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OK. Let's assume legal protections are put in place tomorrow and today's living artists magically (because it skips all the details of "How do you make that wor

by Kalium 4y ago

OK. Let's assume legal protections are put in place tomorrow and today's living artists magically (because it skips all the details of "How do you make that work?") acquire all the rights and enforcement abilities they could wish for. What do we expect changes? I think the uncomfortable answer is that for a lot of commercial art uses, nothing changes. In many cases people just want something to fulfill a need and aren't really all that picky about it. Maybe the style changes to be one of the Old Masters instead of something current. Getting it fast and cheap means they don't have to think about it much. A great many commercial art jobs will vanish just as they will outside this hypothetical. Perhaps we should pause and identify what outcome we want before prescribing policy. Are rights our priority, or are we trying to secure the incomes of artists?

gwoolhurme 4y ago
I don’t know I truly don’t. I don’t have any answers. Because you might be right. Especially for commercial art. Just the same as climate change, I don’t see any solution. It all gets worse and worse for everyone involved, except a select few. The outcome I would assume, would be that the livelihoods of artists are protected, or at the minimum that if they do not want a program to mimic a clearly unique style, that it doesn’t. That might just be pie in the sky dreaming at this point though. All desk work is going to disappear, everyone will be displaced.
- Kalium 4y ago
  What is your goal here? What outcome do you want to achieve? It sounds like your primary goal is financial, with rights being a means to an end. Is that accurate?
  - gwoolhurme 4y ago
    That might be accurate, however it is not just financial right? I would say that is the bulk of it though. To the self-worth side of it, someone posted below, but humans tie self worth to their profession as well right? That is probably something wrong with society as a whole but that is how people work as of this day. In the case of an artist (I am not an artist just to be clear), they've worked decades to hone this craft correct? To have it scraped and used to a level that only a machine can do. Something about that feels wrong? I get that is an emotional appeal. Which is probably why I will never write policy.
    - Kalium 4y ago
      Once upon a time, when thread and cloth was all made by hand, the equivalent of a t-shirt cost the equivalent of $5000 in labor alone. Today we consider that absurd. The spinners, fullers, and weavers of the time considered it their livelihoods, the way they fed their children, the way they achieved economic and social status, and thus just and right. Today we're far enough removed from those days to consider their perspective transparently self-serving for all that their distress must have been immensely real and sincere. We use mechanical looms now. We broadly agree that people have better things to do with their lives than spin rough thread, better ways to contribute to society. So I get why it feels wrong to many, but I also have no trouble placing it and those objections in a context of a recurring historical pattern.
      - gwoolhurme 4y ago
        You are ultimately right. Progress cannot be stopped, won't be stopped. My only wish is to help mitigate the pain. You brought up t-shirt manufacturing. That was true and while the luddites ultimately lost, I thought maybe a lesson society could have gained from that was some level of compassion to who it is happening to. Because it's not just artists this time, it's not just the factory, this time it is every profession that can be done at a computer. I am a programmer and I feel like I see the writing on the wall for us too. Soon we will be the Luddite who is scorned, but yes, society and economics don't owe me or any artist a damn thing. This is an emotional post, but reading these stories I feel like the only answer I have come up with is to just allow it to up-end all of our worth, security, and jobs. If you are a 50 year old corporate artist, hopefully something help you on your way to a new profession. It's the same way why I feel like society doesn't do nearly enough for coal miners either. Coal is a nasty product, yes, and a coal miner should clearly not "just learn to code". I don't know what should be done, but something of compassion clearly needed to have been done ethically.
        Kalium 4y ago
        Why don't you say what you want? You don't want compassion. Compassion is an internal emotional experience. I am having compassion right now for the hypothetical hordes of unemployed former commercial artists as I consign them to history's scrapheap. Compassion is a story we tell to tug at the heartstrings of ourselves and others. Compassion is not a policy. Compassion is not a plan. Compassion isn't what coal miners or Luddites wanted. What they wanted was to freeze in amber a way of life that served them well and could be passed on. That's both a reasonable thing to want and a very unreasonable thing to expect. Or maybe you don't know what you want as an outcome. That's OK. It might be worth thinking about that. For my own part, I'm not too worried about programmers quite yet. After all, programming is the easy part. All you have to do is get the business to decide precisely what they want and communicate it clearly. For the future, well, adaptability and rapid learning have been the hallmarks of every good engineer I've ever worked with. We're a flexible lot.
andrewflnr 4y ago
The real desired outcome seems to be "artists can make a living from doing art (without needing to be famous)". Unfortunately that goal has been dubious at the best of times, even before AI. The same questions are happening in fiction writing.
- Kalium 4y ago
  It's been dubious in fiction and music for a long time as well. At a remove, this feels less like a major shift and more like a collective agony as a dream that felt within reach recedes into the distance.

