In a post-scarcity solarpunk future, I could imagine some reasonable uses, but that’s not the world we’re living in yet.
AI art has already poisoned the creative environment. I commissioned an artist for my latest solarpunk novel, and they used AI without telling me. I had to scrap that illustration. Then the next person I tried to hire claimed they could do the work without AI but in fact they could not.
All that is to say, fuck generative AI and fuck capitalism!
Is this what Penny Arcade looks like nowadays? Man I really dislike the shift in art style…Tycho looks grotesque
I feel like enjoying AI “art” is the same entertainment type as scrolling through Facebook or TikTok. Fine to kill time, but nothing that will improve our lives. In other words It’s a perfect media for the future to get addicted to, and get nothing done.
the first rule of the server is to be constructive, you may want to keep that in mind when posting
control of ai by capital is bad, we all know that on this server; what are the next steps then? this is what solarpunks should ask themselves (first of all they prob need to unionize their workplace, for those not freelance, to ensure their jobs)
also those artists who used ai without telling you just want to get by their lives and are costrained by the system as you and as me
-artists- prob need to unionize their workplace
You’ll have an easier time unionizing programmers. I don’t mean that as snark, because most visual art can be very easily outsourced, whether it’s 2D or 3D. People with audio arts are even more fucked, thanks in no small part to record labels.
I wish I had an idea to start fixing this
You’ll have an easier time unionizing programmers
Ye I’ve been since the start until some months ago in the Italian chapter of tech workers coalition because of this :P
I wish I had an idea to start fixing this
I do have ideas but the thing is that almost no one can fully save other people. Like the unionizing thing: we tried to unionize from outside but just doesn’t work if people inside don’t hammer everyday. We can think about cooperative models but even if we start a coop people will have to jump in your ship they can’t just keep the comfort of the status quo
It’s hard but my protip is that everyone should first acknowledge every kind of own power in their own life. Then think how to use it. For example I don’t have much but I happen to have some rural land. I’ll probably make a community space out of it but first I need to ensure myself some other basic survival power lol (basically, I want to go back to studying to then have a useful job for the society I envision)
AI is a lot like plastic:
It is versatile and easy to use. There are some cases for which it is the highest quality product for the job; but for most cases it is just a far cheaper alternative, with bit of a quality reduction.
So what we end up with is plastic being used a lot, to reduce costs and maximise profits; but mostly the products it is used for are worse than they would otherwise be. They look worse. They degrade faster. They produce mountains of waste that end up contaminating every food source of every animal in the world. As a species, we want to use it less; but individual companies and people continue to use it for everything because it is cheap and convenient.
I think AI will be the same. It is relatively cheap and convenient. It can be used for a very wide range of things, and does a pretty good job. But in most cases it is not quite as good as what we were doing before. In any case, AI output will dominate everything we consume because of how cheap and easy it is. News, reviews, social media comments, web searches, all sorts of products… a huge proportion will be AI created - and although we’ll wish they weren’t (because of the unreliable quality), it will be almost impossible to avoid; because its easier to produce 1000 articles with AI than a single one by a human. So people will churn junk and hope to get lucky rather than putting in work to insure high quality.
For individual people creating stuff, the AI makes it easier and faster and cheaper; and can create good results. But for the world as a whole, we’ll end up choking on a mountain of rubbish, as we now have to wade through vastly more low-quality works to find what we’re looking for. It will contaminate everything we consume, and we won’t be able to get rid of it.
It’s not even the fact it’s cheap and easy, it’s just a bunch of idiots overinvested and now they’re desperately trying to make it A Thing so they can recoup losses.
Mcdonalds tried to shoehorn it into drive thru orders. The place that popularised a set menu you select a a controlled list of items from. Wtaf.
Every artist complaining about AI art is like John Henry.
If AI is stealing because it’s using art in it’s learning algorithm, then so is every artist who has studied other artists for inspiration. AI just happens to do it a hell of a lot faster, kind of like how all technology does when it replaces any other form of labor. And while AI art can’t compete with the top 0.1% of artists, it can certainly compete with the bottom 99.9%, and it can produce thousands of images in the time it takes an artist to produce 1, which is plenty good enough for most applications.
