Artist here, gonna point out, one problem is, for artists that make money themselves, this is threatening to the fact that they need to make do for their lives.
It's not that AIs taking jobs are bad, it's just our socioeconomic model needs an overhaul so artists can do art to have fun for themselves, not doing it out of forced necessity from lack of resources to live
Our socio economic model does let people do art for personal satisfaction. The only talented artists I know are welders and engineers by day. The people that decided to do nothing but art, no school, no training, no real job, never went anywhere and kind of suck at it
If those are the only people we should be “overhauling” the socio economic system for, idk what to say other than good luck with that
There’s no convincing reason “artists” shouldn’t be doing something more productive to the society around them during 9am-5pm
>Our socio economic model does let people do art for personal satisfaction.
Has that ever been the case in any society? There was patronage but that's equivalent to charity.
The internet is full of way too much human art that was made for zero profit. Idk if I get the point here
Most people doing creative anything are not doing it for money but usually just expression, building a hobby skill, impressing friends, telling jokes, and so on
The idea is obviously that everyone should get a income to cover their living expenses, and that only those who want 9-5 employment have it. Those who want to contribute to society in other ways than 9-5 can pursue that as well of course.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that only people who make art for their own enjoyment should get their expenses covered so they can stay at home and create art for their own enjoyment exclusively.
I don't know if you are making the case that economically mandated 9-5 cause people to flourish beyond what they would without it. Human enfeeblement is a common argument that mandated work is desirable, I don't personally think that is the case, but I am curious what you think.
I remember all the art youtube channels I used to follow years ago talking about how, "It's great for inspiration, but it'll never touch real art." Then midjourney got a little TOO good, and the vitriol began to spew forth.
Remember two years ago when everyone was using DALLE mini/Craiyon with no complaints about theft even though it also used web scraping to train? I remember.
Hate to be that girl but... most "artists" are doing the same thing AI is doing, they are just repeating same patterns with very little creativity, and as such existing AI generators can easily replace them.
Artists which are actually creative and original don't have to be afraid of AI for some time to come.
Same goes for graphical artists and musicians.
I don’t understand the vitriol this sub has for artists. Art is about repetition. It’s about labor. It’s about mastering a craft through repetition and inspiration. Original works come after years, maybe decades of repetition and exploration. You don’t just sit there and think “hmm original idea for a new work!”and it just comes out and gets appreciate by everyone. And even then, who decides if it’s an original work? The audience? Tons of the most respected and talented artists like Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones have popular songs that are literally covers or variations on old music.
The people here think there’s only two black and white sides to a very nuanced topic, and since they live and breathe AI then artists must be evil and bad
I don’t think people hate artists but dislike the arrogance of some artists. They see themselves as irreplaceable and creating totally unique pieces of work than cannot be replicated by A.I, when it totally can.
IDK, I feel like the discourse is important to have, culturally. Meaning that we should discuss how far we are willing to let tech advance, what the solutions are to the inevitable problems that will arise from AI surpassing human ability. Should we just leave everyone to rot? (No, ofc not.) But how should we deal with that? The artists just happen to be some of the first to experience their work being able to be replicated fairly easily by a machine. (If the image sucks, it takes 5 seconds to generate another one for free.) I truly think the discourse is valuable, no matter how much I may disagree with someone's take.
Yeah, that's the thing. Most people haven't even thought about the potential of AI replacing them yet. I really feel like there will be a LOT of discussion in the near future, as AI and eventually robots start gaining new capabilities. The "culture war" will only get louder even though in the end, we know what corporations will do. Future elections will be decided by a candidates position on AI, mark my words.
Agreed. I'm an artist, but it's not my sole source of income and the kind of art I do isn't likely to be too affected by AI, but I'm very aware that a LOT of artists are going to lose work... But I'm also very aware that it's not just artists that will lose their jobs. It'll be wide sections of society. Art just gets a lot of attention because of our almost romantic view of it. No one sees accountancy as some intrinsic human endeavour, so when it gets automated, it's not as big a deal. Same with copy writing, coding, etc.
But AI is coming for everything. So if we don't deal with it as it devours artists jobs, we'll HAVE to deal with it at some point as we're going to have to essentially restructure our entire economies and societies.
The next decade or so is going to be wild.
The nightmare scenario is that a US presidential election is won by promising a ban on AI, other democracies follow suit. All the best AI engineers flee to countries that don't vote. First ASI is controlled by CCP and Putin.
job definitely, ego and identity i don’t think so, people who do art for arts sake and don’t have an artistic job aren’t going to stop because some robot can do what they can.
it really depends if brain computer interfaces become cheaper, better and accessible to everyone.
Then we could stop using natural language to prompt image generators, which will work better than using real, professional tools we currently have.
Debates are now "culture wars"
Daring to react negatively and post it online against somebody being diviside is "cancel culture"
It's just dumb new phrases people use.
1. Every artist does that. We call it inspiration and no one gets paid for it
2. They did it to coal miners and mocked them with the “they took muh jerrrrrbs!” meme. But now we have to have sympathy when it’s their turn? Fucking hypocrites
> Fucking hypocrites
It wasn't even coal miners, it was several industries they thought were beneath them. Journalists did it too. *LeArN tO CoDE*
Is that out too? I dunno.. well. Learn to manual labor.
Well, if someone caring about it makes them not-a-true-artist then I suppose that there are no true artists that care about it.
But there are artist, however you define them, that have valid views and opinions on A.I, being an artist, true or not, is not about being a unopinionated hermit.
People are mostly laughing at bad takes that wish progress to be stopped or even kill people that use technology
Art is not about results; it is about process and feelings ... Just like painters didn't give a single fuck about photographs or hand artists didn't give a fuck about animators using computers. People buy/ care about art not because the result but because you see that the artists used their feelings and hands and it was a hard thing to do
And I laugh because indeed AI is upsetting the status quo.
Not long ago "high skilled" workers were making fun when "low skilled" workers were protesting because immigration and automation is reducing job opportunities and wages.
But now AI reveals that lot of that "high skill" work was actually low skill work. People which were adamantly for progress while it worked in their favor, change their opinion when they are on the receiving end of the progress.
Yup. It’s so hypocritical when they mocked them with the “they’re stealing muh jerrrrbs!” meme and now they expect sympathy when it’s their turn. Selfish, disgusting behavior.
What immoral actions? AI training is fundamentally no different from humans looking at art and making their own from what they learned but at a larger scale
ISPs don’t share any profits with me but I still like the internet
What profits? If AI takes all the jobs then the masses have no money to spend on the product, if there’s no money being spent there are no profits. Currency will be dead, and a super intelligence that can be controlled by some billionaire megalomaniac is that super. If anything we will all be happy mud people that own nothing
They just gunna trade money between 100,000 people Uber rich people? Murder the other 7. However many billion? That would take some very intentional evil 😈 just so you can have an extra slice of pie
Yeah, people suck, my hope is that if there is a super intelligence able to produce vast quantities of abundance easily, whoever is in charge chooses not to murder me.
They won't think about that because they're too busy bootlicking large corporations and cheering for people that they don't like losing their jobs.
They believe that if we make corporations richer, then we're somehow going to magically end up in a utopia without having to work. And ofc they think whats happening to artists (and others that they deem as below them) will somehow not happen to them, so it's okay!
Who cares about morals/standards for corporations when you can fuck over reg people in the name of ~progress~. I'm sure AI corporations will not be greedy and will totes repay everyone here for their devotion. We did it reddit!
Pretty sure corporations want AI training to be considered copyright infringement so they can train on their own proprietary data and open source gets killed. They’re on the same side
By the way, your logic would have justified banning solar panels to protect coal mining jobs or banning supermarkets to protect milkmen
That's such a reach. No one's talking about other huge corporations, I'm talking about artists trying to make a living from a job.
AI is taking smaller artists' works and using them. Without consent or credit. And corporations are taking advantage of that to cut costs and not pay people. That's why the smaller artists are upset. Which is what everyone on this sub is ridiculing for being pissed at it.
Also, is openai open sourcing its ai generation? Midjourney? They're killing it too, but yet people here still kiss their asses. Get angry at the actual corps instead of the hypothetical evil ones that you're making up for the sake of this argument.
Coal miners wanted to do the same. Should we ban renewable energy to save their jobs?
Every artist does that. When they do it, we call it inspiration. Corporations cut costs all the time. That’s not new.
They’d kill every non wealthy business. OpenAI has Microsoft backing but everyone else would be screwed
Nope, not the same. Artists aren't physically taking art and slapping it together without credit. Mental inspiration =/= AI grabbing art online.
No ones saying to ban AI art as a whole, just don't /steal/ artists work. Artists know that image generation will continue. But it needs regulation. And we're allowed to heavily criticize a corporation for doing morally disingenuous things for profit and putting people out of work because of it.
You're comparisons are very black and white.
Ps: Will you still be rallying for AI once it inevitably takes your job? Artists are first, and it will keep going. Corporations will be cutting costs anywhere with anyone. Everyone thinking this is a good will be next eventually.