by Kalium 4y ago

gwoolhurme 4y ago

I don’t know I truly don’t. I don’t have any answers. Because you might be right. Especially for commercial art. Just the same as climate change, I don’t see any solution. It all gets worse and worse for everyone involved, except a select few. The outcome I would assume, would be that the livelihoods of artists are protected, or at the minimum that if they do not want a program to mimic a clearly unique style, that it doesn’t. That might just be pie in the sky dreaming at this point though. All desk work is going to disappear, everyone will be displaced.

Kalium 4y ago
What is your goal here? What outcome do you want to achieve? It sounds like your primary goal is financial, with rights being a means to an end. Is that accurate?
- gwoolhurme 4y ago
  That might be accurate, however it is not just financial right? I would say that is the bulk of it though. To the self-worth side of it, someone posted below, but humans tie self worth to their profession as well right? That is probably something wrong with society as a whole but that is how people work as of this day. In the case of an artist (I am not an artist just to be clear), they've worked decades to hone this craft correct? To have it scraped and used to a level that only a machine can do. Something about that feels wrong? I get that is an emotional appeal. Which is probably why I will never write policy.
  - Kalium 4y ago
    Once upon a time, when thread and cloth was all made by hand, the equivalent of a t-shirt cost the equivalent of $5000 in labor alone. Today we consider that absurd. The spinners, fullers, and weavers of the time considered it their livelihoods, the way they fed their children, the way they achieved economic and social status, and thus just and right. Today we're far enough removed from those days to consider their perspective transparently self-serving for all that their distress must have been immensely real and sincere. We use mechanical looms now. We broadly agree that people have better things to do with their lives than spin rough thread, better ways to contribute to society. So I get why it feels wrong to many, but I also have no trouble placing it and those objections in a context of a recurring historical pattern.
    - gwoolhurme 4y ago
      You are ultimately right. Progress cannot be stopped, won't be stopped. My only wish is to help mitigate the pain. You brought up t-shirt manufacturing. That was true and while the luddites ultimately lost, I thought maybe a lesson society could have gained from that was some level of compassion to who it is happening to. Because it's not just artists this time, it's not just the factory, this time it is every profession that can be done at a computer. I am a programmer and I feel like I see the writing on the wall for us too. Soon we will be the Luddite who is scorned, but yes, society and economics don't owe me or any artist a damn thing. This is an emotional post, but reading these stories I feel like the only answer I have come up with is to just allow it to up-end all of our worth, security, and jobs. If you are a 50 year old corporate artist, hopefully something help you on your way to a new profession. It's the same way why I feel like society doesn't do nearly enough for coal miners either. Coal is a nasty product, yes, and a coal miner should clearly not "just learn to code". I don't know what should be done, but something of compassion clearly needed to have been done ethically.
      - Kalium 4y ago
        Why don't you say what you want? You don't want compassion. Compassion is an internal emotional experience. I am having compassion right now for the hypothetical hordes of unemployed former commercial artists as I consign them to history's scrapheap. Compassion is a story we tell to tug at the heartstrings of ourselves and others. Compassion is not a policy. Compassion is not a plan. Compassion isn't what coal miners or Luddites wanted. What they wanted was to freeze in amber a way of life that served them well and could be passed on. That's both a reasonable thing to want and a very unreasonable thing to expect. Or maybe you don't know what you want as an outcome. That's OK. It might be worth thinking about that. For my own part, I'm not too worried about programmers quite yet. After all, programming is the easy part. All you have to do is get the business to decide precisely what they want and communicate it clearly. For the future, well, adaptability and rapid learning have been the hallmarks of every good engineer I've ever worked with. We're a flexible lot.

andrewflnr 4y ago

The real desired outcome seems to be "artists can make a living from doing art (without needing to be famous)". Unfortunately that goal has been dubious at the best of times, even before AI. The same questions are happening in fiction writing.

Kalium 4y ago
It's been dubious in fiction and music for a long time as well. At a remove, this feels less like a major shift and more like a collective agony as a dream that felt within reach recedes into the distance.