4 ms·
The cat's out of the bag on AI art. There's gonna be regular drama about it for the next few years and then it will just become part of life. Same with other a
by wilg 4y ago
The cat's out of the bag on AI art. There's gonna be regular drama about it for the next few years and then it will just become part of life.
Same with other applications of AI over time.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoIt’s funny… the more I look at it, the more it seems that the prevailing sentiment regarding AI was that white-collar workers thought it would take blue-collar jobs… and now it is looking closer to the reverse.
- wpietri 4y agoI think the class component here is underrated for sure. Technology has done a lot more do destroy blue-collar jobs over the last century, and so white-collar people have been pretty chill about it. But I think you're right that we'll see a change around that. ChatGPT, for example, is pretty bad at creating excellent prose with reliable information. But it's extremely good at creating a bullshit memo that nobody will really read or act upon. And I think there are a lot of people out there with bullshit jobs that will find themselves at risk.
- wilg 4y ago> Technology has done a lot more do destroy blue-collar jobs over the last century It'd be interesting to know if this is true. My gut says it might be the opposite. Maybe many "unskilled" jobs are moved out of the U.S. for example, but that's attributable to geopolitics not technology.
- wpietri 4y agoHere's some useful data for you: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/employment-by-industry-1910-and-2015.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2016/employment-by-industry-191... But note that this is only non-farm employment. Currently about 1% of the US's population works in agriculture. At around the same time, 31% of people did farm work: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/the-life-of-american-workers-in-1915.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2016/article/the-life-of-americ... I'll note that offshoring is also driven by technological change. In particular, cheap global shipping and communication. It's true a bunch of manufacturing jobs went to places with cheaper labor. But if those jobs had stayed here, there would still be a lot less of them because our higher labor prices make it more worthwhile to spend on factory automation. Another area where technology makes a big difference is in household labor. In 1910, 14.5% people were engaged in either domestic or personal service. Now it's 1%. We owe a lot of that to things like the washing machine and the dishwasher.
- wilg 4y agoBut what happened to the people who had those blue-collar jobs? Surely they didn't all die. Did they become white-collar workers? If so, wouldn't that be a good thing?
- wpietri 4y agoSure! So far we have always found things for people to do. That's probably good. But maybe not always. We are also seeing rising inequality and increased capital concentration. So there's a risk that we might head in the direction of, say, preindustrial England, where to survive people have to labor to make the rich happy. There's also the phenomenon of bullshit jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs As the relationship between labor and value becomes less and less direct, it becomes easier for waste to creep in. E.g., a manger who over-hires not because the new people are needed to do anything, but because their status rises with their headcount. So hopefully as all of these white-collar workers are forced to find new employment, we will find socially positive things for them to do. But I don't think it's guaranteed.
- wilg 4y agoMakes sense – physical labor is about robotics + AI, whereas mental labor is just the AI.
- gremlinsinc 4y agoActually a lot of physical labor didn't even need AI. A lot of things are just repetitive motion, which was way easier, now we have ai, ai + better facts + robots and add the ability to ai to create/iterate better algorithms for their own ai, and you basically get us to AGI and the singularity.
- rideontime 4y agoIs animation a white-collar job?
- kitsunesoba 4y agoIn the context of the Japanese animation industry, I don't think so. Animators there are worked to the bone for a pittance and are usually contractors, so they don't even enjoy the benefits a full-time employee would. Either way I think the difference between e.g. driving and animating is the passion component. For the most part, I don't think anybody really enjoys working as a bus driver for example… in many ways it's a brutal and thankless job. By contrast people who work in animation tend to really, really love animation and pour themselves into their craft. It certainly creates problems for drivers to have their job automated away, but for the most part nobody is being denied of earning a living with their passion in the process. By replacing artists with AI you're eliminating the possibility for many artists to produce art because they're going to have to find some other kind of work which will commandeer the majority of their time and energy instead, leaving little for creative pursuits. Ideally it's the menial and mindless things that get automated, so long as the displaced workers are provided for. It's squandering of human potential on a massive scale for people to have to do those things just to exist.
- labrador 4y agoI've tried to get people to care about professional drivers over the years without success. Now that it's their jobs, they care. Millions of Professional Drivers Will Be Replaced by Self-Driving Vehicles https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/millions-professional-drivers-will-be-replaced-self-driving-vehicles-n817356 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/millions-professional...
- wilg 4y agoI don't see why we need to lock in current professions. There weren't millions of professional drivers before there were cars. Jobs change over time, we shouldn't try to preserve them just to run a jobs program. If we want to make sure everybody has income, just give everybody income.
- edflsafoiewq 4y agoI don't think it's just about jobs. It's alright when the machines are driving the cars or running the factories, but when the machines are also painting the pictures, writing the poetry, composing the symphonies, what exactly are the humans for?
- krapp 4y ago> but when the machines are also painting the pictures, writing the poetry, composing the symphonies, what exactly are the humans for? Consuming. The machines will create culture, humans will consume it.
- gremlinsinc 4y agoI'd hope, we'd be there more to maybe pursue scientific/research endeavors. Sure the ai can do this too, or enhance it - but imagine if every living human being were a scientist, or engineer working on solving the nature of the universe, FTL drives, fusion, expansion of the human race into space, etc? No more wars, etc - just intellectuals working in intellectual fields pursuing whatever their curiosity takes them.
- chucksmash 4y agoI remember ~12 years ago coming across the concept of "the easy things are hard, the hard things are easy" (in the context of a robotics class). The example I remember from the time was the relative ease of translating the decision trees of pharmacists (who in the US today earn a doctorate degree before practicing) into code versus catching a softly lobbed tennis ball with a robotic arm. A kid in elementary school can do the second task using their own arm without giving it any thought, but creating a hardware/software system to track the moving object, estimate trajectory, extrapolate future location, decide which rotations/translations need to be applied about the joints of the shoulder/arm/elbow/wrist to move your hand into the right position to make the catch, and then to actuate your hand closed at the right time with the right pressure is quite involved.
- periphrasis 4y agoAnd because the passage of time implies progress, this will be inherently better than what came before. /s
- wilg 4y agoIt probably will be at least somewhat better, but not for this reason.
- LewisVerstappen 4y agoIt will be significantly better for everyone who consumes media. Imagine if you can get movies custom made to your own personal preferences?
- periphrasis 4y agoSo literally generic content replacing art? Just tell the machine what you expect and like and then your expectations can be satisfied on-demand! Sounds like cultural oblivion and I will hold my tongue on the quality of your aesthetic judgment.
- LewisVerstappen 4y agoYou should google the definition of generic. > Sounds terrible and I will hold my tongue on the quality of your aesthetic judgment. Thank god! Your opinion would devastate me! Anyway, I'm super excited to be able to prompt an AI to "create another kubrick movie in the modern era" or "make a seinfeld episode about living under covid" or something. A better large language model would generate a script 100x better than any of the current hollywood writers (who do a pretty piss poor job as it is...)
- shp0ngle 4y agoSome reality TV shows already feel AI generated. I don’t think people will notice.