AIs gunning for our precious freelancers

[Raphael]

It seems like everyone here [..] sees a huge problem with humans writing their own texts and so forth

No. That is not the position of "everyone" here. And there's no good reason for you to think that it is.

[malloc]

There is plenty. Everyone else in this this thread is defending generative AI and I am pretty much the only one criticizing it. Where is anyone else agreeing that it represents a problem?

[KathTheDragon]

I'd like you to pick out where I've defended generative networks. As I recall, I've been ridiculing it.

[Raphael]

There is plenty. Everyone else in this this thread is defending generative AI and I am pretty much the only one criticizing it. Where is anyone else agreeing that it represents a problem?

That's a common fallacy: when people disagree with you on something, it doesn't automatically mean that they're "on the other side of the issue". It can also mean that they start out from completely different ideas of what the issue is in the first place.

In this case, you assume that the issue is something like "Should human writers be replaced with AI?" That doesn't mean that everyone else agrees with you that that's the issue.

Besides, by now your life experiences should have taught you that you're simply not that good at understanding other people's opinions or positions.

[Ares Land]

But why do we even such things? We already have human writers, a venerable and cherished profession. It seems like everyone here and in the tech industry sees a huge problem with humans writing their own texts and so forth but nobody has explained why. Automation makes sense for boring and dangerous tasks but art and scholarship hardly falls into that category. People die in collapsing mines but nobody dies from writing a film script or drawing a portrait.

Myself, I think AI isn't very good at art and that humans are going to keep writing their own texts for the foreseeable future. All in all I just don't see the existential threat you're seeing.

I do think novels should be written by humans and I don't see the point of turning this over to machine. But again, I'm not really worried about that because I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen.
We're not going to leave art to the machines, not least because they're incapable of doing it.

(People are using ChatGPT to produce stuff like cover letters, minutes of meetings and bland commercial prose; but these are terribly tedious.)

[malloc]

Then how have AI generated images become so prevalent on sites like DeviantArt if machines cannot make good images? What the screen writers in strike now in particular because they fear chatGPT replacing them? Are all the artists and writers worried about AI simply paranoid and cherrypicking examples to make AI look more powerful than it really is? Back before twitter was still worthwhile, I was constantly seeing tweets by artists worried about their livelihood and the examples of AI generated images I've seen are often impossible to distinguish from human-drawn ones.

[xxx]

the great replacement has already begun,
and the line between boring and noble activities
is shifting at high speed,
driven by the advantage of lower costs...

[Moose-tache]

Lord, have mercy.

OK.

First of all, DeviantArt is where we as a society keep our anime titties. OpenAI lets you make anime titties for free in a fraction of a second. Of course DeviantArt is going to fill up with procedurally generated anime titties. This is a poor measuring stick for the nature of art. For one thing, boiler plate consumer pap has always been distinct from art, in that it has to cleave very closely to the client's brief. No one wants to be surprised or have their values called into question by a book cover they comissioned for an erotic Star Trek novel. This kind of art is much more in line with carpentry, plumbing, or other crafts. AI doesn't have to be good to do this work. It just needs to be cheaper than a person in the eyes of someone who is not picky.

And the writers have every reason to be against the studios replacing them with AI. First of all, the AI could literally just repeat the phrase "hello world" over and over, and the studios would fill their streaming platforms with shows like "hello world island" and "hello world in paradise." TV is terrible. But more to the point you don't need good AI to replace writers. Writers can be replaced by anything. Scabs. Filipino teenagers on Fiver. There are more Star Trek Lower Decks fan scripts kicking around harddrives than there are stars in the sky. Replaceability is constant and inherent to Capitalism. We're all replaceable if the ownership class decides to stop paying us.

It is irrelevant how "good" AI is at doing things. I mean, it's terrible at pretty much everything. Have you read a book written by AI? I have; they are unreadable, literally. But they could recreate Proust ex machina and that wouldn't be the problem. The problem is that only humans can produce value. It doesn't matter how many widgets your machine can turn into flanges to put into the machine that turns flanges into widgets. If there is no human involved, the whole process is value-inert.

[linguistcat]

First of all, DeviantArt is where we as a society keep our anime titties.

I'd actually point out that DA has somewhat of an algorithm to show you things similar to things you already look at. By and large, a lot of people on there do look at anime titties. I see occasional animated breasts myself, but I have a good mix of general character designs, scenery and comics of various sorts. I have seen maybe one person in the past few months of being on there daily who was using AI to generate "character art"; None of the characters were the same but they were extremely same-y, even more than normal anime design. And I blocked the account and haven't seen more since.

