7 ms·

China's Video Game AI Art Crisis: 40x Productivity Spike, 70% Job Loss

39 points by Al0neStar 4y ago

anonzzzies 4y ago
Ah yes, and meanwhile here on HN, everyone keeps repeating AI is not ‘replacing anyone yet’ and no one has to worry. While people are getting axed and replaced by AI everywhere I look. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35326865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35326865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35194986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35194986
- deleted 4y ago
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- blakesterz 4y ago
  What I keep seeing is "This frees people up to do something else", which is the part that I just don't agree with. I just can't help but think there is a very large net drop in jobs in the areas that are going to be hit (apparently Game Art is on) and no increase anywhere else, so we're going to be left with a LOT of people with no where to go.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    This has always been true. A single factory worker replaced dozens of blacksmiths. A single mechanic replaced dozens of farriers and groomsmen. We went from 80% people employed directly in agriculture to 1%. Only a very small portion of the 79% no longer working on farms are now building the giant tractors etc that make the few remaining farmers so much more efficient.
    - deleted 4y ago
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  - krapp 4y ago
    > What I keep seeing is "This frees people up to do something else", which is the part that I just don't agree with. A lot of true believers in the infinite abundance of free market capitalism are going to have a rude awakening when they too are left to die in the trenches like dogs.
- dtagames 4y ago
  And it cannot be coincidental that many companies, even the US, have announced layoffs right alongside their new investments in LLMs and AI. Sometimes within days of each other! We are literally seeing people laid off in anticipation of making money from AI, rather than continuing to pay the employees.
- Woeps 4y ago
  Their slogan is: "Tracking the Explosive World of Generative AI" I would take anything positive they say about AI with a few (or more) grains of salt. But you might be right. Tough so far I have mixed feelings, just today chatGPT had issues writing a simple 10 line bash or fish function.
- sottol 4y ago
  Everyone? Imo more than half are worried, some members are thinking about switching careers. Two random examples by searching algolia for a minute (entire posts, not just single comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34008901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34008901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33884202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33884202
  - anonzzzies 4y ago
    You are right, but the more prominent members in this community believe there is no issue, at least as far as I have seen. Of course I do not read everything (I still have a job), but I do read quite a lot. I see more the seniors/established saying no worries and the juniors worry. But I also notice that the people who don’t worry are in a reality distortion field where they never work or did work with bad programmers for instance. They were smart, went to a good schools, have friends with 130+ iqs and think ai is far removed. If that is true or not (the ai being far from 130 human iq) is not relevant; it is better or at least good enough and definitely faster at many many things compared to most humans, but many people here never meet these ‘most humans’ because they have none around them.
    - freitzkriesler2 4y ago
      There were 130IQs thinking the internet and crypto had little value as well (we can argue about crypto's utility) but the point still stands: high IQ doesn't preclude someone from being wrong, it just reduces the likelihood. And typically when high IQ people are wrong as rare as it is, they're really really wrong
      - anonzzzies 4y ago
        Sure, but the thing is that people are in their own circles and if you only know and talk to smart people, you get a very skewed view of humanity. You start believing we as a whole are far better than we are.
        4y ago
- oh_sigh 4y ago
  > With a 70% drop in illustrator jobs in China over the past year – initially triggered by economic slowdown and regulatory pressures, then accelerated by the proliferation of AI tools I think we would need a firmer accounting of what percent of the decline is due to economic slowdown vs AI
  - badpun 4y ago
    Given that many statistics people throw around are pure bullshit, I'd be satisfied with them just revealing a source of this stat.
    - mztwo 4y ago
      Source for this is the Run of World article linked in the document. Their China journalist spoke with recruiters who work on video game illustrator roles and gave background info on the trend and decrease. I'd like to think this is similar to how Silicon Valley recruiters (the good ones, at least) have a strong pulse on the market and can share trends well in advance of them making it into any mainstream publications like WSJ or NYTimes.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        Given the slow down in tech hiring, how would that slow down in illustrator hiring be compared to slowdowns in dev hiring? Interest rates going up put a damper on tech hiring in the states, and China could be going through something similar?
      - badpun 4y ago
        Ok, so this is as I suspected - it's not "70% drop in illustrator jobs", but merely 70% drop of new open positions.
