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"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth." To expand: no side is without sin in this. The art community has inclusive

"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth." To expand: no side is without sin in this. The art community has inclusiveness problems of its own, and you'll find that many of the loudest anti-AI voices are those privileged and connected enough to have been able to develop their craft and to make a living off it, not the majority of individuals who are struggling to find a place and a manner of expression that is successful (however they define it). The former's derisive calls to "pick up a pencil and draw, if you want to make art" are not altogether different from the advice you would get on deviantArt or some long-since-forsaken forum 20 years ago. This, of course, is incomplete advice, especially in a quickly-developing art movement, where not having the resources, or the time, or the connections that produce skill or economic mutual aid, or the psychological space and safety to be self-critical and creative, could leave a would-be artist stagnated and frustrated. Some people are able to find that capability, while some are merely left with years of resentment from trying and failing to break through. And, make no mistake: much of where one ends up has less to do with actual artistic ability, and more to do with one's social standing. I imagine that many of the people who are engaged with AI art and its development fall into that latter category. Much as with crypto art and NFTs in 2021 and 2022, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the anti-AI art crowd comes from the end-run people who were ignored or ostracized by those gatekeepers have been enabled to do around those "systems of respect" (which, as I've explained, were arbitrarily elitist and exclusionary to begin with). Their anger is self-serving, and in some regards cruel, because it's energy that a less egotistical group might have turned towards proving with action the morality of the process they espouse. But now, as before, the goal is not in enabling the success of those aggrieved who turn to AI as a balm, but in conserving an advantageous status quo. All the shouting does is cement this craven ethos as the true core of their discontent.

1attice 4y ago
This is a good point, and I upvoted it. AI tools do redistribute the ability to produce art, which might otherwise tend to be limited to a lucky few who get the right education and training. The problem, however, is that without a professional class, fields tend to drop in stature, and whole fields of human endeavour begin to seem less consequential. This is important to the self-respect argument I outlined above. I recall an Onion article entitled something like "Area man asks friend if he knows how to get any doctoring work," about a man who (apparently) sees conducting surgery and doing odd-job home repairs as roughly equivalent. Something like a "doctoring work" market is on its way for the artworld, and in the process, it will dramatically change the social significance of artists, the social stature of artists, and, more generally, the possiblity of making a defensible 'moat' around one's living as an artist. The big beneficiaries of this process, aside from Susan, who will suddenly be able to write that novel, will be the guys selling Susan her novel, one token at a time. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I genuinely think this will make Susan's novel less meaningful, both to her and to her readership, as well as making novels in general less meaningful. All the while lining the pockets of, inter alia, my former employer.[1] I think this is.... not a good change? [1] Disclosure: I benefitted financially from the advent of contemporary ML. It made my career, frankly. It stands poised to unmake the careers of many of my art friends.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  Note that at some point, some people-identifying-as-artists tried to attack Creative Commons. They were making very similar arguments to the arguments we hear against AI today. Since Creative Commons is commonly used by charities, museums and volunteer organizations, they had some trouble maintaining the moral high ground. The attacks eventually fizzled out. (Even just finding back their texts attacking CC turns out to be pretty tricky) But I still remember something of those attempts. Just because some people are saying bad things about you, doesn't mean that those things are necessarily true.
- artsytrashcan 4y ago
  The social significance of art has endured in disparate cultures and through hundreds of years of economic transition, and has managed to recover its footing in the cases that it has slipped; it's not at risk. I could not give less of a damn about the social stature of artists, in and of itself; like most people, artists tend to abuse this status within their little fiefdoms, encouraged by the social and economic spoils of such abuse under Capitalism. Those with the most success are those most in need of humility. What you're talking about is akin to the "professionalization" (or the maintenance of status) of a trade, artificially limiting the breadth of practice in order to direct energy to the quality. This is almost always portrayed as a good thing, when we've lived through an example of it (IT) being disastrous for workers. Professionalization puts up onerous barriers to entry; encourages cronyism; and strips a field of its base of novice workers, as well as a clear and germane path for advancement, replacing it with glad-handing and credentialism. Collective action - unionization, foremost - would be a better solution in securing the livelihood of artists and conditions under which art is made, both for those who participate and even for those who don't. But we haven't seen it, or even the serious talk of it, and I imagine that it's for the reasons I've given: a central ethos rooted ego and not principle. And faced with a choice between shoring up the barriers for people who are only out for themselves, and opening the floodgates for expression, I choose the latter.
  - 1attice 4y ago
    Strongly recommend that you read the book I linked to above. 'Artist', as a thing that an adult can be and do, has only been around for a hundred or so years (said William Deresiewicz https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53935644-the-death-of-the-artist?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=iUKrO3Bkzd&rank=1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53935644-the-death-of-th...) and there is no reason to think it will be around for a hundred more. Yes, art has been around for thousands of years, but most of that time, it was beholden to: the church, the power structures of the day, etc. The idea of 'art for art's sake', the idea of artists empowered to do and make things that their commission did not specifically tell them to do, is not an immortal category of human. I'm not doing this argument justice, please read William Deresiewicz. <3 What a great book.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
Sooner or later people are going to need to work together. Current AI output looks impressive, but if you push hard you quickly start hitting limits, and you discover you're going to need to hire/cooperate with experts in several fields if you want to take things further. In future, rather than single artworks, people are more often going to want LoRAs, checkpoints, models, etc. And it already seems like they are willing to pay for these things to be made. There are definitely opportunities for new business models to be had here.