But if you look at anime titties, it'll show you more titties. If you look for generated artwork, it will show you more generated artwork. So if everything Malloc is finding is from generative networks, it's because he was looking for it. Kind of the modern confirmation bias.

It is irrelevant how "good" AI is at doing things. I mean, it's terrible at pretty much everything. Have you read a book written by AI? I have; they are unreadable, literally. But they could recreate Proust ex machina and that wouldn't be the problem. The problem is that only humans can produce value. It doesn't matter how many widgets your machine can turn into flanges to put into the machine that turns flanges into widgets. If there is no human involved, the whole process is value-inert.

This is a very good way of putting this, and I think Malloc doesn't understand this concept. That or he thinks that true AI (general AI of equal or greater intelligence than humans, that is capable of taking actions on its own) is extremely near at hand AND will enforce its values upon us.

Otherwise I don't know what his actual concern is and his outlook and experiences are so, so foreign to my own.

[malloc]

First of all, DeviantArt is where we as a society keep our anime titties. OpenAI lets you make anime titties for free in a fraction of a second. Of course DeviantArt is going to fill up with procedurally generated anime titties. This is a poor measuring stick for the nature of art. For one thing, boiler plate consumer pap has always been distinct from art, in that it has to cleave very closely to the client's brief. No one wants to be surprised or have their values called into question by a book cover they comissioned for an erotic Star Trek novel. This kind of art is much more in line with carpentry, plumbing, or other crafts. AI doesn't have to be good to do this work. It just needs to be cheaper than a person in the eyes of someone who is not picky.

Even so, that still means numerous jobs in art have disappeared and the remaining ones require far more skill than ever. You can perhaps argue that eliminating easy jobs for mediocre artists is no great loss, but that still means many lost jobs. For that matter, improving at art requires practice and eliminating easy jobs means eliminating an important stepping stone for developing artists. Furthermore, the state of technology is always advancing which means AI will take over more and more art jobs. Artists will face ever stiffer competition for fewer and more difficult jobs. Quite soon, art will go from something that can sustain the average drawer of furry porn to something only the next Picasso can manage.

The problem is that only humans can produce value. It doesn't matter how many widgets your machine can turn into flanges to put into the machine that turns flanges into widgets. If there is no human involved, the whole process is value-inert.

That makes no sense. There is nothing magical about humans that makes us uniquely capable of producing value. If we managed to completely automate agriculture, the resulting food would still have the same nutritional content and therefore practical value. Eliminating farmers and farm workers would not somehow turn wheat into indigestible chaff.

But if you look at anime titties, it'll show you more titties. If you look for generated artwork, it will show you more generated artwork. So if everything Malloc is finding is from generative networks, it's because he was looking for it. Kind of the modern confirmation bias.

No, it just started popping up one day and became more and more numerous until it seemed like everything was that. I did find an option to hide AI images though.

This is a very good way of putting this, and I think Malloc doesn't understand this concept. That or he thinks that true AI (general AI of equal or greater intelligence than humans, that is capable of taking actions on its own) is extremely near at hand AND will enforce its values upon us.

Considering how rapidly the first wave of AI has advanced, it seems quite plausible that AGI will arrive very soon. The development of AI has advanced far more quickly than I could ever have imagined even several years ago.

[KathTheDragon]

furry porn

It's interesting you should bring this up, because I can say with quite some certainty that it's quite unlikely that generative images will break into the furry art scene, for the simple fact that half the time, commissions are being bought because of the artist. Even if generative networks learn to draw furries doing the next improbable thing, they wouldn't be able to capture a significant enough part of the market simply because they're not a person. It's also very easy to check that an artist is actually a person - computers can't do art streams.

[linguistcat]

Considering how rapidly the first wave of AI has advanced, it seems quite plausible that AGI will arrive very soon. The development of AI has advanced far more quickly than I could ever have imagined even several years ago.

Ok, but you're not just making an assumption about the development of AGI. You're also assuming:
- It will be capable of taking actions on its own
- It will want to take actions at all instead of, say, being lazy
- The actions it will take will negatively affect humans

I don't think any of those are inherent, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm a fairly optimistic person and I think it's served me well, but I admit we can't really tell what an AGI would do. But assuming that they will take the most actively hostile course of action by default is just as likely to be wrong as assuming they will be entirely benevolent.

[KathTheDragon]

But assuming that they will take the most actively hostile course of action by default

Haven't you learned that this is malloc's entire worldview?

