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
No one is in programming to "do programming". They're in it to get things done. I didn't learn C++ in high school to learn C++, I learned it to make games (then C++ changed and became new and scary to me and so I no longer say I know C++, possibly I never did).

If an AI will take care of most of the finicky details for me and let me focus on defining what I want and how I want it to work, then that is nothing but an improvement for everyone.

>>XorNot+cf
I would point out that many (most?) people are in programming to make money, rather than get things done per se.

If an AI were to make it impossible to make a living doing programming, would that be an improvement for most readers of this site?

>>meebob+Wi
It should be an improvement for people to get a career in something they enjoy, instead of what pays the most money.

>>ZetaZe+Lm
What we're talking about here is the immanent arrival of it being impossible for a very large number of people to get a career in something they enjoy (making images by hand).

It's fair to suppose (albeit based on a very small sample size, i.e., the last couple hundred, abnormal years of history) that all sorts of new jobs will arise as a result of these changes- but it seems to me unreasonable to suppose that these new jobs of the future will necessarily be more interesting or enjoyable than the ones they destroyed. I think it's easy to imagine a case in which the jobs are all much less pleasant (even supposing we all are wealthier, which also isn't necessarily going to be true)- imagine a future where the remaining jobs are either managerial/ownership based in nature or manual labor. To me at least, it's a bleak prospect.

>>meebob+oq
At the risk of demonstrating a total lack of empathy and failure to identify, we long ago passed the arrival of it being impossible for a very large number of people to get a career in something they enjoy (making images by hand). Art has been a famously difficult career path for quite a long time now. This does not really seem like a dramatic shift in the character of the market.

Now, I have empathy. I paused a moment before writing this comment to identify with artists, art students, and those who have been unable to reach their dreams for financial reasons. I emphatically empathize with them. I understand their emotional experiences and the pain of having their dreams crushed by cold and unfeeling machines and the engineers who ignore who they crush.

Yet I must confess I am uncertain how this is supposed to change things for me. I have no doubt that there used to be a lot of people who deeply enjoyed making carriages, too.