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I think that's a good way to put it, but there's still a problem. The path of a digital artist is long and arduous. For a time on this path, the artist may be
by VoodooJuJu 4y ago
I think that's a good way to put it, but there's still a problem.
The path of a digital artist is long and arduous. For a time on this path, the artist may be considered mediocre, or to put it better, they are an apprentice.
Just as in other physical trades, an apprentice who is mediocre at their craft can still practice aspects of that craft well enough to be useful and earn some money. It is also through practice that the apprentice improves their skills. In this way, the apprentice is financially supported and even incentivized to improve at their trade, until one day they become truly good at it.
So what things like DALL-E and Github Co-Pilot and your clip art package do is displace the apprentice. With no path of mediocrity for the apprentice to walk, to earn a stipend for training, how then can they receive the financial support necessary to train until they're a master? They would need to already be independently wealthy or receive financial assistance.
In order to train more master artists and programmers, we would need to provide them with financial support while they train without us receiving anything useful in return.
- CuriouslyC 4y agoWith tools like stable diffusion, mastery means something different than it used to. Now a master is understands style and composition, who knows how to use the tools effectively to produce stylish, well composed images, then has sufficient editing skills to clean up/paint over tool output in order to produce professional results.
- salawat 4y agoAll of said tools having the most godawful interfaces and documentation known to man if the JS ecosystem is any evidence of the direction things are going.
- rdedev 4y agoBut the problem presented in GP still exists right? Not everyone starts out with a good understanding of style and composition from the start. They need time to master those skills but also need a line of income to survive till then. If mediocre level work is all automated someone starting out might not get the time to reliably skill up
- CuriouslyC 4y agoLearning composition and style is a different thing than developing technical skill though. You can learn the principles of composition/framing and get a good survey of art styles in months, compared to technical skills which frequently take years and years to develop. With this tech, you could start out as an enthusiast generating your own art, then get hired as an assistant of sorts to do low level prompt and input "exploration" for a head artist in a sort of apprenticeship.
- towaway15463 4y agoThe general public are not going to be the ones using these tools for the most part. Sure some people will try it for fun and some will become hobbyists but the ones actually producing salable work will be in the industry or attempting to get into it. So now instead of drawing a bunch of crude pictures and selling them for cheap they’ll be generating those images with an AI and selling them cheap.
- xnx 4y agoI'm not too worried about this. We have a lot of skilled trades that have survied technology (e.g. carpenters and power tools)
- jedberg 4y agoIt's interesting that you basically just made Andrew Yang's argument for Universal Basic Income -- that we need to redistribute the wealth of automation to all of society. This is the perfect example -- with a UBI the apprentice no longer needs to get paid to learn. They can live off of the UBI while learning, until they are good enough to charge for their services.
- narrator 4y agoThe problem with UBI is Jevons paradox[1]. Just to illustrate what the problem is using an extreme example: Oh good, we made it so anyone can turn the whole of the earth's crust into paperclips with a push of a button in a fully automated way that doesn't require any human labor and the energy to do it is completely sustainable. Hmm... Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- jedberg 4y agoEconomists are still divided on the subject. So far localized experiments in UBI have not caused localized inflation, but it's hard to tell since it's small scale. I'm not so sure it would actually happen though. We already give support to a lot of poor people through various programs like EBT and Medicaid. This just converts that help to cash, which gives people more freedom on what they want to spend on.
- JackFr 4y agoThe problem with UBI experiments is that it hasn’t been U. If it’s localized and small scale it’s obviously not Universal, which makes it hard to draw conclusions.
- yellowapple 4y agoIt's also rarely B, either; I don't know of very many (if any) such experiments where the income was sufficient to live on.
- wpietri 4y agoWas there really an apprentice level for digital artists before AI models? I know somebody who does a lot of digital art as a hobby. They have spent years and years working on stuff for their own enjoyment, and to hear them tell it they're only now reaching the point of marketability. What's the market for mediocre art today? I long ago worked on tech for magazines, which would sometimes use adequate commissioned art to jazz things up. But that was before the rise of vast stock art collections that were instantly accessible. Looking at some popular web-based magazines, it seems like the still commission the occasional original illustration, but that it's mainly stock photos or photo-composite illustrations.
- VoodooJuJu 4y agoI don't know about digital art, but centuries prior, traditional artist training followed the apprenticeship model just like any other trade at the time. Leonardo da Vinci walked this path.
- wpietri 4y agoSure, but we're talking about the near-future impact of AI. My point is that I don't think this is going to make much of an impact on available apprentice positions. I'm not worried about da Vinci; he won't be harmed by this.
- Someone 4y agoAnd less than a century ago, scores of people drew background images for Disney animated feature films, with the better ones getting allowed to draw main characters, and the best having final say in accepting or rejecting drawings. I guess the same happened with those creating and animating 3D models for the likes of Toy Story.
- Arcanum-XIII 4y agoLearning to play an instrument, to draw, sculpt or basically anything is hard, or at least it takes time. There was never a market for mediocrity... but people will happily pay for exposure (to play in a bar, rent a space as a gallery and so on). The problem is that even for good art it's hard, and it has always been. The rise of accessible stock art doesn't help, and AI will not. Still one point is important: if you want to create something new, and not reassess (derive) the same thing, I guess we (human) have still a place. At least for now.
- namose 4y agoI think the apprentice model will still exist, they’ll just use AI to aid them. Only the very experienced, talented artists will know when AI is hindering them. Same way a really good programmer will understand when not to use a web framework or whatever, but an inexperienced programmer who knows how to make a crud app with django or whatever is still valuable.
- zamfi 4y agoThe thing is, the job of the digital artist of the future will include Stable Diffusion or whatever comes next. The apprentices of tomorrow will be apprentices not at creating this kind of work by hand but at using these technologies to make art. The problem is there aren't any masters at this, yet. As an aside, I'm not sure I'd use the term "apprentice" -- I'd maybe say "junior" as in "junior developer" or "junior designer". They're learning how to make good work, but they're still a professional in the field.
- towaway15463 4y agoI think this argument is a bit like saying that mechanized looms will destroy the art form of weaving. The apprentices won’t be able to practice their craft by slogging away at menial tasks but they will be able to learn the new craft of AI enhanced art and coding. They’ll need to learn a new set of skills along with some of the old skills in order to succeed and what they produce will be magnified by the power of this new technology.
- franciscop 4y agoThis sounds a lot like most traditional degrees in Universities, where people are learning for 3-8 years and only then start working.