[linguistcat]

But assuming that they will take the most actively hostile course of action by default

Haven't you learned that this is malloc's entire worldview?

Unfortunately yes.I suppose we need some pessimists in the world though. That said, it is still an assumption, and maybe he can recognize this pattern in his thinking and slowly change to the second worst possibility. Or hostility that wasn't intended.

[Raphael]

For one thing, boiler plate consumer pap has always been distinct from art, in that it has to cleave very closely to the client's brief. No one wants to be surprised or have their values called into question by a book cover they comissioned for an erotic Star Trek novel. This kind of art is much more in line with carpentry, plumbing, or other crafts.

I completely disagree. Under that standard, the overwhelming majority of art produced by humans throughout human history would somehow not really count as art. The idea that art has to surprise people or call people's values into question is an arbitrary assertion of a clique of pretentious art theorists who like to take themselves way too seriously. And even most of the people who claim to believe in that idea probably don't really want art that calls their values into question; they want art that calls their opponents' values into question.

How much art that meets your apparent standards for "real art" was produced before, let's say, about 250 years ago?

[Moose-tache]

For one thing, boiler plate consumer pap has always been distinct from art, in that it has to cleave very closely to the client's brief. No one wants to be surprised or have their values called into question by a book cover they comissioned for an erotic Star Trek novel. This kind of art is much more in line with carpentry, plumbing, or other crafts.

I completely disagree. Under that standard, the overwhelming majority of art produced by humans throughout human history would somehow not really count as art. The idea that art has to surprise people or call people's values into question is an arbitrary assertion of a clique of pretentious art theorists who like to take themselves way too seriously. And even most of the people who claim to believe in that idea probably don't really want art that calls their values into question; they want art that calls their opponents' values into question.

How much art that meets your apparent standards for "real art" was produced before, let's say, about 250 years ago?

You misunderstand me. When I say that craftsmen make things that we call art that are distinct from "Art" art, it is not meant to denigrate either. Someone had to bang out one ornate gothic arch after another, without being allowed to innovate or express themselves, and the result is gorgeous cathedrals. If your objection is simply that craft art and high art must have equal claim to the noun "art," then fine. I won't disagree. But they are distinct phenomena. One can be done by AI, and the other never can, by definition.

It sounds like you've encountered some hoity toity people who stare at Modernist dogshit all day while wearing turtlenecks, and look down their noses at the humble anime titty. Not so me. I simply don't think that AI's ability to accurately reproduce an areola means that AI has conquered art.

[malloc]

The point remains that vast numbers of artistic jobs are destroyed either way. You can dismiss them as mere craft that doesn't challenge the viewer or require any transcendental skill, but it still robs numerous people of jobs that support them while bringing them satisfaction. The fact that future analogs of Jackson Pollack or John Cage will still have opportunities means little to the vast majority of artists. They lost something dear to themselves just so already wealthy techies can earn even more money while cheapening culture even further.

Furthermore, this argument feels like moving the goalposts. Several years ago when I brought up the dangers of automation, everyone insisted that only boring gruntwork would disappear while creative jobs would survive. Now the machines are taking over creative work as well and people have shifted the goalposts to saying sophisticated art will survive even if cartoons and porn are automated. How do know they won't find ways to automate even more sophisticated work like avant-garde art or scientific research?

The fundamental problem is that technology keeps advancing while humans have remained basically the same over the past quarter million years. We have compete with AI using the same brains we had in the pleistocene while it gets new and more powerful hardware and software everyday. It seems difficult to imagine how we can possibly keep pace at this rate, short of genetically augmenting the entire human race or something.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

But assuming that they will take the most actively hostile course of action by default

Haven't you learned that this is malloc's entire worldview?

Unfortunately yes.I suppose we need some pessimists in the world though. That said, it is still an assumption, and maybe he can recognize this pattern in his thinking and slowly change to the second worst possibility. Or hostility that wasn't intended.

I think this might be the one time I've seen him make some pretty good points, despite what seems to be his usual catastrophising.

[Travis B.]

I'm surprised I haven't heard of people calling for a real-life Butlerian Jihad yet.

[KathTheDragon]

Has everyone forgotten that the real problem is capitalists cutting costs by exploiting machines that don't need to be paid instead of exploiting people that do need to be paid? If we weren't living under capitalism, the invention of sophisticated generative networks would not lead to this kind of discussion. Instead we'd be talking about how cool it is that we can achieve the same amount with less effort, which leads to more leisure time.