No. AI art isn’t going anywhere. It’s too convenient and we’re not going to reverse course just to save jobs, something we have never done in the advancement of technology. No one stopped the steam engine driving railroad spikes because they wanted John Henry to keep his job. No one stopped the printing press because they were concerned about scribes. No one stopped the DVD because they were worried about what VRC repair men would do afterwards.
AI art is a tool, and it’s here to stay. Adapt or fall victim to the progress of technology. “AI art is sTEaLiNg” is some desperate nonsense that I think even those making it know deep down is BS. It’s the only argument being made because all the technical ones about quality, speed, and availability have quickly fallen flat. AI art is higher quality, faster, and more accessible to users than regular art and it’s not even a question. So all they have left is “it’s theft!” while conveninetly ignoring that it’s the same fucking thing they did to learn art, just in a much faster, more optimized way.
“If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.” Artists are firmly in the table pounding stage.
I agree. Times change. Putting people out of work is not inherently a bad thing. How many oil workers and coal miners will be out of work when we ban fossil fuels? How many jobs emptying chamber pots and hauling dung were lost when cities installed sewer systems? Hell, how many taxi drivers were put out of work by Uber, and how many Uber drivers are about to be put out of work by self-driving vehicles? When specialized labor is replaced by technology that can do it faster and cheaper, that’s good for society as a whole.
The problem is, society also needs better support for people whose jobs are replaced by technology, and that’s something we don’t have. The logic of capitalism requires unemployed people to suffer, so workers fear losing their jobs and don’t oppose their bosses. OP’s comic shouldn’t be read as an attack on AI, but as an attack on capitalism.
If only we’d replace Uber drivers and taxis with trains and busses -_-
You said this very well. It’s no more stealing than you looking at a piece of art and remembering details, and producing output from that input no more immoral.
It’s clearly necessary to have the broadest possible training data in order to be useful at all. If it isn’t familiar with Spider-Man it can’t create art depicting an accurate representation of him.
If anything I’m proud of the pioneers ignoring the legal implications and pushing forward, instead of letting copyright limit what AI understands.
Every single picture on the Internet, ever created, unless specifically licensed Creative Commons or equivalent via licensing has an implicit copyright. AI art is impossible under international copyright framework at written, so thank God they ignored the insanity of intellectual property fuckery the US has imposed on the world.
Yeah I can’t look at artists with zero nuance for AI as anything but being hypocritical. Most artists I know from the industry understand that legally they have no case against these companies because they use the same fundamental freedoms and ideas extracted from the collective human creativity they themselves used to get where they are. And art and creative studies explicitly teach you this. You will spend a lot of time analyzing great works to see what makes them so special, and replicating those ideas as practice.
It’s how it’s been since forever, and many great artists in history are on record as having directly studied, imitated, or producing homages of other great artists. The Mona Lisa is the best example, it has uncountable derivative works, but nobody questions the ethics of that because we accept even works directly based on another have room for creative input that can make it distinct. And nobody is claiming to have made the original, just their own version.
Hiding or downplaying those facts about the creative industry so you can call AI theft without being a hypocrite is very questionable behaviour, especially since it’s often used to convince people that don’t know much about the creative process and can’t properly realize their ignorance is being taken advantage of to condition them these aren’t just a normal part of becoming a better artist. And if pressed on that, the response is usually “but it’s okay if a human does it.”, admitting that the point was intentionally misrepresented to not hint people in on the fact the AI is doing the same as the human, and not explicit copyright infringement akin to real theft.
You can still not like AI or argue to provide better protections for people displaced by AI, I honestly partially agree. The technology needs to remain something in the hands of the working people that contribute to the collective, not gated behind proprietary services built to extort you. But arguing against AI on a level of theft or plagiarism (barring situations where the person using the AI intends to do exactly that) is just incredibly disingenuous and makes allies not want to associate with you because you’re just spouting falsehoods for personal gain. Even if I think you deserve all the help in the world, you’re asking me to accept and propagate a lie to support you, I will not do that.