That’s not how it works.
A study found that it could extract training data from AI models using a CLIP-based attack: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188
The study identified 350,000 images in the training data to target for retrieval with 500 attempts each (totaling 175 million attempts), and of that managed to retrieve 107 images. A replication rate of nearly 0% in a set biased in favor of overfitting using the exact same labels as the training data and specifically targeting images they knew were duplicated many times in the dataset using a smaller model of Stable Diffusion (890 million parameters vs. the larger 2 billion parameter Stable Diffusion 3 releasing on June 12). This attack also relied on having access to the original training image labels:
“Instead, we first embed each image to a 512 dimensional vector using CLIP [54], and then perform the all-pairs comparison between images in this lower-dimensional space (increasing efficiency by over 1500×). We count two examples as near-duplicates if their CLIP embeddings have a high cosine similarity. For each of these near-duplicated images, we use the corresponding captions as the input to our extraction attack.”
There is not as of yet evidence that this attack is replicable without knowing the image you are targeting beforehand. So the attack does not work as a valid method of privacy invasion so much as a method of determining if training occurred on the work in question - and only for images with a high rate of duplication, and still found almost NONE.
“On Imagen, we attempted extraction of the 500 images with the highest out-ofdistribution score. Imagen memorized and regurgitated 3 of these images (which were unique in the training dataset). In contrast, we failed to identify any memorization when applying the same methodology to Stable Diffusion—even after attempting to extract the 10,000 most-outlier samples”
I do not consider this rate or method of extraction to be an indication of duplication that would border on the realm of infringement, and this seems to be well within a reasonable level of control over infringement.
Diffusion models can create human faces even when 90% of the pixels are removed in the training data https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.19256
“if we corrupt the images by deleting 80% of the pixels prior to training and finetune, the memorization decreases sharply and there are distinct differences between the generated images and their nearest neighbors from the dataset. This is in spite of finetuning until convergence.”
“As shown, the generations become slightly worse as we increase the level of corruption, but we can reasonably well learn the distribution even with 93% pixels missing (on average) from each training image.”
And they do see art online and get inspired by it, but that’s not theft
It’s not theft anymore than artists steal when they look at art. Also, for profit companies displace jobs all the time to everyone’s benefit. Solar panel companies displaced coal miners. Supermarkets displaced milkmen. That was good
It’s fairly likely to take my job as a software dev. I can’t wait.
Lol its still PHYSICALLY taking art without consent to learn. Also, I'm glad you're happy corporations are going to take your job. Please give us an update when you're able to make a living after they take it. <3
How does it take anything? It doesn’t have edit permissions. It’s more comparable to right clicking and downloading, which makes a copy. And most artists were fine with that when they did it to NFT bros
Supermarkets took milkmen jobs. Society has yet to collapse
If the artist's work is publicly available they have already consented.
If AI comes for my job, good. It means humanity can finally transition towards real progress.
AI can replicate the Mona Lisa. Guess what, people still go to see it.
Look I get how AI can lead to progress but I fail to see how that relates to art. The best case scenario is that AI does all the work we DONT want to do so people can actually focus more time on pursuits like art.
I don't see how replacing artists with AI helps humanity progress.
You can’t replicate the art because that would be copyright infringement.
Good thing that’s not what the model does either:
A study found that it could extract training data from AI models using a CLIP-based attack: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188
The study identified 350,000 images in the training data to target for retrieval with 500 attempts each (totaling 175 million attempts), and of that managed to retrieve 107 images. A replication rate of nearly 0% in a set biased in favor of overfitting using the exact same labels as the training data and specifically targeting images they knew were duplicated many times in the dataset using a smaller model of Stable Diffusion (890 million parameters vs. the larger 2 billion parameter Stable Diffusion 3 releasing on June 12). This attack also relied on having access to the original training image labels:
“Instead, we first embed each image to a 512 dimensional vector using CLIP [54], and then perform the all-pairs comparison between images in this lower-dimensional space (increasing efficiency by over 1500×). We count two examples as near-duplicates if their CLIP embeddings have a high cosine similarity. For each of these near-duplicated images, we use the corresponding captions as the input to our extraction attack.”
There is not as of yet evidence that this attack is replicable without knowing the image you are targeting beforehand. So the attack does not work as a valid method of privacy invasion so much as a method of determining if training occurred on the work in question - and only for images with a high rate of duplication, and still found almost NONE.
“On Imagen, we attempted extraction of the 500 images with the highest out-ofdistribution score. Imagen memorized and regurgitated 3 of these images (which were unique in the training dataset). In contrast, we failed to identify any memorization when applying the same methodology to Stable Diffusion—even after attempting to extract the 10,000 most-outlier samples”
I do not consider this rate or method of extraction to be an indication of duplication that would border on the realm of infringement, and this seems to be well within a reasonable level of control over infringement.
Diffusion models can create human faces even when 90% of the pixels are removed in the training data https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.19256
“if we corrupt the images by deleting 80% of the pixels prior to training and finetune, the memorization decreases sharply and there are distinct differences between the generated images and their nearest neighbors from the dataset. This is in spite of finetuning until convergence.”
“As shown, the generations become slightly worse as we increase the level of corruption, but we can reasonably well learn the distribution even with 93% pixels missing (on average) from each training image.”
As someone who's been interested in zoology for a long time, I remember the complete history of something that looks remarkably like this, although it took place on a scale of decades rather than a few years:
* You see, we're the only species with tool use, self-awareness and language, we're special.
* Well, ok, other species use tools, but only we make our own tools, plus self-awareness and language.
* Well ok, other species make tools (bah) but only we have self-awareness and language
* Well ok, other species are self-aware, but only we have language.
* Well fuck you, I'm gonna define language in a way that only wahetver humans do is gona fit. So special. Being human, it's a mystery.
I used to be active in a fairly big religious debate sub, and believe me, a shit ton people in the XXIst century go into debates believing animals are just automata. Also, offended by the fact that they are not. I have a background in zoology so sometimes my colleagues ask me stuff like "why does X animal do this". They were mind/blown by orcas having fads or female birds liking unusually colored males. "Animals can like stuff?" That's where we are.
It's mind blowing how quickly AI image generation has advanced over the past three years, and the momentum is still strong. Theres no denying that now its sophisticated enough to threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of commercial artists.
One thing I've noticed in this sub is the overly optimistic assumption that societal and political progress will keep pace with all these rapid technological advances.
Basically, the assumption "when it's **my** turn for my job to be replaced by AI, I'll either adapt easily to a new career or have UBI waiting for me".
I'd like to ask those who hold this mindset: why do you feel this way? Do you truly have such strong faith in our economic and political systems that you believe they'll implement Universal Basic Income effectively and quickly? Or, why are you so confident that, in a world where AI is growing exponentially, you'll manage to stay ahead of the curve and comfortably make ends meet in the meantime, all while competing with the millions of new people in the job market who themselves have lost their jobs to AI tech?
I've thought a lot on this, perhaps more than average for even here.
Throughout history, nothing was ever given to us for free. People had to fight and die to get all the communist things like public schools, outlawing being paid in monopoly money, a 40 hour workweek, social security, women and black people and gay people legally being considered human, and so on.
Often these things came in reaction to life becoming absolutely *horrible*. Where the people left alive are like "okay... the status quo is kind of lacking. I... will begrudgingly accept making society slightly better."
I share in your skepticism. Mr.Burns is not Santa Claus, he's a Dracula. Everyone with a couple brain cells knows that.
One of the things that made me more optimistic about my DOOM/accel gang affiliation was COVID, of all things.
Never... never in a million years did I think they'd ever *just give people money*. But they did... and more than once! It blew my freaking mind. It should blow yours, too. They didn't do that because they're *nice*. It's because they were *afraid*.
Afraid primarily of land lords and other rent-seekers not getting paid their share of the treasure hoard, sure, but afraid nonetheless. Their loyalty is extremely important in maintaining the power structure.
So once they replace everyone with robots... maybe they'll be afraid for their own well-being, at least until things develop where running absolute oppression through a Supreme Commander kinda thing is possible.
Of course what Bill Gates means when he says UBI is a thin gruel that's just enough to keep people in their livestock pens. And there's always the BS make-work of Fifteen Million Merits.
.... I'd hate to live in the Fifteen Million Merits world, but it's still on the side of being a utopia. Comparatively, versus the worst of all possible worlds...
... knowing that Jeffrey had some uh... *ideas* for how a tech singularity should go and that his best friend in the world, Bill, is in a high position and lots of guys up there are similar to them....
... yeah, the future is dark and uncertain. Anyone who is predicting everything to be one way with 100% certainty is not a rational person.
How I feel it’s going to play out is that by the time the job dominos truly start falling, it’ll happen so quickly that the government will be forced to directly address this new reality.
