if we could meet and chat for an hour, we’d understand each other better.
But despite the bad, I also see a great deal of good that can come from LLMs, and AI in general. I appreciated what Sal Khan (Khan Academy) had to say about the big picture view:
There’s folks who take a more pessimistic view of AI, they say this is scary, there’s all these dystopian scenarios, we maybe want to slow down, we want to pause. On the other side, there are the more optimistic folks that say, well, we’ve gone through inflection points before, we’ve gone through the Industrial Revolution. It was scary, but it all kind of worked out.
And what I’d argue right now is I don’t think this is like a flip of a coin or this is something where we’ll just have to, like, wait and see which way it turns out. I think everyone here and beyond, we are active participants in this decision. I’m pretty convinced that the first line of reasoning is actually almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, that if we act with fear and if we say, “Hey, we’ve just got to stop doing this stuff,” what’s really going to happen is the rule followers might pause, might slow down, but the rule breakers–as Alexander [Wang] mentioned–the totalitarian governments, the criminal organizations, they’re only going to accelerate. And that leads to what I am pretty convinced is the dystopian state, which is the good actors have worse AIs than the bad actors.
angrystego@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Creative is great, industry not so much.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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.
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 days ago
There are people out there without any kind of conscience or memorse. If they can somehow make a profit, they'll sell somehing to you or anyone who is willing to listen.
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
Because they like money, and anything they say about creative industries is just silly words they don’t mean that you shouldn’t take seriously. Zero meaning in anything they say 🤷♂️
spujb@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
It’s because AI enthusiasts genuinely proud and in awe of their work, and those that are still staunchly pro-AI are unaware of how much damage they have already done.
Two key facts:
Freya Holmér does excellent analysis at around the 43:00 mark. She notes that AI represents a story of human triumph, and the innate quality or “coolness” that lies in that. But on the other hand, she explains how generative AI has quite quickly become entirely devorced from positively amplifying human expression. Exceptions to this exist, where people use AI creatively as an extension of themselves exist, but are exceptions only and not the rule.
I see other threads here discussing “is there even demand for authentic human art?” And those discussions ignore that yes, there is, and that authentic human art was scraped from copyright holders on the internet without their consent. “Is there even demand for human art?” is what is being asked, when the technology in question was immediately bought up and exploited by billion-dollar companies who are gaining immensely more value from generative AI than even the most lucrative AI-artist.
I encourage “AI bros” reading this to look around and engage with the art world. Genuinely. If you have always wanted to be a screenwriter or painter hobbyist, go engage with those stories. Go and see the human experiences, training and techniques that are visible in every line and brush stroke. Creativity is quite a wonderful and powerful thing and I always encourage it.
Then, after you have experienced these works to a new degree, look back. Don’t even ask “is AI good”—because we all agree, it’s an amazing feat. Instead ask “do I want this technology to be monopolized by corporate interests?”
Yingwu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
Wonderful answer.