- slashdev 4y ago
  Every disruptive technology creates and destroys jobs. This is business as usual since the start of the Industrial Revolution and beyond. No need to panic, like the Luddites, yet. Real AGI is the time to panic, because that forms an event horizon we can't see beyond. There may well be no place at all for humans in a post AGI world. But LLMs are still a long way from AGI. I don't expect to see AGI in my lifetime, despite the blistering pace of advancement.
  - anonzzzies 4y ago
    Yep, you are a typical example. Your world (and mine) is safe, but let’s meet up and step into a fortune 1000 non FAANG office, hit someone up for a chat and let’s see if you don’t believe this person can be replaced now by gpt4. Try it. I cannot see how, even after these stories, you cannot see how this is a problem and how this is not vastly different (horse drivers went to car drivers, farmers became factory workers etc; there is no such switch now) than the previous examples. We are limited by the amount of very clever people as the rest can be replaced (we need some robots but that’s coming). When we reach AGI, then even the 130+ iq peeps like you and me can start the worrying. But that doesn’t mean there is a present danger.
    - andsoitis 4y ago
      If one person is more competent and willing to work for less money than someone else, what is a business to do? Hire/retain the more expensive less competent employee? If a machine is more competent and costs less than a human worker, what is a business to do? Not use robots to assemble cars? Not use AI to do mechanizable routine work?
      - anonzzzies 4y ago
        Yea, that’s what will happen. Not sure why you are responding to me? The gp seems to argue that this won’t be a problem now as in the past this made more jobs, so it will now too. I don’t believe that.
        4y ago
- riogordo2go 4y ago
  Maybe trades will get popular again as this is less easy to swap with an ai alternative.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    Trades aren't unpopular as the popular narrative says - there's barriers to entry that few people are talking about.
  - re-thc 4y ago
    Who will you sell your services to when no 1 can afford it anymore?
- akasakahakada 4y ago
  AI can never replace AI deniers. Just like science still unable to get rid of flat earthers.
  - anonzzzies 4y ago
    And religion.
- walkhour 4y ago
  This is just the beginning and we don't know what will happen. Some people will say creative destruction is happening and people will find other jobs. They may equate this to the horse drivers finding other jobs at the beginning of the XXth century. The truth is we don't know. People that will lose their jobs may find other jobs or not. Maybe it's harder to reinvent oneself now. Maybe a lot of people will truly suffer because of AI. I find very hard to know with certainty what will happen, who will remain unharmed, and who will struggle but make it through, but change is coming.
  - anonzzzies 4y ago
    We should prepare for it though. All the existential stuff with AIs killing humans I don’t think is the biggest danger. No work and no money is far more urgent. Even if it doesn’t happen, it can happen, so why not assume it will and change tactics when it’s clear it’s far more sunnier?
    - orwin 4y ago
      As long as we produce as much food and as much utilities, why would having less work to do overall bad?
      - anonzzzies 4y ago
        Well yes, that’s the best outcome; infinite energy which means infinite everything and, with AGI, infinite intelligence. Done properly, there is no worry; we will live in paradise. No needs for ads, wars or money. But it will depend on who owns it, no?
      - bobwaycott 4y ago
        Because “less work” means less money—and we haven’t built a society in which people can access all the food and utilities produced without it.
      - Taywee 4y ago
        Because most of the entire world is structured such that not working means you don't eat, can't pay rent, and can't afford healthcare Having less work is great, if we completely overhaul our economy so that not working is a viable way of life.
- freitzkriesler2 4y ago
  Yup, china is a good bell weather for the type of destructive boosts we'll see in jobs with AI. They have no scruples about laying off a ton of their workforce. Wait until non union entertainment industry jobs get a hold of this AI stuff. It's over and it is coming.
- qwery 4y ago
  > AI is not ‘replacing anyone yet’ and no one has to worry. I have seen these comments and this excuse (among others) as well. The thing that amuses me, before that amusement turns to some sort of cosmic existential horror dread, is the lack of critical thinking and general reasoning skills on display. The argument that AI is not replacing anyone yet is a strange one, because it implies that the outcome is inevitable (and at least unfortunate, presumably) but you shouldn't worry about it. You know, because it hasn't happened yet. But it will. So stop talking about it. I don't know, I just find that strange. (and seeing this pattern all over the place increasingly frequently is deeply concerning but that's a real-talk so I better stop).
- danielrpa 4y ago
  And this is the 8-bit version of AI Art, relatively speaking. In 10 years it will be hard to find a human that can match AI's quality in "regular art", i.e., something that doesn't try to innovate artistically but otherwise looks great.
- TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
  I am not worried at all. I am looking forward to it. And if people can be replaced by smarter IntelliSense, then maybe it is time to skill up.
908B64B197 4y ago
I'm not surprised. There's a race to the bottom in the video game industry to farm content to "best cost countries". Most man-hours aren't spent on engineering problems but on gameplay and asset generation. The Chinese industry is even more brutal in terms of the race to the bottom. Purchasing power is much lower than in the west and there's barely any export opportunities, so the only way to make money is to crank out "good enough" games by having the same engine run with different assets.
- Woeps 4y ago
  >" so the only way to make money is to crank out "good enough" games by having the same engine run with different assets." This reminds me of the countless dress up games I worked on during the Flash-era. And you know what, a hand full of those dress up games made us more money then all our other games combined ...
- Pet_Ant 4y ago
  > Most man-hours aren't spent on engineering problems but on gameplay and asset generation. Which is a shame. I'd really like to see more done in procedural generation and reactive content. Just read about a mod for CyberPunk where killing certain characters can effect the stockmarket. It would be cool to see all the NPCs become agents. It also means that after say 40 hour already your game world would become unique and unlike any other.
rcarr 4y ago
Video game and movie illustrators are completely fucked which is sad. Very interested to see how this plays out in the comic/graphic novel space. I could theoretically see the big hitters getting behind human artists for the marketing points, but if some new or smaller comic book studio starts churning out AI content and it takes off they might be forced to follow suit. I think a lot of this might depend on how comic book stores themselves operate e.g if they also get behind the artists and refuse to stock AI generated works. But I don't know how many people are buying comic books from stores vs online, as a relatively outside observer it seems to be one of the only types of retail businesses that seem to have stood up pretty well against the online onslaught, probably because of how much they operate as a community hub. Other prediction: Theoretically anyone with a semi-interesting TTRPG campaign could just feed in their weekly adventure into the program and have a comic book generated from the results. We could end up with a Soundcloud style situation but instead of songs there's 100,000 new comic books being generated a day. From there, it's not a stretch to say the same is going to happen to movies, because once you've got the comics (which are essentially storyboards) and the technology gets perfected for video, it's probably not a lot of effort to feed the comics into the AI and have it generate the movie. Will be interesting to see how the quality vs quantity dynamic plays out. Either we'll start consuming more content from local creatives and indie studios or there will be so much dross to sift through we'll happily pay globo corps more money for the highest quality stuff. It'll probably be somewhere in the middle. At the minute, I'm about 8 episodes into Critical Role's 2nd Campaign and questioning why I even still have Netflix when I can access entertainment like this for free on Youtube.
- Clubber 4y ago
  I think all of this will probably be true. I also think that AI generated art is novel at the moment. Eventually it will get boring because it's essentially just retreads of what it already knows. Since it's now doing all the "creating," based on what it knows, really new and interesting creations it can create will become rarer and rarer. Companies will of course milk it as long as they can, but eventually, the world will hunger for something new that AI can't provide, because it hasn't been trained. I give it 5-20 years before it becomes boring and predictable, like most corporate art already is.
- 4y ago
GaggiX 4y ago
I've seen impressive work done with AI in these Chinese companies such as: https://twitter.com/NIKKE_en/status/1607331147452911622 https://twitter.com/NIKKE_en/status/1607331147452911622 (dec 2022), although I have a keen eye for AI-generated content I couldn't figure it out, it's funny that people use AI to detect AI.
chrisbrandow 4y ago
We’ve always had cognitive jobs to fall back in when previous automation advances displaced jobs. It is not clear what happens when the fallbacks are more manual work that currently does not pay a lot.
stuckinhell 4y ago
It's definitely shocking, but creating a platformer in Unity with my entire family participating was amazing fun this weekend. My husband and I coded it, and our kids had a blast creating the artwork in stable diffusion. We then animated the avatars using another AI based on the vidoes of the faces our kids made. We created a whole game fairly easily.
- donclark 4y ago
  That sounds great! Could you share a link or a screenshot please?
ulfw 4y ago
We are all fucking ourselves and our future. AI will take every single job away until there's only a small sliver of "owners" who will eventually sell to fewer and fewer consumers. Oh sorry yes downvote me. I forgot. I am on Hackernews, were we blindly run after all technological progress even if it's detrimental to real life society.