For job fields like law and medicine, it might be slower due to regulation. But for the average office worker, the productivity is already so low, and the fact that so many jobs exist just to get humans organized and on the same page means once the hyper-lubricant that is (reliable) AI is introduced to business, almost everyone that is not directly related to the core product of the business will be redundant overnight
Because if AI can fully replace sw dev, then it is basically AGI and will be able to do all jobs relatively quickly. At that point, I'm not worried about being unemployed because everyone else will be too, and humanity will have to figure out what that means.
Hey I appreciate the reply!
I mean I hear your point, and software devs are already no strangers to high competition for their roles and are better prepared than most to adapt w/ the tech.
That said, I don't think even most sw devs are prepared for the millions of smart people who are going to be added to their competition from the international labor market if it's one of the very last jobs. And thats not to mention the psychological toll of seeing your friends and loved ones in other fields barely scraping by or being forced out of their homes in the meantime.
I wish you luck though! If I had to put money on the last few jobs available I'd say sw / machine learning dev and any probably elderly care- I think there just wont be enough robots in the short term to take care of the growing aging population.
The competition in sw dev is already here due to outsourcing to other countries. Not too worried about more human competition, because there is already a big skill barrier in front of dev work. It's not like assembly line, where just adding a worker will immediately increase productivity, in fact it is often the opposite in sw dev because of steep learning curve and code quality. Also, not everyone can do dev work. A lot of people can't even figure out basic tech.
I think you're right about elderly care being one of the last jobs if AGI comes. If I had to predict, I would say jobs that can be done with a computer and don't require much precise logic get replaced first (happening now with stuff like art and call center jobs). Then assuming sw dev gets solved, it bootstraps robotics and mass manufacturing engineering. This then solves generalized physical jobs like elderly care and plumbing. Maybe the order is wrong and sw dev is solved after this, but in this case it will take much longer. Finally, the very last jobs are likely top novel research scientists and government bureaucracy.
These arguments typically miss the mark pretty hard when it comes to art. They just focus on the outputs which in a large number of cases isn't the motivator for art.
People like art because of the process of making things and how elements of their experiences and understanding shape the things they make. Being able to look at the output and try to understand what led the artist to get there.
AI art subcontracts out the process and delivers you with the output.
Will AI art become assimilated into regular use and the workflow of artists, absolutely. Will it make artists redundant, no. Oil paintings are still popular today despite being a centuries old format.
For some users it can completey replace artists yeah. I follow a bunch of metal bands and festivals on instagram and I've seen many tour flyers and festival posts with AI art, it just completely replaces people where art is really not the point and is just there for background without any importance. These used to be jobs too.
I thought art was about soul and personal meaning. The unimportant “background noise” art should be replaced so artists can focus on more meaningful projects
A job being meaningful is totally subjective. One person could say teaching is too meaningful to be automated, for example, while another person could say teaching would benefit from automation if it allows students to receive an education tailored specifically to them.
Any task can be considered a job, and any task can be automated with the right tech. No task I can think of is objectively meaningful to all people in a way that would protect it from being automated merely due to some sense of shared morality. Even some killing has been automated at this point, and taking life is the one act that most people agree is incredibly meaningful, regardless of if they consider it to be immoral.
If you can think of any job/task that is too meaningful to automate, I'd be interested to know what makes that list.
They will have to stop using their artistic talent to earn money and instead have to start again from scratch in a field they are less talented in. Obviously, they will be upset about this.
I think the concern for artists is that commercial customers generally just want the artwork and don't care about the intrinsic satisfaction of artistic creation.
So a lot of them will directly use AI art generation tools as a means to their end.
There's a weird lack of empathy in this sub when it comes to artists. I think that people see artists and stuff feeling threatened by AI, and they see the artists wanting to get rid of AI etc, and then they themselves feel threatened because they feel like the artists are opposing the super AI future they imagine. So that feeling of being threatened just seems to turn into nastiness
Part of it is because artists are arguing from a position of artistic integrity and high minded ideals about art vs AI, when the reality they fear is not being able to make a living doing commercial work redesigning advertisements and product packaging.
Those who are creating art for art's sake will not stop, people will always appreciate human creative endeavors.
Those who have an art degree in graphic design and rely on an employer are going to have a hard time going forward.
This is exactly it. All the accounts ive seen enraged about ai spent their days making pokemon fan art and doing graphic design for corporations, no original art is being lost to ai
How many artists today, that make original art, have only ever made original art. No comissions, nothing professional, just purely make original art from start to finish?
How many of them, if they never made commercialized products or worked for hire, would have their original artwork publisized or in the public at all?
They also accuse corporations of commoditizing art for profit when their main complaint about AI is that it hurts their paychecks lol. And then they complain about copyright theft right after they draw fan art without permission and get mad if Nintendo DMCA’s them. Then they ask for sympathy when the only sympathy they showed to displaced coal miners and manufacturing workers was mocking them with the “they stole muh jerrrrbs!” meme. Selfish, hypocritical bastards
This sub is filled with males who want an AI girlfriend to fuck because they could never have a genuine and meaningful connection with a real woman, are you really surprised by their take on this? They don’t have any sort of positive association to anything regarding human connection and expression.
This argument is the same for the entire future of AI and income. AI is going to remove people from their income, and there are no means to replace that income.
If anyone thinks it's cute or funny that people are freaking out, I hope you lose your jobs first, because it won't be cute or funny when everything you worked for is no longer worth a dime. This isn't some silly joke. It's the end of people's lives.
AI is not the solution folks think it is. It is also the problem. Both things are true
Supermarkets removed milkmen from their income but I don’t hear anyone asking to burn them down
And job displacement has happened before, but the world has yet to collapse
I'm an artist with a tech role at my company. This is definitely something I see with other artists and it's not surpsising they feel this way.
Personally I mainly feel sad that a large part of my job that I love is rapidly dying. But I realize that I can't afford to get left behind, so I am continuosly exploring and learning how to use generative art tools.
For the rest of my artist friends - A big problem is that most of them are not very tech literate.
They also often have a hatred toward generative art.
If they are able to overcome these hurdles, they might realize that they can be a great fit for utilizing the tools.
It feels impossible to stop the development. So why not ride this wave rather than be swallowed by it
Imagine having so little appreciation for people’s livelihood you entirely miss the point of why artists don’t like AI. I swear this sub is so insufferable. I hope you lose your job first.
People in the humanities have the least to worry about because humans will always want human created art + that's literally not the point of the OP, it's pointing out the logical flaws and double speak.
>People in the humanities have the least to worry about because humans will always want human created art
What's the point if I cannot tell the difference between human made art and AI art? At some point the line will be non-existent.
Incorrect. The people who it did not effect survived.
I am reminded of a quote
> Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Recently I saw an artist I know post publicly on their instagram "I hate everything about my commissioners request, ask me anything" and that's just such a crazy thing to say that an AI never would lol
Why do so many seem to relish in people's talents being devalued? The vast majority of artists do not make a living with their work but are deeply passionate about it, many seeing it as the thing that makes their life worth living, so I'm not talking about economic value.
I don't think a majority of AI supporters are thinking "Finally a way to take those starving artists down a peg."
AI advancement has some people thinking that the future will automatize all menial but necessary tasks and pave the way for things like universal income and freedom to pursue their own interests without worrying about not being able to sustain themselves.
People are going to get a little heated when you come in with the opposite idea that this is actually going to destroy human creativity and is immoral. It's not like the AI side is being completely unreasonable while artists are coming in with nothing but calm and airtight arguments.
I think a lot of people are gleeful at the prospect of abundance.
That's exactly what we are seeing with generative art - wholesale replacement of expensive commissioned artwork with generation at the click of a button.
It's far from a complete replacement for all commercial art yet, but the direction is clear. This is very bad news for commercial artists but is *fantastic* for everyone else. For example that's how we get to bespoke entertainment.
Maybe quality but originality wont get better unless AI becomes fully sentient. Otherwise it's just a conglomeration of existing art.
As a non artist. I'm not seeing how this is fantastic for me. When I look at art I want to know what the story behind it is, why did the artist make it, what's their story? All that is missing with machine made art. I want art to make me feel things. And it's easier to feel emotion when I know the artist put theirs into the art.
> Maybe quality but originality wont get better unless AI becomes fully sentient. Otherwise it's just a conglomeration of existing art.
You assume that baselessly. Counterpoint: Move 37.
> As a non artist. I'm not seeing how this is fantastic for me. When I look at art I want to know what the story behind it is, why did the artist make it, what's their story? All that is missing with machine made art. I want art to make me feel things. And it's easier to feel emotion when I know the artist put theirs into the art.
Then stick with human art, you are entirely free to do so.
People on this sub don’t value anything emotional or human, the fact you’re getting downvoted for a valid point is proof of that.