And there’s the flipside. Limiting those freedoms in a way that AI would be outlawed or constrained would most likely cause unintentional side effects that can blow up in artist’s faces, limiting not only their freedoms but also the freedoms of artists that embrace AI and use it as the tool it’s meant to be. And you bet your ass that companies like Disney are just salivating at the idea of amending copyright law once more.
Someone said something that stuck with me the other day. “I don’t want AI to create all of our art and music so we can work more. I want AI to do our work so we have more time to create art and music”.
Funny - I distinctly remember not having any time to recreationally make, and most importantly, actually finish small art pieces. Because our society nowadays demands me to be working on things that aren’t quite art for 80% of the time I’m awake. AI assisted tools have caused me to be able to use that 20% to actually make something again in a satisfactory way. At least for me and most people I talk to in a similar situation, it has allowed me to enjoy being creative again.
That’s cool. It helps me at work too.
The reason for that is that you have to look at this as if you’re some greedy corporate bastard.
A robot butler costs money to build and if it doesn’t pan out, they’re on the hook for the cost. Firing people saves money right now, and if generative art doesn’t pan out, they can hire new employees that will work for less.
AI is just the latest craze to justify what these greedy bastards do all the time. The way they’re fucking us is new, but the act of fucking us is as old as dirt.
A tale as old as time
Currently reading Cloud Atlas and these comments accompany it pretty well
True as it could be
AI is on its way to automate most jobs. The economy is about radically change
Yeah, except we don’t have anything even close to ready for everyone who will lose their income. I foresee a lot of hardship coming, especially since those in power tend to horde all resources for themselves, and AI will allow them to horde resources at never before imaginable levels.
That should be at the forefront of our political discourse. We had Andrew Yang bring make some noise back in 2019/2020, but he was the only one to bring AI, automation, and UBI and he kind of faded into irrelevancy. Which is unfortunate because nobody else is talking about any of these things, especially the dinosaurs we have running for president right now.
Simmer down Ted Kazynski, AI is good and actually helps the poor and hurts the rich that’s why megacorps like the RIAA want to ban it. Open source non profit models run locally that trvialize violating IP and remove gatekeeping from the art industry is the closest thung to socialism we’ll ever see.
Call me an optimist but I think the closest thing to socialism we’ll ever see is socialism, not a cool new app.
App? Is that really how you lot see tech? Apps on a phone spoonfed you by a corporation? No wonder you fucking hate it lol I would too, it’s just sad. I don’t use apps or corporate products as I can, that’s why I like GenAI, it’s pure expression of the socialist politics of open source software.
No, just the impression I got from what you said. Emphasis on the socialism, not on the computer program.
We practice it where we can. Right now IRL is bust, but the internet has been a bustling hive of communal activity for the betterment of all humanity, open source GenAI included.
Yeah the art community hated desktop publishing too. People who spent decades working with moveable type were made obsolete.
The problem is not that creativity is easier, the problem is our industrialist masters are all too eager to replace us from the artist to the driver to the lawyer to the task laborer to the engineer.
This isn’t a new problem. The reason Disney only does CGI and live action movies now is because the cell animators unionized.
It’s not the technology. It’s the system that lets you die for the grace of profit-minded industrialists.
With the US on the brink of autocratic rule, it’s really time to take seriously the notion of communist revolution.
IMHO what makes it more appealing now than 20 years ago is the bonkers inequality. We could do a really bad job at socialism and still be better off than we are today. We’re just flushing trillions of dollars worth of value down the toilet on pointless nonsense that only like 100 people want.
So during the Great Depression (about a century ago) the industrialists were totally happy, and Hoover was on board with them. The people were seriously thinking about doing that thing Lenin was trying over in the Soviet Union, because really anything was better than eating flour paste and living in cardboard and stacked paint cans.
According to Behind the Bastards in their two parter How The Rich Ate Christianity, FDR’s New Deal was in order to give capitalism another chance since it really was doing the people wrong, and Hoover and his industrialist pals really hated it.
(Christianity at the time was also on team-pinko, except they believed it was the responsibility of wealth and industry to just be relentlessly charitable, so at the time the industrialists had no allies in the Church. The current right wing guns-and-money Christian Nationalism is the product of a decades long propaganda campaign to turn the faith into a pro-wealth, pro-capitalism ideology. And the Catholic Church and Protestant ministries alike bought into it.)
