Yep. Recording and photography killed almost all the value (social and financial) of middling artistic talent in music, storytelling, and visual arts, which may well have been what gave a lot of people a significant part of their sense of self-worth before that—plus, maybe, some income.
Now AI's coming for most of those who survived that first culling. And not just the middling-talent folks this time.
That's an interesting set of transition that I hadn't really comprehended. People used to be entertained by live performers in their local area.
Printing, photography, radio, film, television, etc have all increased the availability and 'quality' of entertainment available at the same time as reducing the number of creators involved. (Obviously there is some debate possible around quality)
That kind of assumes people consumed the same amount of entertainment throughout history, which I don't think is correct.
It also assumes that they were constrained to local creators.
It is possible that people simply did other activities that don't involve a creator. Another possibility is that most people consumed content from a small set of non-local creators, like authors with wide distribution.
It's Vonnegut's observation. He brings it up in a couple books or stories, IIRC, but like nearly all his themes or messages, it's included in Bluebeard.
Being a half-competent folk musician or good storyteller or being able to sketch pretty well used to be super valuable to your family and community. Not so much anymore. Expressions of those sorts of skills are more often tolerated than genuinely looked-forward-to, now. The need is gone.
People on this site complain about folks being consumers and not producers, not being creative—well, for a large swath of the arts, that's where it started. Recording and photography. Took it from something that was strongly socially encouraged & rewarded to something private. You can't fix that with "maker" movements—not in any major way.
Technology changed the social context and wiped out the external motivation & encouragement for a bunch of kinds of creative expression that were accessible to & achievable by the masses. AI is more of the same.
On the other hand, this is a great opportunity for new artists to embrace AI and make a career out of it, instead of cowering in fear.
There's a popular youtuber named Joel Haver who films videos, then uses an AI tool to convert them into animations, so they can be magically put into a space or fantasy setting.
AI dungeon is an text adventure where the content is AI-generated.
I also imagine tools similar to Github Co-pilot for other markets. Some AI could generate music or video games levels based on inputs from a user, then the user can take or modify the best bits. The goal hopefully being that they get something no human could have thought up, instead of just generating a bunch of mediocre content.
>There's a popular youtuber named Joel Haver who films videos, then uses an AI tool to convert them into animations, so they can be magically put into a space or fantasy setting.
Hang on, AI tool? Joel Haver converts every frame manually. His method is the literal opposite of using an AI tool. It's incredibly painstaking.
Uh no. Did you watch the video you posted in full? He uses software called “ebsynth”. He draws over a couple of frames in a scene and feeds the rest to the software, which attempts to match the style. It’s not perfect, which is why you see some weird glitches in the videos.
My grandfather and group sang.
From what tapes I have heard of them, they didn't sound worse than any other group of Appalachian gospel/blue grass singers.
My parents' wedding photos weren't 'professional' and I think they came out pretty well, perhaps even charming.
Sometimes I think people are putting too much stock in the notion of a 'perfect' life, rather than a lived one.
Most people wouldn't and millions of the cds are sold from the most popular bands (world best is subjective). When it comes to live most people would pay 10x times more to sit 100x further away to see world class vs a cover band playing the same music.
This is going to push us back to making our own music like we use to. Singing/playing should be a fun group activity rather a performance given to a group of non performers. We are all artists.
I mean the whole concept of "world's best" in terms of art doesn't even make sense. It rarely, if ever, makes sense in other areas or fields as well. (even sports, where it is is sometimes objective, records and acheivements are broken all the time again and again)
Now AI's coming for most of those who survived that first culling. And not just the middling-talent folks this time.