zlacker

>>dredmo+(OP)
I've been finding that the strangest part of discussions around art AI among technical people is the complete lack of identification or empathy: it seems to me that most computer programmers should be just as afraid as artists, in the face of technology like this!!! I am a failed artist (read, I studied painting in school and tried to make a go at being a commercial artist in animation and couldn't make the cut), and so I decided to do something easier and became a computer programmer, working for FAANG and other large companies and making absurd (to me!!) amounts of cash. In my humble estimation, making art is vastly more difficult than the huge majority of computer programming that is done. Art AI is terrifying if you want to make art for a living- and, if AI is able to do these astonishingly difficult things, why shouldn't it, with some finagling, also be able to do the dumb, simple things most programmers do for their jobs?

The lack of empathy is incredibly depressing...

>>meebob+kc
Making art is not "vastly more difficult" or at least it is (IMO) highly debatable. Some parts of it require decades of experience to do with any kind of excellence, yes. That's also the case with powerlifting, figure skating and raising children and indeed programming. It's just that your boss made a money printer that takes in bullshit and outputs bullshit which gives you your cosy job.

But that is not "programming". That is glueing together bullshit until it works and the results of that "work" are "blessing" us everyday. The gift that keeps on giving. You FAANG people are indeed astronomically, immorally, overpaid and actively harm the world.

But, luckily, the world has more layers than that. Programming for Facebook is not the same as programming for a small chemical startup or programming in any resource-restricted environment where you can't just spin up 1000 AWS instances at your leisure and you actually have to know what you're doing with the metal.