Link to the full Penny Arcade comic: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/07/01/jobophage
I think the way forward is to label and be honest about AI.
So to your point OP, I agree, using AI art is fine, but lying about it is bad just like lying about your vendors.
You come across as anti-tech out of spite. Yes, generative AI is snake oil, but that is a question of scope and power and speculation, not utility of easy to create pictures.
I am so happy with the vast amount of free art available these days. As a blogger, it’s easier than ever to find a free topical picture.
“hooray convenience, fuck your livelihood.”
“hooray convenience, fuck your livelihood.”
This is literally how everyone behaved when bank tellers were replaced by ATMs, when coal diggers were replaced by drills, when daily laborers were replaced by tractors, when Morse code operators were replaced by the telephone, when travel agents were replaced by websites, when warehouses and factories started delivering you your Amazon package in 1 day instead of 5 because they replaced humans with machines…
And now that technology is coming for artists instead of all the other jobs it replaced so far, now you wanna go back to the way things were?
Get with the times. I don’t wish this situation upon anyone, it’s devastating to see your profession reduced to a few clicks, but it’s silly to say “nah, THIS change is crossing the line”. Hundreds of millions of people before you lost their job to new tech. Let me know when you hire a town crier instead of whipping out your phone and searching for the news, and I’ll hire you for a painting instead of getting AI to apply some paint-like filters on a photo. Until then, I’m sorry but your job is in the process of being rendered obsolete, like so many others before it.
Who said this is where I draw the line? My job isn’t under threat from AI until it can actually reason, which an LLM will never achieve. Or at least, we’d better hope not because professorGPT is just a confident moron at the moment. That’s not how the foundational technology works. It may be able to amalgamate something convincing enough to pass for people who don’t care, but it will never understand art. Hell, it can barely produce usable code and that is with the tremendous benefit of defined syntax, which art does not have.
Drills didn’t have to steal the expertise of diggers to operate, and the diggers became the drillers because they knew where to dig and how to not die in the process. Telephones didn’t immediately cut out skilled labor and many became switchboard operators. Day laborers are still hired every day? Do you even understand how dumb your argument is?
Gen AI has nothing without being fed source material, if that material is not being paid for or in the public domain, it is just plain theft. Any other argument you want to make is going to have to reconcile with that fundamental problem first. Until then all you’re doing is advocating for the wealthy to own everything because you get to say “but it’s convenient, fuck the consequences.”
Also the irony of championing AI in a solarpunk community of all places. The current model is as bad as it could be through the lens of solarpunk ideology.
Thing is, without art to train on Gen AI is useless. So it steals training data, from artists. Then it steals work from the same artists by using the stolen data.
Tell me, where will the new training data come from when artists are not publishing because they aren’t getting work?
If you use Gen AI, it is obvious and makes you look like a no-tallent hack, and a grifter.
As a blogger
You realize you’re next on the AI chopping block, right?
Most are crap ad mills anyways trying to game SEO Only interesting ones I’ve read in the past couple years are technical deep dives where the creators don’t even care to put ads on it.
You’re absolutely right, which is why Orcrist here shouldn’t be encouraging the use of AI.
I think that day has long since passed. Blogs don’t show up on search results anymore unless you’re amazing and lucky, which I’m not. Meh. :-)
Yes, generative AI is snake oil, but that is a question of scope and power and speculation, not utility of easy to create pictures.
“Sure, AI can’t fully replace human artists, but that’s just because the technology hasn’t advanced far enough yet.”
I am so happy with the vast amount of free art available these days. As a blogger, it’s easier than ever to find a free topical picture.
dirtbag
Sounds like if you want to be able to actually protect yourself from potential infringement, you’re going to require your artists to record themselves creating the art the entire process. And that video itself would be part of your defense
Now that sounds dystopian as fuck. Because at scale this will involve human workers being tracked all the time and limited in their freedom. Ironically an AI might be used to track what workers do in such a scenario.
Having them send over the project file (like PSD file) without having flattened any of the layers probably is enough.
Oh look, it’s Mira Murati!
Okay, so the talk show host is supposed to be the comic author. Who is the woman supposed to be?