- throwbadubadu 4y ago
  But..lets take AI and latest developments out of the picture for a second.. Imagine e.g. whole food providing world consists of only few coorps, run by few individuals that run a bot army to plant and harvest crops.. and they reap all the profits, while everyone else is unemployed: Isn't that a problem of the system? Shouldn't at least at that point everybody agree that pure free market capitalism needs to stop here and we should communize food creation? And now for everything else: Why shouldn't we favor all technical progress and gets us rid of "stupid" jobs.. there is so much more from caring for others, doing science, doing (human) art.. yes everyone needs a purpose, but there is enough to be done (like imagine Star Trek utopia). The problem is just, this won't get paid well or not paid at all, while few people own the essentials forever and can reap profits.. We should reconsider our wealth and power systems.. in the end some Star Trek utopia where noone is forced tio do something he doesn't want to but can pursue his purpose should be great, or why not?
  - ulfw 4y ago
    That's all nice and cute and wonderful for in a couple generations from now. Society doesn't adapt quickly. There will be blood on the streets way more likely than a utopian society growing out of nowhere.
qwery 4y ago
It should be obvious that `Thing` generating tools/machines will displace/replace `Thing` generating humans as soon the tool meets the employer's threshold of affordability/quality/speed. This is how capitalism works and you don't have to be a communist to understand or accept that. With that said... Forty times! ... Seventy percent?! ... This seemed a bit extreme, so I had a look through the source article[0] to try and find out what these claims and figures (40x, 70%) were based on. The 40x productivity spike is drawn from a professional illustrator's claim that without AI tools, an illustrator could draw one piece in a day, but "with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from." (quoted from article, not direct quote from the illustrator) The 70% job loss is similarly based on a single individual's claim. They reckon that illustrator jobs (listings?) dropped by 70%, with no indication of how they arrived at that figure. Furthermore, although they are assigning blame to the AI tools, they think that "regulatory pressures and a slowing economy" are the primary causes. To be clear, I'm not saying that either of these people are doing anything wrong. The reporting could be a little more critical, but this is not unexpected these days. The readers could be a little more critical as well... [0] https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/ https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layof...
dahwolf 4y ago
Consider creative/content jobs such as illustrators, freelance writers, translators as a spectrum or perhaps a pyramid. A big part of that pyramid is mass produced "good enough" output that was already squeezed before AI. That part will be almost entirely replaced with generative AI operated by a relatively tiny group. And with "will" I mean right now. The top of the pyramid will be semi-safe but production methods will still drastically change. I'm not convinced of the "we'll just create new jobs" narrative. From land to factory to office. What would be the next step in this cycle? I'm talking a billion people, not 3 super AI coders overseeing things.
falcolas 4y ago
Imagine being a concept artist - basically a professional Photoshop compositor - in the face of Dall-e and crew. Imagine being a script writer - taking other people's ideas and creating a script - in the face of GPT. Imagine being a D&D campaign writer. Technical writer. Tier 1 support. Any job that involves the previously tedious work of transforming ideas into writing or images.
- taylodl 4y ago
  But GPT's writing isn't that great. I would use it as a starter, because it can get you 60%-70% of the way there - but I wouldn't let it create the finished work. I'm not as familiar with the typical illustrator's workflow, but wouldn't something be similar? Could you use GPT to quickly create some different kinds of ideas to see what you like and then use that as the starting point to finish off the work? In both cases aren't there copyright concerns you'd have to address? How do you know GPT isn't using copyrighted material?
  - falcolas 4y ago
    > because it can get you 60%-70% of the way there Which means you can reduce the time spent by that same amount. Or to flip it, one person can do the work of 3-4 people. You'd still want an editor, but you've always wanted an editor. > How do you know GPT isn't using copyrighted material? It quite obviously does use copyrighted material, but it's a dirty secret of these industries that so do their people. GPT and Dall-e will probably hide it better, but it's something the industry already has playbooks around.
  - badpun 4y ago
    Concept artist is basically the idea generator. They quickly paint a bunch of loose ideas and present them to art director and rest of the team for discussion. None of their art makes in into final product. I could see concept art as being disrupted by generative models.
    - taylodl 4y ago
      Thanks - this is what I meant when I said I'm not familiar with their workflow! Sounds like GPT will impact jobs. Do you see a way GPT could actually create jobs?

