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
Lack of empathy is because we are discussing about systems, not feelings

At the dawn of mechanization, these same arguments were being used by the luddites, I'd recommend you to read them, it was quite an interesting situation, same as now

The reality is that advances such as these can't be stopped, even if you forbid ml legislation in the US there are hundreds of other countries which won't care same as it happens with piracy

>>CyanBi+3d
I don't disagree, except I don't get what you mean with "because we are discussing systems, not feelings."

I think artists feeling like shit in this situation is totally understandable. I'm just a dilettante painter and amateur hentai sketcher, but some of the real artists I know are practically in the middle of an existential crisis. Feeling empathy for them is not the same as thinking that we should make futile efforts to halt the progress of this technology.

>>hippie+Ki
I agree, but we should pay attention when we are asked for empathy. In this very thread we have an excellent demonstration of how easy it is for an appeal to feel empathy for people's position to change into an appeal to protect the same people's financial position.

I'll go so far as to say that in many cases, displaying empathy for the artists without also advocating for futile efforts to halt the progress of this technology will be regarded as a lack of empathy.

>>Kalium+uB
It seems like you conflate protecting the financial position with futile efforts to halt the progress of this technology.

You can make sure the people from which their jobs where taken by an AI should be able to live from its proceeds. We all benefit and make progress.

>>except+hD2
I am not so much conflating them by accident as expressing my belief that the two are the same. I am not convinced that we can make sure the people from which their jobs where taken by an AI will be able to live from its proceeds.

There's a very real chance that adding these costs on top will drive development away from the sort that pays the people who lose out. For example, attempting to require licensing for images may simply push model training towards public domain materials. Then the models still work and the usable commercial art is still generated cheaply, but there are no living artists getting paid.

We should not blithely assume an ideal option that makes everyone happy is readily available or even at all. The core incentive of a lot of users is to spend less on commercial imagery. The core incentive of artists is to get paid at least as much as before. We should take seriously the possibility that there is not a medium in there that satisfies everyone.