My guess is the CTO of Chat GPT: Mira Murati. based on a mix of how she’s appeared in interviews, including this one with the WSJ.
Also that is who she is tagged as in the comic in question.
People are still confusing art with output… Even if llms caould generate a 1:1 replica of the Monalisa, do people thing it’s going to have the same value and be held in the same regard?
Generated output is a gimmick that will be used by people who have no intention of making art.
If AI tools were more advanced, they would free up resources from small artists that want to make multidisciplinary works, like movies and games. The issue is with capitalism requiring artists to sell their art to put food on their table instead of making art for the craft itself. Point your pitchforks and torches at people supporting capitalism, not the people developing tools that make creation easier.
Well, they aren’t. Until they are, let’s keep the conversation to what they are.
Great! Can’t wait for all the directionless cashgrabs on steam and AAA Hollywood brainrot to come out faster at the cost of people’s jobs!
Game engines were a mistake because they allow people to make content faster. Back in the 90s people would have had to learn assembly to make a game. Think of all the programmers that lost their jobs.
Big, fat /s
That’s great! What’s your plan exactly to take down capitalism? I have a month, I bet we could knock this out.
It’s probably pretty similar to your plan to take down “AI.”
If there is no plan to take down capitalism, why would I waste any time being upset about it when LLMs are already ruining my news feed.
Maybe I would listen to you if you actually cared about anything you were saying.
MLMs are coming whether you want them to or not. Only time will tell if they’re able to consistently get better. Might as well look at what they can do for people, since they’re not going anywhere in the immediate future.
Multi-level marketing?
One thing they can do for me is get out of my news feed.
Because I don’t want to see this shit.
Generated output is a gimmick that will be used by people who have no intention of making art.
Without getting into the definition of “art”, yes, people will use generated output for purposes other than “art”. And that’s not a gimmick. That’s a valuable tool.
Rally organizers can use AI to create pamphlets and notices for protests. Community organizers can illustrate broadsheets and zines. People can add imagery and interest to all sorts of written material that they wouldn’t have the time or money to illustrate with traditional graphic design. AI can make an ad for a yard sale or bake sale look as slick and professional as any big name company’s ads.
AI tools will make the world a more artistic place, they will let people put graphic art in all sorts of places they wouldn’t have the time or money or skill to do so before, and that’s a good thing.
Sure, my auntie will use a generator instead of paint for her yard sale poster. But we’re assuming Llms are going stay free and accessible to all at zero cost. That’s just not a reality we live in.
But comparing the current garbage that comes out of llms with “big name company’s ads” is purposeful misonformation from a person, who is likely never done graphiscs design professionally.
“AI” tools will not make the world a more artistic place. Art has never been limited by tools.
I could agree that the generated stuff could make the world slightly more pleasing visually, at the cost of environment.
But easily accessible graphics weren’t even the limiting factor. There are many tools online that can help you mock things up in seconds without “AI”. Canva, mockups, simple websites that generate decent templates.
It’s people’s willingness to put in the effort, and comprehension of aesthetics, and IT literacy that are the limiting factors.
Art has always been limited by access. Either to the tools, or to the ability to learn and practice. AI, at least in its current form, with open source models readily available, is only allowing more people to create who never could before. Getting into any art is expensive, both in money and time. Anyone with a half decent rig can get something set up and add a touch of art to their world, and begin to express themselves in SOME way.
Art has always been limited by access. Either to the tools, or to the ability to learn and practice.
Hard disagree.
AI, at least in its current form, with open source models readily available, is only allowing more people to create who never could before.
So are poeple are doing the creating or the machine? Because even the techbros are saying that it’s the machine.
Getting into any art is expensive, both in money and time.
Tell that to the poeple who did cave-paintings
Anyone with a half decent rig can get something set up and add a touch of art to their world, and begin to express themselves in SOME way.
Google “Mona Lisa” and print it out. That’s about the same amount of art as entering a prompt and receiving an output.
AI generated art is fundamentally different from printing a reproduction of something that exists 1:1. I’m not interested in going on depth on a technical discussion on AI, anyway. I’d rather discuss the philosophy.