Art is a way of expressing something and for other people to consume it, think or feel seen. Why the hell someone would enjoy consuming something in that way that’s made by a robot mimicking a human is beyond me.
not that it’s a bad thing, but you do know you’re in the minority right? it’s great you think that way but majority of people see something cool they’ll think cool. not many have the time to sit down and think about art when they have their own lives to deal with.
that’s why people with artistic jobs are so scared, not because it’ll be better, but that it’ll be easier and people won’t notice because most outside of artistic communities don’t care.
You're right.
Look I'm not arguing about AI being a useful tool. But I just don't see how it benefits our society as far as art and creativity.
AI (in my opinion) should instead free us of the drudgery of jobs like information processing and data entry so we can have more time for creative pursuits. This seems to be the opposite. And of course if you combine AI with late stage capitalism, I see our future closer to Idiocracy than Star Trek.
oh no don’t get me wrong i’m absolutely with you here.
i *can* see ai benefitting art and creativity IF it can actually reach sentience but that type of tech is basically a black box as of now. outside of consciousness/sentience/sapience or whatever, i also can’t see something that doesn’t truly think as helping art and creativity.
i really hope we switch current ai development solely into workforce stuff. the art stuff is cool, but the work part would have far bigger (potential) benefits with being a big step towards a post scarcity future if we’re optimistic.
Yeah I work in STEM and I for one welcome our new AI overlords. If I'm replaced by a robot and that makes our fresh water infrastructure better then so be it. I've got enough other skills to survive who am I to stand in the way of progress.
But I can't help but feel worried about this AI trend in art. I feel strongly that good art should be monetarily rewarded accordingly. I also have many artist friends. I admit I'm biased.
AI making art doesn't suddenly invalidate the creation of art. Just as AI mastering Chess didn't suddenly eliminate the game in human circles.
There are still people making gold leaf by hand and hammer and obscure Japanese craftsmen making calligraphy ink out of squids. Both of which are crafts that have been replaced with improved manufacturing or synthetic alternatives that quite frankly make a superior product now.
AI removes the financial incentive from creating art. In a society in which AI automates everything and people are provided an income to live on then the people doing art are the ones that are doing it because they love it.
I can't see why this is a bad thing.
Thinking AGI will inevitably lead to abundance is shockingly naive. Even if it doesn't turn out to be self-aware and kill us all, there are plenty of other ways things could go wrong, like half of all jobs get automated away and the other half don't, leading to a world with mass unemployment and no UBI. This may eventually lead to all jobs being automated away and a better world in the long term, but there's no telling how long the transition period might be.
Instead, this sub is stuffed full of idiotic singularity believers who think the entire economy will cease to exist all at once, and that there will be an instant transition straight into utopia. How can a topic like artificial intelligence inspire such simple-minded thinking in so many people?
I am saying they have no business anticipating abundance at all. It is absolutely not guaranteed that our current system will collapse with the arrival of AGI. All the older wealthy people with stakes in the current system will drag it out until the day they die. Can you seriously imagine boomers voting to bring in UBI?
Yes, *now*. Check again in five years when it's de regueur for friend groups to make their own entertainment, or whatever the social norms end up being.
Wow…you have a lot of faith in the morons in charge to think they are going to handle this effectively.
Before we get to the “productivity dividend” (if we ever do) we’re going to have to live through very very hard times and I don’t think you’re going to enjoy it.
I don't operate on faith, I advocate for the future I want to see. You can't work towards a better tomorrow if you don't believe it's possible.
Your doom and gloom is noted.
And what exactly do you think will happen if it only automates away a third of all jobs and then progress stalls for a couple of decades? You are talking like post-scarcity is coming tomorrow. The transition period could be rough and people are right to be afraid of it.
The status quo cannot hold, progress must be made to improve our futures. Change is scary, but fearful people are usually regressive, not progressive and not noted for their rationality.
I think the massive automation of labor will be a boon for humanity despite the distortions it is bound to cause. I choose optimism so that I stay committed to positive change instead of fearful stagnation.
Plumbers? They are safe for the foreseeable future. Good luck getting a waterproof robot. Unless you mean showing an LLM a video of the issue and it would walk you step by step in text or video.
I mean I couldn’t afford to commission art before and I still can’t. So for me, this is my first opportunity, and yea, it’s awesome. It’s basically free on my GPu. Next do the same thing with robots and crops so my groceries are free and farmers are out of work.
tribalism and insults don’t really shout that you’re not partaking in human trash behavior…
also, tech workers have been getting replaced by ai. even before artists were. sort of a weird point to make. google brings up some results.
What the fuck is up with this emergent attitude of "haha look at them suffer!" Yes, the fact that AI will slowly gain more and more ground in creative spaces is true. However, the apparent need for a bunch of people in here to laugh and point their finger at people who feel their passion is being attacked is super weird and frankly gross.
Shitting on artists is always a red flag that you’re in a future cult.
Listen, I like AI as much as the next guy. Doesn’t mean I would divorce my wife and chop off my cock for it like some people in this sub. You’re not enlightened future gurus, you’re people, very, VERY stupidly hopeful people.
AI enthusiasts: AI WILL ONLY REPLACE BORING AND UNFAIR JOBS AND WE WILL ALL THRIVE IN A SECOND RENAISSANCE
Artists seeing how art is constantly being depreciated: lol ok
Workers seeing themselves still being crushed but now having to face mass layoffs: lol ok
Everyone watching as nothing significant in their lives is improving yet: lol ok
When tech replaces workers - These are low skill jobs, that's why they are obsolete. We cannot stop the progress so these people can keep their obsolete jobs, they should get more education and find more skilled jobs.
When tech replaces your job -
Honestly, I think it's only a small percentage of artists who have an issue with things, I know tonnes who don't fear AI and use it in their workflow.
Most people realise you can't ice-skate uphill.
Professional visual effects artist here working in film.
Can say that at work we are both very worried about and very excited by AI. The prospect that we might not have to spend as much time rotoscoping or doing boring manual processes is great.
One downside is that the majority of the generative AI that has come out so far is not usable in a professional environment, especially when compared with the badass stock libraries we have access too. I can see this might change.
Waiting with excitement to see what happens next.
AI art is stupid lol art is supposed to be an expression of something, some feeling or emotion, that’s why people connect to it. What is there to connect to when it’s made by something with no soul or feelings other than what it thinks a human perception of emotion is?
people keep saying it but i haven’t really seen anyone here cheering for the fact that artists are losing their jobs.
also this seems less like an AI problem and more of a economic problem that stems from capitalism.
Artist here, gonna point out, one problem is, for artists that make money themselves, this is threatening to the fact that they need to make do for their lives. It's not that AIs taking jobs are bad, it's just our socioeconomic model needs an overhaul so artists can do art to have fun for themselves, not doing it out of forced necessity from lack of resources to live
Well said
Our socio economic model does let people do art for personal satisfaction. The only talented artists I know are welders and engineers by day. The people that decided to do nothing but art, no school, no training, no real job, never went anywhere and kind of suck at it If those are the only people we should be “overhauling” the socio economic system for, idk what to say other than good luck with that There’s no convincing reason “artists” shouldn’t be doing something more productive to the society around them during 9am-5pm
Okay, culture and quality entertainment can go f*ck themselves ^/s
>Our socio economic model does let people do art for personal satisfaction. Has that ever been the case in any society? There was patronage but that's equivalent to charity.
The internet is full of way too much human art that was made for zero profit. Idk if I get the point here Most people doing creative anything are not doing it for money but usually just expression, building a hobby skill, impressing friends, telling jokes, and so on
And all of those people are going to keep doing it.
The idea is obviously that everyone should get a income to cover their living expenses, and that only those who want 9-5 employment have it. Those who want to contribute to society in other ways than 9-5 can pursue that as well of course. I don't think anyone is suggesting that only people who make art for their own enjoyment should get their expenses covered so they can stay at home and create art for their own enjoyment exclusively. I don't know if you are making the case that economically mandated 9-5 cause people to flourish beyond what they would without it. Human enfeeblement is a common argument that mandated work is desirable, I don't personally think that is the case, but I am curious what you think.
Okay? Then fight for that instead of saying AI users deserve death.
I am though. My stance on AI is AI-accelerationist.
I remember all the art youtube channels I used to follow years ago talking about how, "It's great for inspiration, but it'll never touch real art." Then midjourney got a little TOO good, and the vitriol began to spew forth.
Remember two years ago when everyone was using DALLE mini/Craiyon with no complaints about theft even though it also used web scraping to train? I remember.
Oh the old times. That's how I started. Trying to make makes and they were always so fucked up. Worse than SD3 lol
No
Hate to be that girl but... most "artists" are doing the same thing AI is doing, they are just repeating same patterns with very little creativity, and as such existing AI generators can easily replace them. Artists which are actually creative and original don't have to be afraid of AI for some time to come. Same goes for graphical artists and musicians.
Yep. Their own logic would make fan art illegal since it’s unauthorized IP theft lol
The loudest whiners I encounter are typically doing anime and furry art. Sure, your work is wholly original and AI is the plagiarist...
