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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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The notion of progress is too much of a catch-all positivity word here. If speed and efficiency is all we care about then, sure, ai will blow traditional artists out of the water. If however, we care about what the artist themselves brings in terms of their unique perspective, talents, and stories, ai art will only serve to muffle and homogenize that.
The notion of people with disabilities being able to use it to create something is a fair point. I think it'd be absurd to say that it's only negatives. However, these kinds of cases, as good as they are, are often used to patch over the uglier aspects of what ai generated images is doing and will do. Kind of like how in Florida they're talking about slavery teaching people valuable skills.
I think the people most excited about it are those who seem to have a resentment of artists at some level, likely because those artists are already doing what they wish they could do. That's why I think there's almost a perverse giddiness at the notion of crushing artist's jobs and replacing them with these tech-oriented ones.
It seems like for some people, the ideal society is one in which humans have been made irrelevant and machines interface with each other in perpetuity, generating a heap of content that no one ever sees or thinks about. It's the kind of sci-fi dystopian ending which we don't want to acknowledge because there's money to be made for someone and nothing is supposed to get in the way of that.
I mean I kinda agree with you that it sucks that AI is being used on the arts. That's more than just a job, it's a passion. The arts are a hobby for most that they are fortunate if they can make a living out of it. I would focus AI and automation on menial labor type jobs if I was somehow in charge of it.
The problem is that no matter how much we dislike it, it's still going to happen, so we might as well embrace it and focus on the good in it. It's here to stay until the electrical grid is taken out I imagine.
Also, you are going off on a tangent imagining rare people in the middle there. I don't think there are many people out there that resent artists for having talent like you are saying. The few who do are narcissists, and are likely failed artists themselves. Not a common occurrence.
I do grant completely the valid uses for the technology which pertain to individual interests. I think there's interesting possibilities there as well.
There's a quote from the Tao Te Ching, which says, "why must you value what others value?" I think that's relevant here. It may be true that those with money and power will always try to force their own interests (See the app formerly known as Twitter for reference). I'm not suggesting that we can or should try to shove this technology back in the bottle so to speak. What I am saying is that we shouldn't so easily accept corporate interests as being in the interest of humans more generally and we should be skeptical of anything that sounds like happy tech industry propoganda.
As to the latter part, it's just my perception based on what I've read. It may not be accurate.
I 100 percent agree with everything you say there. If only we can convince the rest of the world that. I hate what tech is turning into right now. If we actually focused it on doing what's good for us and our future it could be so much better. We are using it for some good, but it is being vastly overshadowed by corporate interests and making numbers go up.