As far as the role of man versus machine, using AI as a tool is more like being a director or composer. You determine the composition. The setting. The subject. The style. Let the machine do the labor of simply outputting, and then you tell it what you don’t like about this output.back and forth, until you arrive at whatever finished is. It’s as much art as a conductor in a symphony, or a director on a set, simply giving direction to a machine.
The issue that people have, or should have, with AI isn’t with AI art, it’s with it being shoe horned into everything that can make a buck. Open source generative AI running on my own machine has allowed me to express myself in ways I never could before. The point of art is expression, and regardless of the tools used to create, that output is still an expression of me. More people should have access to tools to express themselves, in whatever way they can.
As far as the role of man versus machine, using AI as a tool is more like being a director or composer. You determine the composition. The setting. The subject. The style. Let the machine do the labor of simply outputting, and then you tell it what you don’t like about this output.back and forth, until you arrive at whatever finished is. It’s as much art as a conductor in a symphony, or a director on a set, simply giving direction to a machine.
Now replace “AI” with an artist, and yourself with any mouth-breathing supervisor, that micro-manages artists.
You are employing something to do the art for you.
Amd my fucking god, comparing entering a prompt to a conductor. Techbros really are high on their own farts.
@Prandom_returns @Ookami38 The “I use AI as a tool” people are coping the hardest
will be used by people who have no intention of making art.
I think you mean ‘people who have no intention of paying for art.’
It also makes a way for the poor to be able to afford to get art to make comics and other things when they otherwise would have been unable to hire artists. Generative ai also allows poor people to write code they couldn’t before because they couldn’t afford the help. It also gives poor people the ability to brainstorm new ideas when they can’t afford a team of consultants.
It helps the poor, just like search engines and the internet. There were people back in those days scared of change as well. Gen ai is a huge equalizer or wealth and power. The vast majority of people using Gen Ai are using it for things that they never would have considered being able to hire someone to do anyway.
There’s another way for the poor to acquire art for their own comics. Can you guess what it is?
But I will literally die if I don’t get free plagiarized art :(
You would die (or be out on the street and wish you were dead) if your primary source of income relied on having access to filler art for some purpose and you didn’t have thousands of dollars to hire an artist.
Do I not have hands in this scenario? If I can’t draw why is my livelihood dependent on me making filler art?
Say you’re producing an independent film, or a game, or some other work that is multimedia, working on a shoestring budget, and with a limited set of skills.
Barter. Between artists. That kind of collaboration happens all the time and people are deliberately ignoring it so they can justify AI LLM’s.
Yeah, I can guess that you think that everyone who wants to make comics should either have to draw it themself or hire someone to draw it. Just like how you probably would have thought that anyone who wants a shirt should weave it themself or hire a hand weaver.
People will always create new and better machines to automate away what they don’t want to do. Similarly, there will always be people who are upset about this. It’s an age-old story. You can accept the times or try to prevent an avalanche with your body, but that snow doesn’t care at all about your favorite little patch of land. It’s doing its thing regardless.
Environmentally speaking, people should probably learn to sew and not be overly reliant on unsustainable mechanisation.
Yeah, and they should probably not use cars, or plastics, or make spaceships, or airplanes, or smart phones, or beanie babies. They shouldn’t farm or hunt more than they need. They shouldn’t make medicines either. They should do none of these things if preserving the environment is the number one concern. The issue is that there are billions of years of evolution driving us to explore and conquer, to learn and manipulate our surroundings, to do anything we can to stay alive and keep our lived ones alive. That couple billion years absolutely annihilates any vague notion of preserving the environment. I’m not saying it’s a better idea, just that people are restless by design us all curling up into little balls and having minimal impact on the environment simply isn’t going to happen unless something massively limits us.
If only there was some kind of compromise between “drawing comics and sewing clothes” and “burn down the entire amazon rainforest to generate apes”
shh. if you can’t afford to pay people, then you should just die. /s
you’re quite right, and it’s a shame that generative AI art is treated like a gun and not a hammer. Both can be used to kill someone. (it’s not a great analogy, but hopefully people see my point about it generative AI being more than a weapon to kill artists)
I once heard an American saying, “God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal”, so perhaps the comparison to a gun isn’t that incorrect?