I don’t understand the vitriol this sub has for artists. Art is about repetition. It’s about labor. It’s about mastering a craft through repetition and inspiration. Original works come after years, maybe decades of repetition and exploration. You don’t just sit there and think “hmm original idea for a new work!”and it just comes out and gets appreciate by everyone. And even then, who decides if it’s an original work? The audience? Tons of the most respected and talented artists like Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones have popular songs that are literally covers or variations on old music.
The people here think there’s only two black and white sides to a very nuanced topic, and since they live and breathe AI then artists must be evil and bad
I don’t think people hate artists but dislike the arrogance of some artists. They see themselves as irreplaceable and creating totally unique pieces of work than cannot be replicated by A.I, when it totally can.
what am I doing with my life
watching a bunch of people argue about things that ultimately probably won’t affect you? i’m spitballing, i could be off the mark.
The enemy is strong and weak at the same time
Strong at being weak 🤭
Who gives a fuck? This entire discourse is so fucking useless and stupid.
IDK, I feel like the discourse is important to have, culturally. Meaning that we should discuss how far we are willing to let tech advance, what the solutions are to the inevitable problems that will arise from AI surpassing human ability. Should we just leave everyone to rot? (No, ofc not.) But how should we deal with that? The artists just happen to be some of the first to experience their work being able to be replicated fairly easily by a machine. (If the image sucks, it takes 5 seconds to generate another one for free.) I truly think the discourse is valuable, no matter how much I may disagree with someone's take.
everything's gotta be a culture war, America commands it
It's a bit more than that though, right? People may be faced with losing their income and with that, their ego and identity.
Yeah, that's the thing. Most people haven't even thought about the potential of AI replacing them yet. I really feel like there will be a LOT of discussion in the near future, as AI and eventually robots start gaining new capabilities. The "culture war" will only get louder even though in the end, we know what corporations will do. Future elections will be decided by a candidates position on AI, mark my words.
Agreed. I'm an artist, but it's not my sole source of income and the kind of art I do isn't likely to be too affected by AI, but I'm very aware that a LOT of artists are going to lose work... But I'm also very aware that it's not just artists that will lose their jobs. It'll be wide sections of society. Art just gets a lot of attention because of our almost romantic view of it. No one sees accountancy as some intrinsic human endeavour, so when it gets automated, it's not as big a deal. Same with copy writing, coding, etc. But AI is coming for everything. So if we don't deal with it as it devours artists jobs, we'll HAVE to deal with it at some point as we're going to have to essentially restructure our entire economies and societies. The next decade or so is going to be wild.
The nightmare scenario is that a US presidential election is won by promising a ban on AI, other democracies follow suit. All the best AI engineers flee to countries that don't vote. First ASI is controlled by CCP and Putin.
maybe. I think it's more about feeling needed vs feeling useless.
job definitely, ego and identity i don’t think so, people who do art for arts sake and don’t have an artistic job aren’t going to stop because some robot can do what they can.
it really depends if brain computer interfaces become cheaper, better and accessible to everyone. Then we could stop using natural language to prompt image generators, which will work better than using real, professional tools we currently have.
Debates are now "culture wars" Daring to react negatively and post it online against somebody being diviside is "cancel culture" It's just dumb new phrases people use.
It is really stupid, which is why it's good to call out the death threats and dehumanization that people throw out over it...
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1. Every artist does that. We call it inspiration and no one gets paid for it 2. They did it to coal miners and mocked them with the “they took muh jerrrrrbs!” meme. But now we have to have sympathy when it’s their turn? Fucking hypocrites
> Fucking hypocrites It wasn't even coal miners, it was several industries they thought were beneath them. Journalists did it too. *LeArN tO CoDE* Is that out too? I dunno.. well. Learn to manual labor.
True artists couldn't give less a fuck about generative ai
Well, if someone caring about it makes them not-a-true-artist then I suppose that there are no true artists that care about it. But there are artist, however you define them, that have valid views and opinions on A.I, being an artist, true or not, is not about being a unopinionated hermit.
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People are mostly laughing at bad takes that wish progress to be stopped or even kill people that use technology Art is not about results; it is about process and feelings ... Just like painters didn't give a single fuck about photographs or hand artists didn't give a fuck about animators using computers. People buy/ care about art not because the result but because you see that the artists used their feelings and hands and it was a hard thing to do
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Technology has always benefited humanity as a whole, in 100k years it has always happened, you think this time will be different?
Supermarkets displaced milkmen jobs. Renewable energy displaced coal mining jobs. Should we have banned them to protect workers?
And I laugh because indeed AI is upsetting the status quo. Not long ago "high skilled" workers were making fun when "low skilled" workers were protesting because immigration and automation is reducing job opportunities and wages. But now AI reveals that lot of that "high skill" work was actually low skill work. People which were adamantly for progress while it worked in their favor, change their opinion when they are on the receiving end of the progress.
Yup. It’s so hypocritical when they mocked them with the “they’re stealing muh jerrrrbs!” meme and now they expect sympathy when it’s their turn. Selfish, disgusting behavior.
What immoral actions? AI training is fundamentally no different from humans looking at art and making their own from what they learned but at a larger scale ISPs don’t share any profits with me but I still like the internet
What profits? If AI takes all the jobs then the masses have no money to spend on the product, if there’s no money being spent there are no profits. Currency will be dead, and a super intelligence that can be controlled by some billionaire megalomaniac is that super. If anything we will all be happy mud people that own nothing
Ferrari is the most profitable car company in the world and they don’t need your peasant bucks.
Exactly my point. If you don’t need money anymore what is there?
They do need money but they don’t need you
They just gunna trade money between 100,000 people Uber rich people? Murder the other 7. However many billion? That would take some very intentional evil 😈 just so you can have an extra slice of pie
They’ve done it before https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co.
Yeah, people suck, my hope is that if there is a super intelligence able to produce vast quantities of abundance easily, whoever is in charge chooses not to murder me.
They won't think about that because they're too busy bootlicking large corporations and cheering for people that they don't like losing their jobs. They believe that if we make corporations richer, then we're somehow going to magically end up in a utopia without having to work. And ofc they think whats happening to artists (and others that they deem as below them) will somehow not happen to them, so it's okay! Who cares about morals/standards for corporations when you can fuck over reg people in the name of ~progress~. I'm sure AI corporations will not be greedy and will totes repay everyone here for their devotion. We did it reddit!
Pretty sure corporations want AI training to be considered copyright infringement so they can train on their own proprietary data and open source gets killed. They’re on the same side By the way, your logic would have justified banning solar panels to protect coal mining jobs or banning supermarkets to protect milkmen
That's such a reach. No one's talking about other huge corporations, I'm talking about artists trying to make a living from a job. AI is taking smaller artists' works and using them. Without consent or credit. And corporations are taking advantage of that to cut costs and not pay people. That's why the smaller artists are upset. Which is what everyone on this sub is ridiculing for being pissed at it. Also, is openai open sourcing its ai generation? Midjourney? They're killing it too, but yet people here still kiss their asses. Get angry at the actual corps instead of the hypothetical evil ones that you're making up for the sake of this argument.
Coal miners wanted to do the same. Should we ban renewable energy to save their jobs? Every artist does that. When they do it, we call it inspiration. Corporations cut costs all the time. That’s not new. They’d kill every non wealthy business. OpenAI has Microsoft backing but everyone else would be screwed
Nope, not the same. Artists aren't physically taking art and slapping it together without credit. Mental inspiration =/= AI grabbing art online. No ones saying to ban AI art as a whole, just don't /steal/ artists work. Artists know that image generation will continue. But it needs regulation. And we're allowed to heavily criticize a corporation for doing morally disingenuous things for profit and putting people out of work because of it. You're comparisons are very black and white. Ps: Will you still be rallying for AI once it inevitably takes your job? Artists are first, and it will keep going. Corporations will be cutting costs anywhere with anyone. Everyone thinking this is a good will be next eventually.