39 points by Al0neStar 4y ago

Ah yes, and meanwhile here on HN, everyone keeps repeating AI is not ‘replacing anyone yet’ and no one has to worry. While people are getting axed and replaced by AI everywhere I look. Examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35326865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35326865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35194986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35194986

deleted 4y ago
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blakesterz 4y ago
What I keep seeing is "This frees people up to do something else", which is the part that I just don't agree with. I just can't help but think there is a very large net drop in jobs in the areas that are going to be hit (apparently Game Art is on) and no increase anywhere else, so we're going to be left with a LOT of people with no where to go.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  This has always been true. A single factory worker replaced dozens of blacksmiths. A single mechanic replaced dozens of farriers and groomsmen. We went from 80% people employed directly in agriculture to 1%. Only a very small portion of the 79% no longer working on farms are now building the giant tractors etc that make the few remaining farmers so much more efficient.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- krapp 4y ago
  > What I keep seeing is "This frees people up to do something else", which is the part that I just don't agree with. A lot of true believers in the infinite abundance of free market capitalism are going to have a rude awakening when they too are left to die in the trenches like dogs.
dtagames 4y ago
And it cannot be coincidental that many companies, even the US, have announced layoffs right alongside their new investments in LLMs and AI. Sometimes within days of each other! We are literally seeing people laid off in anticipation of making money from AI, rather than continuing to pay the employees.
Woeps 4y ago
Their slogan is: "Tracking the Explosive World of Generative AI" I would take anything positive they say about AI with a few (or more) grains of salt. But you might be right. Tough so far I have mixed feelings, just today chatGPT had issues writing a simple 10 line bash or fish function.
sottol 4y ago
Everyone? Imo more than half are worried, some members are thinking about switching careers. Two random examples by searching algolia for a minute (entire posts, not just single comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34008901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34008901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33884202 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33884202
- anonzzzies 4y ago
  You are right, but the more prominent members in this community believe there is no issue, at least as far as I have seen. Of course I do not read everything (I still have a job), but I do read quite a lot. I see more the seniors/established saying no worries and the juniors worry. But I also notice that the people who don’t worry are in a reality distortion field where they never work or did work with bad programmers for instance. They were smart, went to a good schools, have friends with 130+ iqs and think ai is far removed. If that is true or not (the ai being far from 130 human iq) is not relevant; it is better or at least good enough and definitely faster at many many things compared to most humans, but many people here never meet these ‘most humans’ because they have none around them.
  - freitzkriesler2 4y ago
    There were 130IQs thinking the internet and crypto had little value as well (we can argue about crypto's utility) but the point still stands: high IQ doesn't preclude someone from being wrong, it just reduces the likelihood. And typically when high IQ people are wrong as rare as it is, they're really really wrong
    - anonzzzies 4y ago
      Sure, but the thing is that people are in their own circles and if you only know and talk to smart people, you get a very skewed view of humanity. You start believing we as a whole are far better than we are.
      - 4y ago
oh_sigh 4y ago
> With a 70% drop in illustrator jobs in China over the past year – initially triggered by economic slowdown and regulatory pressures, then accelerated by the proliferation of AI tools I think we would need a firmer accounting of what percent of the decline is due to economic slowdown vs AI
- badpun 4y ago
  Given that many statistics people throw around are pure bullshit, I'd be satisfied with them just revealing a source of this stat.
  - mztwo 4y ago
    Source for this is the Run of World article linked in the document. Their China journalist spoke with recruiters who work on video game illustrator roles and gave background info on the trend and decrease. I'd like to think this is similar to how Silicon Valley recruiters (the good ones, at least) have a strong pulse on the market and can share trends well in advance of them making it into any mainstream publications like WSJ or NYTimes.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      Given the slow down in tech hiring, how would that slow down in illustrator hiring be compared to slowdowns in dev hiring? Interest rates going up put a damper on tech hiring in the states, and China could be going through something similar?
    - badpun 4y ago
      Ok, so this is as I suspected - it's not "70% drop in illustrator jobs", but merely 70% drop of new open positions.
slashdev 4y ago
Every disruptive technology creates and destroys jobs. This is business as usual since the start of the Industrial Revolution and beyond. No need to panic, like the Luddites, yet. Real AGI is the time to panic, because that forms an event horizon we can't see beyond. There may well be no place at all for humans in a post AGI world. But LLMs are still a long way from AGI. I don't expect to see AGI in my lifetime, despite the blistering pace of advancement.