1attice 4y ago

This is a good point, and I upvoted it. AI tools do redistribute the ability to produce art, which might otherwise tend to be limited to a lucky few who get the right education and training. The problem, however, is that without a professional class, fields tend to drop in stature, and whole fields of human endeavour begin to seem less consequential. This is important to the self-respect argument I outlined above. I recall an Onion article entitled something like "Area man asks friend if he knows how to get any doctoring work," about a man who (apparently) sees conducting surgery and doing odd-job home repairs as roughly equivalent. Something like a "doctoring work" market is on its way for the artworld, and in the process, it will dramatically change the social significance of artists, the social stature of artists, and, more generally, the possiblity of making a defensible 'moat' around one's living as an artist. The big beneficiaries of this process, aside from Susan, who will suddenly be able to write that novel, will be the guys selling Susan her novel, one token at a time. Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I genuinely think this will make Susan's novel less meaningful, both to her and to her readership, as well as making novels in general less meaningful. All the while lining the pockets of, inter alia, my former employer.[1] I think this is.... not a good change? [1] Disclosure: I benefitted financially from the advent of contemporary ML. It made my career, frankly. It stands poised to unmake the careers of many of my art friends.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
Note that at some point, some people-identifying-as-artists tried to attack Creative Commons. They were making very similar arguments to the arguments we hear against AI today. Since Creative Commons is commonly used by charities, museums and volunteer organizations, they had some trouble maintaining the moral high ground. The attacks eventually fizzled out. (Even just finding back their texts attacking CC turns out to be pretty tricky) But I still remember something of those attempts. Just because some people are saying bad things about you, doesn't mean that those things are necessarily true.
artsytrashcan 4y ago
The social significance of art has endured in disparate cultures and through hundreds of years of economic transition, and has managed to recover its footing in the cases that it has slipped; it's not at risk. I could not give less of a damn about the social stature of artists, in and of itself; like most people, artists tend to abuse this status within their little fiefdoms, encouraged by the social and economic spoils of such abuse under Capitalism. Those with the most success are those most in need of humility. What you're talking about is akin to the "professionalization" (or the maintenance of status) of a trade, artificially limiting the breadth of practice in order to direct energy to the quality. This is almost always portrayed as a good thing, when we've lived through an example of it (IT) being disastrous for workers. Professionalization puts up onerous barriers to entry; encourages cronyism; and strips a field of its base of novice workers, as well as a clear and germane path for advancement, replacing it with glad-handing and credentialism. Collective action - unionization, foremost - would be a better solution in securing the livelihood of artists and conditions under which art is made, both for those who participate and even for those who don't. But we haven't seen it, or even the serious talk of it, and I imagine that it's for the reasons I've given: a central ethos rooted ego and not principle. And faced with a choice between shoring up the barriers for people who are only out for themselves, and opening the floodgates for expression, I choose the latter.
- 1attice 4y ago
  Strongly recommend that you read the book I linked to above. 'Artist', as a thing that an adult can be and do, has only been around for a hundred or so years (said William Deresiewicz https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53935644-the-death-of-the-artist?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=iUKrO3Bkzd&rank=1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53935644-the-death-of-th...) and there is no reason to think it will be around for a hundred more. Yes, art has been around for thousands of years, but most of that time, it was beholden to: the church, the power structures of the day, etc. The idea of 'art for art's sake', the idea of artists empowered to do and make things that their commission did not specifically tell them to do, is not an immortal category of human. I'm not doing this argument justice, please read William Deresiewicz. <3 What a great book.

Kim_Bruning 4y ago

Sooner or later people are going to need to work together. Current AI output looks impressive, but if you push hard you quickly start hitting limits, and you discover you're going to need to hire/cooperate with experts in several fields if you want to take things further. In future, rather than single artworks, people are more often going to want LoRAs, checkpoints, models, etc. And it already seems like they are willing to pay for these things to be made. There are definitely opportunities for new business models to be had here.