@RobotToaster @ASeriesOfPoorChoices
The comparison is correct, the logic is not. Sam Colt did not make humans equal. Look at the wealth and political power disparity between the richest and the poorest in Sam Colt’s nation. Notice anything?
And it helps the poor perform heart surgery because they couldn’t afford medical school. And it helps the poor build space craft because they couldn’t afford engineering degrees.
There’s a reason some of these things are done by experienced professionals not some AI kludge. If you really want to fix the problem, allow the poor access to education so they can become professionals in these areas if they so wish. The answer isn’t some AI telling them to put glue on their pizza.
I need a cover for my novel. Hold on real quick while I get this 4 year degree and spend $80k to send an fu to the AI overlords and design it myself.
After that I’ll throw my shovels away and use spoons instead.
Or you could pay someone… There’s a bunch of starting artists who work for cheap. There, saved you $79.5k Sadly your novel won’t sell because it’s been buried by an avalanche of ai generated books. (amazon recently limited the number of books you can self publish to only five per day… Your argument works both ways, why should I study and practice for years to learn to write my own novel (or pay you) when Ai can just generate it for me?
I recently commissioned a logo because AI is terrible at it. Once that becomes good enough, I don’t see myself paying another $100 when I can generate it for nearly free. I had submissions for the logo that were clearly AI generated. It’s the same problem with search, you won’t know what’s human unless you dig. It harms artists, but technology improvement always leaves a trail of industries obsoleted. The technology is here, it makes some work more efficient. If you cripple it now to save jobs, you’ll limit the investment and any future gains due to fear of repeat. I think the key is to look at it as a tool, not a replacement. It can certainly help you flush out your ideas and write a better book.
Gains for who? If Ai does all the art and books and all the artists are broke, the only ones left are the corporations making money, and the ones selling AI/hardware. The rest are left with generic art, and ironically, innovation in art will stall because Ai cannot innovate.
And it’s not being used as a tool, you yourself said that you’ll use it instead of paying an artist. As I said, there’s already a ton of Ai books being churned out, flooding the market. Are you fine with yourself being replaced by Ai because it’s cheaper?
I think at the point AI can “replace” artists, the individual becomes the artist. A much less exclusionary field if you don’t have the drawing ability. It becomes just another advanced paint brush.
The true creatives will still find a way to stick out. The definition of “art” will change.
the only ones left are the corporations making money,
So at worst by your logic there is no difference. I have no preference for artist capitalists over chipmaking capitalists.
What means of production do you think artists hold?? It’s absolutely deranged to put artists (who 99 times out of 100 are not wealthy) and CEOs in the same class.
This is why I focus on distribution rather than training. If you commercialize a model trained on things you don’t own/license, and it generates anything remotely infringing, you should be fully on the hook for every single incident.
But if a model is trained and distributed freely as FOSS, then it’s up to anyone running it to ensure the output is not infringing. This protects fair use while also ensuring that big companies tread more carefully when redistributing models that can violate fair use by competing with those whose work was trained on without permission and are subsequently being emulated without permission.
Who do you care so much about protecting the failed and unethical law of copyright? Are you going to tell me you don’t pirate media too?
Why do you care so much about defending unimaginably wealthy corporations stealing the labor of regular people?
See, now we have both misrepresented each others comments.
We don’t.
We also want to see capitalism gone as well as its copyright laws.
Likewise you weren’t misrepresented, you argued in favour of copyright.
In that case, I didn’t misinterpret you, either. You argued in favor of labor theft.
@JackGreenEarth @Veraxus
Failed and unethical as long as it’s used by non-human entities like “companies” to enrich bosses who didn’t create the content themselves. Just and ethical when it’s used to protect actual named human authors, and only them. Big difference. Big big difference.
First of all it concentrates power and wealth on the owners of the models (Microsoft, OpenAI) or the ones that provide the tools (Nvidia).
Yes, there is truth in it, that people who couldn’t afford to pay someone to create art, or get consulting, can get this now to a certain extend (if they can afford internet access and pay the AI services they need). But this comes also at the price of lowering the income of the people who provided these services. They now need to compete in the business creation market and not in the market that they trained for. Not everyone can create and maintain a business with or without starting money, just from a skill point of view. Nor does everybody want to.