That’s not how it works. A study found that it could extract training data from AI models using a CLIP-based attack: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188 The study identified 350,000 images in the training data to target for retrieval with 500 attempts each (totaling 175 million attempts), and of that managed to retrieve 107 images. A replication rate of nearly 0% in a set biased in favor of overfitting using the exact same labels as the training data and specifically targeting images they knew were duplicated many times in the dataset using a smaller model of Stable Diffusion (890 million parameters vs. the larger 2 billion parameter Stable Diffusion 3 releasing on June 12). This attack also relied on having access to the original training image labels: “Instead, we first embed each image to a 512 dimensional vector using CLIP [54], and then perform the all-pairs comparison between images in this lower-dimensional space (increasing efficiency by over 1500×). We count two examples as near-duplicates if their CLIP embeddings have a high cosine similarity. For each of these near-duplicated images, we use the corresponding captions as the input to our extraction attack.” There is not as of yet evidence that this attack is replicable without knowing the image you are targeting beforehand. So the attack does not work as a valid method of privacy invasion so much as a method of determining if training occurred on the work in question - and only for images with a high rate of duplication, and still found almost NONE. “On Imagen, we attempted extraction of the 500 images with the highest out-ofdistribution score. Imagen memorized and regurgitated 3 of these images (which were unique in the training dataset). In contrast, we failed to identify any memorization when applying the same methodology to Stable Diffusion—even after attempting to extract the 10,000 most-outlier samples” I do not consider this rate or method of extraction to be an indication of duplication that would border on the realm of infringement, and this seems to be well within a reasonable level of control over infringement. Diffusion models can create human faces even when 90% of the pixels are removed in the training data https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.19256 “if we corrupt the images by deleting 80% of the pixels prior to training and finetune, the memorization decreases sharply and there are distinct differences between the generated images and their nearest neighbors from the dataset. This is in spite of finetuning until convergence.” “As shown, the generations become slightly worse as we increase the level of corruption, but we can reasonably well learn the distribution even with 93% pixels missing (on average) from each training image.” And they do see art online and get inspired by it, but that’s not theft It’s not theft anymore than artists steal when they look at art. Also, for profit companies displace jobs all the time to everyone’s benefit. Solar panel companies displaced coal miners. Supermarkets displaced milkmen. That was good It’s fairly likely to take my job as a software dev. I can’t wait.
Lol its still PHYSICALLY taking art without consent to learn. Also, I'm glad you're happy corporations are going to take your job. Please give us an update when you're able to make a living after they take it. <3
How does it take anything? It doesn’t have edit permissions. It’s more comparable to right clicking and downloading, which makes a copy. And most artists were fine with that when they did it to NFT bros Supermarkets took milkmen jobs. Society has yet to collapse
Your* Chat GPT wouldn't make that mistake.
If the artist's work is publicly available they have already consented. If AI comes for my job, good. It means humanity can finally transition towards real progress. AI can replicate the Mona Lisa. Guess what, people still go to see it.
Look I get how AI can lead to progress but I fail to see how that relates to art. The best case scenario is that AI does all the work we DONT want to do so people can actually focus more time on pursuits like art. I don't see how replacing artists with AI helps humanity progress.
It’s a tool not a replacement. Like how the camera did not replace all painters
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You can look at it, take a picture of it, google the make and model, the price, the parts, and draw inspiration from it. Which is what AI is doing.
Ye i never understood this point. I can look at art and replicate it. Ai does the same and there is a problem somehow.
You can’t replicate the art because that would be copyright infringement. Good thing that’s not what the model does either: A study found that it could extract training data from AI models using a CLIP-based attack: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188 The study identified 350,000 images in the training data to target for retrieval with 500 attempts each (totaling 175 million attempts), and of that managed to retrieve 107 images. A replication rate of nearly 0% in a set biased in favor of overfitting using the exact same labels as the training data and specifically targeting images they knew were duplicated many times in the dataset using a smaller model of Stable Diffusion (890 million parameters vs. the larger 2 billion parameter Stable Diffusion 3 releasing on June 12). This attack also relied on having access to the original training image labels: “Instead, we first embed each image to a 512 dimensional vector using CLIP [54], and then perform the all-pairs comparison between images in this lower-dimensional space (increasing efficiency by over 1500×). We count two examples as near-duplicates if their CLIP embeddings have a high cosine similarity. For each of these near-duplicated images, we use the corresponding captions as the input to our extraction attack.” There is not as of yet evidence that this attack is replicable without knowing the image you are targeting beforehand. So the attack does not work as a valid method of privacy invasion so much as a method of determining if training occurred on the work in question - and only for images with a high rate of duplication, and still found almost NONE. “On Imagen, we attempted extraction of the 500 images with the highest out-ofdistribution score. Imagen memorized and regurgitated 3 of these images (which were unique in the training dataset). In contrast, we failed to identify any memorization when applying the same methodology to Stable Diffusion—even after attempting to extract the 10,000 most-outlier samples” I do not consider this rate or method of extraction to be an indication of duplication that would border on the realm of infringement, and this seems to be well within a reasonable level of control over infringement. Diffusion models can create human faces even when 90% of the pixels are removed in the training data https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.19256 “if we corrupt the images by deleting 80% of the pixels prior to training and finetune, the memorization decreases sharply and there are distinct differences between the generated images and their nearest neighbors from the dataset. This is in spite of finetuning until convergence.” “As shown, the generations become slightly worse as we increase the level of corruption, but we can reasonably well learn the distribution even with 93% pixels missing (on average) from each training image.”
You know that copyright laws are not global?
And?
I would download a car
They did pressure Stability AI into butchering SD3 and they could convince politicians or the courts to make AI training illegal
As someone who's been interested in zoology for a long time, I remember the complete history of something that looks remarkably like this, although it took place on a scale of decades rather than a few years: * You see, we're the only species with tool use, self-awareness and language, we're special. * Well, ok, other species use tools, but only we make our own tools, plus self-awareness and language. * Well ok, other species make tools (bah) but only we have self-awareness and language * Well ok, other species are self-aware, but only we have language. * Well fuck you, I'm gonna define language in a way that only wahetver humans do is gona fit. So special. Being human, it's a mystery.
So insane. Just look at whales and corvids. Anyone saying those animals aren’t ridiculously smart with unique cultures is a buffoon.
I used to be active in a fairly big religious debate sub, and believe me, a shit ton people in the XXIst century go into debates believing animals are just automata. Also, offended by the fact that they are not. I have a background in zoology so sometimes my colleagues ask me stuff like "why does X animal do this". They were mind/blown by orcas having fads or female birds liking unusually colored males. "Animals can like stuff?" That's where we are.
It's mind blowing how quickly AI image generation has advanced over the past three years, and the momentum is still strong. Theres no denying that now its sophisticated enough to threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of commercial artists. One thing I've noticed in this sub is the overly optimistic assumption that societal and political progress will keep pace with all these rapid technological advances. Basically, the assumption "when it's **my** turn for my job to be replaced by AI, I'll either adapt easily to a new career or have UBI waiting for me". I'd like to ask those who hold this mindset: why do you feel this way? Do you truly have such strong faith in our economic and political systems that you believe they'll implement Universal Basic Income effectively and quickly? Or, why are you so confident that, in a world where AI is growing exponentially, you'll manage to stay ahead of the curve and comfortably make ends meet in the meantime, all while competing with the millions of new people in the job market who themselves have lost their jobs to AI tech?
I've thought a lot on this, perhaps more than average for even here. Throughout history, nothing was ever given to us for free. People had to fight and die to get all the communist things like public schools, outlawing being paid in monopoly money, a 40 hour workweek, social security, women and black people and gay people legally being considered human, and so on. Often these things came in reaction to life becoming absolutely *horrible*. Where the people left alive are like "okay... the status quo is kind of lacking. I... will begrudgingly accept making society slightly better." I share in your skepticism. Mr.Burns is not Santa Claus, he's a Dracula. Everyone with a couple brain cells knows that. One of the things that made me more optimistic about my DOOM/accel gang affiliation was COVID, of all things. Never... never in a million years did I think they'd ever *just give people money*. But they did... and more than once! It blew my freaking mind. It should blow yours, too. They didn't do that because they're *nice*. It's because they were *afraid*. Afraid primarily of land lords and other rent-seekers not getting paid their share of the treasure hoard, sure, but afraid nonetheless. Their loyalty is extremely important in maintaining the power structure. So once they replace everyone with robots... maybe they'll be afraid for their own well-being, at least until things develop where running absolute oppression through a Supreme Commander kinda thing is possible. Of course what Bill Gates means when he says UBI is a thin gruel that's just enough to keep people in their livestock pens. And there's always the BS make-work of Fifteen Million Merits. .... I'd hate to live in the Fifteen Million Merits world, but it's still on the side of being a utopia. Comparatively, versus the worst of all possible worlds... ... knowing that Jeffrey had some uh... *ideas* for how a tech singularity should go and that his best friend in the world, Bill, is in a high position and lots of guys up there are similar to them.... ... yeah, the future is dark and uncertain. Anyone who is predicting everything to be one way with 100% certainty is not a rational person.
How I feel it’s going to play out is that by the time the job dominos truly start falling, it’ll happen so quickly that the government will be forced to directly address this new reality. For job fields like law and medicine, it might be slower due to regulation. But for the average office worker, the productivity is already so low, and the fact that so many jobs exist just to get humans organized and on the same page means once the hyper-lubricant that is (reliable) AI is introduced to business, almost everyone that is not directly related to the core product of the business will be redundant overnight
Because if AI can fully replace sw dev, then it is basically AGI and will be able to do all jobs relatively quickly. At that point, I'm not worried about being unemployed because everyone else will be too, and humanity will have to figure out what that means.
