> Why can't people be happy that more individuals would be soon able to create freely in a more accessible way?
The gates are wide open for those that want to put in effort to learn. What AI is doing to creative professionals is putting them out of a job by people who are cheap and lazy.
Art is not inaccessible. It's never been cheaper and easier to make art than today even without AI.
> Personally I can't wait to see the new creative doors ai will open for us!
It's opening zero doors but closing many
---
What really irks me about this is that I have _seen_ AI used to take away work from people. Last weekend I saw a show where the promotional material was AI generated. It's not like tickets were cheaper or the performers were paid more or anything was improved. The producers pocketed a couple hundred bucks by using AI instead of paying a graphic designer. Extrapolate that across the market for arts and wonder what it's going to do to creativity.
It's honestly disgusting to me that engineers who don't understand art are building tools at the whims of the financiers behind art who just want to make a bit more money. This is not a rising tide that lifts all ships.
That's how human brains work. People have an intrinsic need to sort, build hierarchies and prioritize. Effort spent is one of viable heuristics for these processes.
> Why should being an artist be a viable job?
Art itself has great value, if it weren't, museums, theaters and live shows wouldn't exist.
> Would you be against technology that makes medical doctors obsolete?
The analogy doesn't work. The results of a medical process is a [more] healthy person. The result doesn't have any links to the one performing it. Result of an artistic creative process is an art piece, and art is tied to its creator by definition.
I think the result of an art piece is "wow that looks pretty cool / makes me feel this certain way". Human properties aren't required there. Sure, some art rests on there being human properties, but then AI wouldn't be able to replace it by definition. You can argue that AI lowers the discoverability of art that falls in the latter category, but I'd say that it's a solvable problem that can be fixed with better recommendation algorithms.
> I think the result of an art piece is "wow that looks pretty cool / makes me feel this certain way".
This is an expansive definition and thus not useful, because it would include:
1. Natural phenomena (sand on a vibrating plate is pretty cool).
2. Folk crafts (this hand-woven rug sure ties the room together!).
3. Advertisement.
4. Industrial design (this soap dispenser looks like a droid head, awesome!).
5. Drug induced experiences.
6. Art forgery and plagiarism.
Nothing in the list is really art. Rough definition of art is an intentional process (or the results thereof) of self-expression, and/or interpretation/modeling of reality performed with symbolic means. This implies intentionality and a conscience, which current "AI" doesn't have.
> AI lowers the discoverability of art that falls in the latter category, but I'd say that it's a solvable problem that can be fixed with better recommendation algorithms.
Theoretically it is. However, it won't be ever solved and implemented widely due to the lack of incentives and the fact that just replacing it all with "AI" is much more profitable and exploitable.
I would be against technology that freezes medicine at our current understanding and makes it economically unviable to develop new medicine.
I don't think it's worthwhile to explain the inherent value of human created art or that to learn how to do it one must put some effort into it. All I can say is, if you are one of those people who do not understand art, please don't build things that take away someone else's livelihood without very good reason.
I don't think the majority of AI generation for art is useful for anything but killing artists.
On effort being a requirement: part of art is around playing with limits of a medium and finding a way in it, it takes a lot of trials, attempts, and errors for an artist to make their way. It's not a requirement per se, but something needed for someone to intent something different. Not worried about creative ways where artists explore AI, new things will come out of it and it's going to be interesting. Not worried either about post-modernists who already dropped requirements long time ago and tape bananas to walls, they'll find their way. But the category artists who make their way through the effort put in a medium, not only the narrative around the medium will be affected.
On jobs: craftsmanship is slightly different than art: industries are built with people who can craft, there is today an artistic part in it but it's not the essence of the job: the ads industry can work with lower quality ads provided they can spam 10x. There is however an overlap between art/craftmanship: a lot of people working in these industries can today be in a balance where they live with a salary and dedicate time to explore their mediums. We know what will happen when the craftmanship part is replaced by AI, being an artist will require to have the balance in the first place.
It feels like a regression: it leads to a reduction of ideas/explorations, a saturation of the affected mediums, a loss of intent. Eager to see what new things come out of it though.
I think effort is a signal that whatever the thing is, the artist/team -really- wanted to put it out there and have people view it. They had -something- that drove them to take the time and effort to make the thing.
Zero-effort output generators like prompting means people are just generating trash that they themselves don't even care about. So why should I take my time to watch/experience that?
The whole "GenAI is accessible" sentiment is ridiculous in my opinion. Absolutely nothing is stopping people from learning various art mediums, and those are skills they'll always have unlike image generators which can change subscription plans or outright the underlying model.
Absolutely no one should be lauding being chained to a big corp's tool/model to produce output.
---
Why should being an artist be a viable job? Well, people should get paid for their work. That applies to all domains except technical people love to look down on art while still wanting to watch movies, well produced youtube videos, etc. You can see it in action here on HN frequently: someone will link a blog post they took time to write and edit... and then generate an image instead of paying an artist. They want whatever effect a big header image provides, but are not willing to pay a human to do it or do it themselves. Somehow because it's "just art" it's okay to steal.
---
If tech has progressed to the point of true "general artificial intelligence", then likely all jobs will be obsolete and we're going to have to rethink this whole capitalism thing.
I think all industries should be utilizing tech to augment their capabilities, but I don't think actual people should be replaced with our current guesstimator/bullshitter "AI". Especially not critical roles like doctors and nurses.
The gates are wide open for those that want to put in effort to learn. What AI is doing to creative professionals is putting them out of a job by people who are cheap and lazy.
Art is not inaccessible. It's never been cheaper and easier to make art than today even without AI.
> Personally I can't wait to see the new creative doors ai will open for us!
It's opening zero doors but closing many
---
What really irks me about this is that I have _seen_ AI used to take away work from people. Last weekend I saw a show where the promotional material was AI generated. It's not like tickets were cheaper or the performers were paid more or anything was improved. The producers pocketed a couple hundred bucks by using AI instead of paying a graphic designer. Extrapolate that across the market for arts and wonder what it's going to do to creativity.
It's honestly disgusting to me that engineers who don't understand art are building tools at the whims of the financiers behind art who just want to make a bit more money. This is not a rising tide that lifts all ships.