The concentration of power part is not true unless people keep trying to use copyrights and the legal system to protect themselves from genai, at which point it will be true. Currently there’s plenty of self hosted solutions like stable diffusion and services like the ai horde to help even people without gpu for free
So your gonna solder your own video cards?
In theory sure, but in practice it’s just gonna give more control to MS and NVidia since they are the ones most people would use.
People buy GPUs already for video games and other purposes. We’re using the same consumer cards, not enterprise ones.
That still involves you giving lots of money to card manufacturers. Which is rather centralized atm (not many competitors).
You give money to centralized monopolistic capitalists regardless what you do
Not when I’m creating art by hand.
Sure I’m paying for a pencil and paper, but you don’t need massive investment into means of production to create that.
That’s why the Industrial Revolution changed things, you now need big factories for your critical tools.
You are still reliant on the models trained by these companies. This training is very expensive. And yes there are ioen source models exist (thank god) but there are also closed source models that are very successfully advertised.
And self hosting requires money and skill. This means there is a lot of people who lack both and may then use closed source models.
And self hosting requires money and skill. This means there is a lot of people who lack both and may then use closed source models.
This is what we’ve mostly to solved with the AI Horde, where we allow people to rely on self-hosted open models.
This is good news indeed.
But I see the same problems as with email, chat etc. You can selfhost almost everything. But too few people are doing it. You can use Linux as your Desktop and at least 4% are doing it. Still too few if you ask me.
And if most of the people keep using the commercial and closed source options over the self hosted one, then I see this concentration of power. Additionally, there is the risk of regulatory capture, where big companies may try to at least hinder self hosting due to (what I consider) made up risks.
However, its good that there are currently such good open source option. I hope they will grow and become the defacto standard.
But I see the same problems as with email, chat etc. You can selfhost almost everything. But too few people are doing it. You can use Linux as your Desktop and at least 4% are doing it. Still too few if you ask me.
The system is explicitly setup so that normal people don’t need to set up anything. Experts and enthusiasts are the one doing the complex work, while normies just use a simply client like this and power users can also use more advanced clients.
And if most of the people keep using the commercial and closed source options over the self hosted one, then I see this concentration of power.
That’s up to all of us to counter by promoting the good solutions instead, not of just despairing and begging politicians to fix this (they won’t, they’ll promote monopolies instead)
That’s up to all of us to counter by promoting the good solutions instead, not of just despairing and begging politicians to fix this (they won’t, they’ll promote monopolies instead)
That was always the case. Having said that, I’ll appreciate your enthusiasm and that you share this work.
@paw @db0
Exactly, this is just a diversionist argument pretending that just because a theoretical possibility exists the problem can be considered solved in practice - it’s like the decrepti old capitalist argument that “everyone can start their own company” if they don’t like how they’re treated as an employee. No they can’t, not in the real world out there. That only works on paper, i.e. if you ignore the current distribution of resources and privileges in the existing society and economy.This is not theoretical. It already is in place and is already serving people. The only reason it’s not growing more is because we don’t have any marketing and we don’t participate in the capitalist rot economy.
The people who get screwed are the ones who cling to the idea that AI is the enemy and refuse to learn to use it. The jobs will be taken by the flexible and adaptive people who use this new incredible tool. This isn’t a new idea, this is how it’s been as long as people have had any jobs and found any more efficient way to do them. The issue is that some people are more willing to continue to grow and adapt than others. The ones who are not willing to, maybe because they are old, or just have oversized egos, will be left behind while they shout angrily into the wind that progress is evil.
Umm what?
When I run a checkpoint at home, how do you think the creator of checkpoint is profiting or gaining any power/wealth?
This stuff is ridiculously easily self hosted and run independently of any company.
Can’t really run the models in reasonable amounts of time without a reasonable GPU, there’s still a bit of a cost barrier
It might be “ridiculously easy” but there is a reason why linux adoption is around 3ish%.
Its because it isnt the easiest option.
Don’t call it gen AI when you mean generative. It also implies artificial general intelligence which we do not have.