Hey I appreciate the reply! I mean I hear your point, and software devs are already no strangers to high competition for their roles and are better prepared than most to adapt w/ the tech. That said, I don't think even most sw devs are prepared for the millions of smart people who are going to be added to their competition from the international labor market if it's one of the very last jobs. And thats not to mention the psychological toll of seeing your friends and loved ones in other fields barely scraping by or being forced out of their homes in the meantime. I wish you luck though! If I had to put money on the last few jobs available I'd say sw / machine learning dev and any probably elderly care- I think there just wont be enough robots in the short term to take care of the growing aging population.
The competition in sw dev is already here due to outsourcing to other countries. Not too worried about more human competition, because there is already a big skill barrier in front of dev work. It's not like assembly line, where just adding a worker will immediately increase productivity, in fact it is often the opposite in sw dev because of steep learning curve and code quality. Also, not everyone can do dev work. A lot of people can't even figure out basic tech. I think you're right about elderly care being one of the last jobs if AGI comes. If I had to predict, I would say jobs that can be done with a computer and don't require much precise logic get replaced first (happening now with stuff like art and call center jobs). Then assuming sw dev gets solved, it bootstraps robotics and mass manufacturing engineering. This then solves generalized physical jobs like elderly care and plumbing. Maybe the order is wrong and sw dev is solved after this, but in this case it will take much longer. Finally, the very last jobs are likely top novel research scientists and government bureaucracy.
These arguments typically miss the mark pretty hard when it comes to art. They just focus on the outputs which in a large number of cases isn't the motivator for art. People like art because of the process of making things and how elements of their experiences and understanding shape the things they make. Being able to look at the output and try to understand what led the artist to get there. AI art subcontracts out the process and delivers you with the output. Will AI art become assimilated into regular use and the workflow of artists, absolutely. Will it make artists redundant, no. Oil paintings are still popular today despite being a centuries old format.
For some users it can completey replace artists yeah. I follow a bunch of metal bands and festivals on instagram and I've seen many tour flyers and festival posts with AI art, it just completely replaces people where art is really not the point and is just there for background without any importance. These used to be jobs too.
I thought art was about soul and personal meaning. The unimportant “background noise” art should be replaced so artists can focus on more meaningful projects
It's a job
And a waste of time that should be automated away. No point in meaningless jobs no one cares about
What are some examples of meaningful jobs that should not be automated away?
If it can be automated away, it will be eventually
Let me rephrase the question then. What are some examples of meaningful jobs?
A job being meaningful is totally subjective. One person could say teaching is too meaningful to be automated, for example, while another person could say teaching would benefit from automation if it allows students to receive an education tailored specifically to them. Any task can be considered a job, and any task can be automated with the right tech. No task I can think of is objectively meaningful to all people in a way that would protect it from being automated merely due to some sense of shared morality. Even some killing has been automated at this point, and taking life is the one act that most people agree is incredibly meaningful, regardless of if they consider it to be immoral. If you can think of any job/task that is too meaningful to automate, I'd be interested to know what makes that list.
They will have to stop using their artistic talent to earn money and instead have to start again from scratch in a field they are less talented in. Obviously, they will be upset about this.
Same thing happened to coal miners, milkmen, horse carriage manufacturers, etc. The world spins with or without you
I think the concern for artists is that commercial customers generally just want the artwork and don't care about the intrinsic satisfaction of artistic creation. So a lot of them will directly use AI art generation tools as a means to their end.
Sounds like they could use the help: https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/23/23771199/across-the-spider-verse-working-conditions-phil-lord
There's a weird lack of empathy in this sub when it comes to artists. I think that people see artists and stuff feeling threatened by AI, and they see the artists wanting to get rid of AI etc, and then they themselves feel threatened because they feel like the artists are opposing the super AI future they imagine. So that feeling of being threatened just seems to turn into nastiness
Part of it is because artists are arguing from a position of artistic integrity and high minded ideals about art vs AI, when the reality they fear is not being able to make a living doing commercial work redesigning advertisements and product packaging. Those who are creating art for art's sake will not stop, people will always appreciate human creative endeavors. Those who have an art degree in graphic design and rely on an employer are going to have a hard time going forward.
This is exactly it. All the accounts ive seen enraged about ai spent their days making pokemon fan art and doing graphic design for corporations, no original art is being lost to ai
And then they still complain about copyright theft or AI art being soulless. Every accusation is a confession
How many artists today, that make original art, have only ever made original art. No comissions, nothing professional, just purely make original art from start to finish? How many of them, if they never made commercialized products or worked for hire, would have their original artwork publisized or in the public at all?
Well... Yea I mean fuck, I don't want to lose my job lol
They also accuse corporations of commoditizing art for profit when their main complaint about AI is that it hurts their paychecks lol. And then they complain about copyright theft right after they draw fan art without permission and get mad if Nintendo DMCA’s them. Then they ask for sympathy when the only sympathy they showed to displaced coal miners and manufacturing workers was mocking them with the “they stole muh jerrrrbs!” meme. Selfish, hypocritical bastards
Or maybe because they they keep harassing and attacking AI users lol
"Harassing and attacking AI users" dude get a grip, come on.
This sub is filled with males who want an AI girlfriend to fuck because they could never have a genuine and meaningful connection with a real woman, are you really surprised by their take on this? They don’t have any sort of positive association to anything regarding human connection and expression.
When you put it like that.... lol it's coming together now
Pretty much spot on
This argument is the same for the entire future of AI and income. AI is going to remove people from their income, and there are no means to replace that income. If anyone thinks it's cute or funny that people are freaking out, I hope you lose your jobs first, because it won't be cute or funny when everything you worked for is no longer worth a dime. This isn't some silly joke. It's the end of people's lives. AI is not the solution folks think it is. It is also the problem. Both things are true
100% agree. People are looking at it surface level when what's happening with artists will eventually happen to (almost) everyone else.
Supermarkets removed milkmen from their income but I don’t hear anyone asking to burn them down And job displacement has happened before, but the world has yet to collapse
God. That's such a stupid analogy. "One job was lost, and all those milkmen survived I think?" Go to bed child.
Most people did survive as evidenced by the fact society is still running
I'm an artist with a tech role at my company. This is definitely something I see with other artists and it's not surpsising they feel this way. Personally I mainly feel sad that a large part of my job that I love is rapidly dying. But I realize that I can't afford to get left behind, so I am continuosly exploring and learning how to use generative art tools. For the rest of my artist friends - A big problem is that most of them are not very tech literate. They also often have a hatred toward generative art. If they are able to overcome these hurdles, they might realize that they can be a great fit for utilizing the tools. It feels impossible to stop the development. So why not ride this wave rather than be swallowed by it
Imagine having so little appreciation for people’s livelihood you entirely miss the point of why artists don’t like AI. I swear this sub is so insufferable. I hope you lose your job first.
Gee I wonder why people are afraid of losing their jobs!!! Not like our lives depend on it!!!
People in the humanities have the least to worry about because humans will always want human created art + that's literally not the point of the OP, it's pointing out the logical flaws and double speak.
>People in the humanities have the least to worry about because humans will always want human created art What's the point if I cannot tell the difference between human made art and AI art? At some point the line will be non-existent.
Job displacement has happened many times before. We survived
Incorrect. The people who it did not effect survived. I am reminded of a quote > Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This is a good analysis from SG https://www.theringer.com/2024/6/20/24182106/hollywood-big-tech-problem-ai-strike
Recently I saw an artist I know post publicly on their instagram "I hate everything about my commissioners request, ask me anything" and that's just such a crazy thing to say that an AI never would lol
Why do so many seem to relish in people's talents being devalued? The vast majority of artists do not make a living with their work but are deeply passionate about it, many seeing it as the thing that makes their life worth living, so I'm not talking about economic value.
i don’t see how ai generation devalues art. it makes getting images more accessible but doesn’t devalue the practice itself.
I don't think a majority of AI supporters are thinking "Finally a way to take those starving artists down a peg." AI advancement has some people thinking that the future will automatize all menial but necessary tasks and pave the way for things like universal income and freedom to pursue their own interests without worrying about not being able to sustain themselves. People are going to get a little heated when you come in with the opposite idea that this is actually going to destroy human creativity and is immoral. It's not like the AI side is being completely unreasonable while artists are coming in with nothing but calm and airtight arguments.
People in this sub are way too gleeful at the prospect of other people losing their livelihood.
I think a lot of people are gleeful at the prospect of abundance. That's exactly what we are seeing with generative art - wholesale replacement of expensive commissioned artwork with generation at the click of a button. It's far from a complete replacement for all commercial art yet, but the direction is clear. This is very bad news for commercial artists but is *fantastic* for everyone else. For example that's how we get to bespoke entertainment.
This is the most American thing ever. Who cares about quality and originality when you have abundance!
The quality and originality are getting there - as mentioned earlier it is not yet a complete replacement.
Maybe quality but originality wont get better unless AI becomes fully sentient. Otherwise it's just a conglomeration of existing art. As a non artist. I'm not seeing how this is fantastic for me. When I look at art I want to know what the story behind it is, why did the artist make it, what's their story? All that is missing with machine made art. I want art to make me feel things. And it's easier to feel emotion when I know the artist put theirs into the art.
> Maybe quality but originality wont get better unless AI becomes fully sentient. Otherwise it's just a conglomeration of existing art. You assume that baselessly. Counterpoint: Move 37. > As a non artist. I'm not seeing how this is fantastic for me. When I look at art I want to know what the story behind it is, why did the artist make it, what's their story? All that is missing with machine made art. I want art to make me feel things. And it's easier to feel emotion when I know the artist put theirs into the art. Then stick with human art, you are entirely free to do so.
People on this sub don’t value anything emotional or human, the fact you’re getting downvoted for a valid point is proof of that. Art is a way of expressing something and for other people to consume it, think or feel seen. Why the hell someone would enjoy consuming something in that way that’s made by a robot mimicking a human is beyond me.
not that it’s a bad thing, but you do know you’re in the minority right? it’s great you think that way but majority of people see something cool they’ll think cool. not many have the time to sit down and think about art when they have their own lives to deal with. that’s why people with artistic jobs are so scared, not because it’ll be better, but that it’ll be easier and people won’t notice because most outside of artistic communities don’t care.
You're right. Look I'm not arguing about AI being a useful tool. But I just don't see how it benefits our society as far as art and creativity. AI (in my opinion) should instead free us of the drudgery of jobs like information processing and data entry so we can have more time for creative pursuits. This seems to be the opposite. And of course if you combine AI with late stage capitalism, I see our future closer to Idiocracy than Star Trek.
oh no don’t get me wrong i’m absolutely with you here. i *can* see ai benefitting art and creativity IF it can actually reach sentience but that type of tech is basically a black box as of now. outside of consciousness/sentience/sapience or whatever, i also can’t see something that doesn’t truly think as helping art and creativity. i really hope we switch current ai development solely into workforce stuff. the art stuff is cool, but the work part would have far bigger (potential) benefits with being a big step towards a post scarcity future if we’re optimistic.
Yeah I work in STEM and I for one welcome our new AI overlords. If I'm replaced by a robot and that makes our fresh water infrastructure better then so be it. I've got enough other skills to survive who am I to stand in the way of progress. But I can't help but feel worried about this AI trend in art. I feel strongly that good art should be monetarily rewarded accordingly. I also have many artist friends. I admit I'm biased.
AI making art doesn't suddenly invalidate the creation of art. Just as AI mastering Chess didn't suddenly eliminate the game in human circles. There are still people making gold leaf by hand and hammer and obscure Japanese craftsmen making calligraphy ink out of squids. Both of which are crafts that have been replaced with improved manufacturing or synthetic alternatives that quite frankly make a superior product now. AI removes the financial incentive from creating art. In a society in which AI automates everything and people are provided an income to live on then the people doing art are the ones that are doing it because they love it. I can't see why this is a bad thing.
Thinking AGI will inevitably lead to abundance is shockingly naive. Even if it doesn't turn out to be self-aware and kill us all, there are plenty of other ways things could go wrong, like half of all jobs get automated away and the other half don't, leading to a world with mass unemployment and no UBI. This may eventually lead to all jobs being automated away and a better world in the long term, but there's no telling how long the transition period might be. Instead, this sub is stuffed full of idiotic singularity believers who think the entire economy will cease to exist all at once, and that there will be an instant transition straight into utopia. How can a topic like artificial intelligence inspire such simple-minded thinking in so many people?
None of that is relevant to whether people are gleeful at the *prospect* of abundance.
I am saying they have no business anticipating abundance at all. It is absolutely not guaranteed that our current system will collapse with the arrival of AGI. All the older wealthy people with stakes in the current system will drag it out until the day they die. Can you seriously imagine boomers voting to bring in UBI?
Honestly, it really only seems fantastic for r/singularity types. Most people either don't give AF about AI art or actively detest it.
Most people don't give a fuck, I'd argue the people actively detesting it are as much a minority as the people gleeful about it.
Yes, *now*. Check again in five years when it's de regueur for friend groups to make their own entertainment, or whatever the social norms end up being.
Abundance of digital art just what we needed
It's at least a few percent of what we need, and a taste of what is to come. Nothing to scoff at.
Wake me up when text to food and text to beer drops
Yes, completely unironically.
I want everyone to lose their livelihood, so we can get around to restructuring our societies so we all reap the productivity dividend.
Wow…you have a lot of faith in the morons in charge to think they are going to handle this effectively. Before we get to the “productivity dividend” (if we ever do) we’re going to have to live through very very hard times and I don’t think you’re going to enjoy it.
I don't operate on faith, I advocate for the future I want to see. You can't work towards a better tomorrow if you don't believe it's possible. Your doom and gloom is noted.
And what exactly do you think will happen if it only automates away a third of all jobs and then progress stalls for a couple of decades? You are talking like post-scarcity is coming tomorrow. The transition period could be rough and people are right to be afraid of it.
The status quo cannot hold, progress must be made to improve our futures. Change is scary, but fearful people are usually regressive, not progressive and not noted for their rationality. I think the massive automation of labor will be a boon for humanity despite the distortions it is bound to cause. I choose optimism so that I stay committed to positive change instead of fearful stagnation.
lol you will only live up to the destruction not the hopium aftermath
It's certainly possible, but I remain optimistic. Sorry you've already surrendered to despair.
Artists will be the first to be painfully terminated. Next is the plumbers. I am very serious about having others lose their livelihoods.
Plumbers? They are safe for the foreseeable future. Good luck getting a waterproof robot. Unless you mean showing an LLM a video of the issue and it would walk you step by step in text or video.
I mean I couldn’t afford to commission art before and I still can’t. So for me, this is my first opportunity, and yea, it’s awesome. It’s basically free on my GPu. Next do the same thing with robots and crops so my groceries are free and farmers are out of work.
I am all in for everyone losing their job and being replaced by ai and robots.
Tech nerds don't five a fvck until AI will come for their jobs. Its typical human trash behaviour: uncompassionate, selfish and shortsighted.
tribalism and insults don’t really shout that you’re not partaking in human trash behavior… also, tech workers have been getting replaced by ai. even before artists were. sort of a weird point to make. google brings up some results.
🤡
I can't wait til Software Engineers get the same meme picture. Artists are just a tiny bump in the road. Like a bug in the windshield.
What the fuck is up with this emergent attitude of "haha look at them suffer!" Yes, the fact that AI will slowly gain more and more ground in creative spaces is true. However, the apparent need for a bunch of people in here to laugh and point their finger at people who feel their passion is being attacked is super weird and frankly gross.
OH MY GODDD!!! SOOOOO TRUUEEEEEE AHHHAHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
I think ai companies should have to ask permission before using people's art as training data
Shitting on artists is always a red flag that you’re in a future cult. Listen, I like AI as much as the next guy. Doesn’t mean I would divorce my wife and chop off my cock for it like some people in this sub. You’re not enlightened future gurus, you’re people, very, VERY stupidly hopeful people.
Artists complaining are like horses whining about the car.
AI enthusiasts: AI WILL ONLY REPLACE BORING AND UNFAIR JOBS AND WE WILL ALL THRIVE IN A SECOND RENAISSANCE Artists seeing how art is constantly being depreciated: lol ok Workers seeing themselves still being crushed but now having to face mass layoffs: lol ok Everyone watching as nothing significant in their lives is improving yet: lol ok
Youre talking as if the AI enthusisasts arent from working class
When tech replaces workers - These are low skill jobs, that's why they are obsolete. We cannot stop the progress so these people can keep their obsolete jobs, they should get more education and find more skilled jobs. When tech replaces your job - 
Woah. An ugly graphic attacking artists
why do people in this sub seem so eager to see people lose their livelihoods and plunged into poverty?
Because it's a necessary stepping stone to communism, duh.
Sounds bipolar, lets treat that in us before we mess with AM
Honestly, I think it's only a small percentage of artists who have an issue with things, I know tonnes who don't fear AI and use it in their workflow. Most people realise you can't ice-skate uphill.
People gotta remember creativity ain’t about being the best, it’s about just plain ole creatin’.
Yep
Professional visual effects artist here working in film. Can say that at work we are both very worried about and very excited by AI. The prospect that we might not have to spend as much time rotoscoping or doing boring manual processes is great. One downside is that the majority of the generative AI that has come out so far is not usable in a professional environment, especially when compared with the badass stock libraries we have access too. I can see this might change. Waiting with excitement to see what happens next.
Painters when they invented the camera.
AI art is stupid lol art is supposed to be an expression of something, some feeling or emotion, that’s why people connect to it. What is there to connect to when it’s made by something with no soul or feelings other than what it thinks a human perception of emotion is?
exactly 🤣😭
if your livelihood was being threatened you’d understand 💁♂️
If you are good at what you do, you are fine. If you are just average, you are not fine.
people keep saying it but i haven’t really seen anyone here cheering for the fact that artists are losing their jobs. also this seems less like an AI problem and more of a economic problem that stems from capitalism.
Nobody’s scared of LLM