- anonzzzies 4y ago
  Yep, you are a typical example. Your world (and mine) is safe, but let’s meet up and step into a fortune 1000 non FAANG office, hit someone up for a chat and let’s see if you don’t believe this person can be replaced now by gpt4. Try it. I cannot see how, even after these stories, you cannot see how this is a problem and how this is not vastly different (horse drivers went to car drivers, farmers became factory workers etc; there is no such switch now) than the previous examples. We are limited by the amount of very clever people as the rest can be replaced (we need some robots but that’s coming). When we reach AGI, then even the 130+ iq peeps like you and me can start the worrying. But that doesn’t mean there is a present danger.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    If one person is more competent and willing to work for less money than someone else, what is a business to do? Hire/retain the more expensive less competent employee? If a machine is more competent and costs less than a human worker, what is a business to do? Not use robots to assemble cars? Not use AI to do mechanizable routine work?
    - anonzzzies 4y ago
      Yea, that’s what will happen. Not sure why you are responding to me? The gp seems to argue that this won’t be a problem now as in the past this made more jobs, so it will now too. I don’t believe that.
      - 4y ago
riogordo2go 4y ago
Maybe trades will get popular again as this is less easy to swap with an ai alternative.
- taylodl 4y ago
  Trades aren't unpopular as the popular narrative says - there's barriers to entry that few people are talking about.
- re-thc 4y ago
  Who will you sell your services to when no 1 can afford it anymore?
akasakahakada 4y ago
AI can never replace AI deniers. Just like science still unable to get rid of flat earthers.
- anonzzzies 4y ago
  And religion.
walkhour 4y ago
This is just the beginning and we don't know what will happen. Some people will say creative destruction is happening and people will find other jobs. They may equate this to the horse drivers finding other jobs at the beginning of the XXth century. The truth is we don't know. People that will lose their jobs may find other jobs or not. Maybe it's harder to reinvent oneself now. Maybe a lot of people will truly suffer because of AI. I find very hard to know with certainty what will happen, who will remain unharmed, and who will struggle but make it through, but change is coming.
- anonzzzies 4y ago
  We should prepare for it though. All the existential stuff with AIs killing humans I don’t think is the biggest danger. No work and no money is far more urgent. Even if it doesn’t happen, it can happen, so why not assume it will and change tactics when it’s clear it’s far more sunnier?
  - orwin 4y ago
    As long as we produce as much food and as much utilities, why would having less work to do overall bad?
    - anonzzzies 4y ago
      Well yes, that’s the best outcome; infinite energy which means infinite everything and, with AGI, infinite intelligence. Done properly, there is no worry; we will live in paradise. No needs for ads, wars or money. But it will depend on who owns it, no?
    - bobwaycott 4y ago
      Because “less work” means less money—and we haven’t built a society in which people can access all the food and utilities produced without it.
    - Taywee 4y ago
      Because most of the entire world is structured such that not working means you don't eat, can't pay rent, and can't afford healthcare Having less work is great, if we completely overhaul our economy so that not working is a viable way of life.
freitzkriesler2 4y ago
Yup, china is a good bell weather for the type of destructive boosts we'll see in jobs with AI. They have no scruples about laying off a ton of their workforce. Wait until non union entertainment industry jobs get a hold of this AI stuff. It's over and it is coming.
qwery 4y ago
> AI is not ‘replacing anyone yet’ and no one has to worry. I have seen these comments and this excuse (among others) as well. The thing that amuses me, before that amusement turns to some sort of cosmic existential horror dread, is the lack of critical thinking and general reasoning skills on display. The argument that AI is not replacing anyone yet is a strange one, because it implies that the outcome is inevitable (and at least unfortunate, presumably) but you shouldn't worry about it. You know, because it hasn't happened yet. But it will. So stop talking about it. I don't know, I just find that strange. (and seeing this pattern all over the place increasingly frequently is deeply concerning but that's a real-talk so I better stop).
danielrpa 4y ago
And this is the 8-bit version of AI Art, relatively speaking. In 10 years it will be hard to find a human that can match AI's quality in "regular art", i.e., something that doesn't try to innovate artistically but otherwise looks great.
TheLoafOfBread 4y ago
I am not worried at all. I am looking forward to it. And if people can be replaced by smarter IntelliSense, then maybe it is time to skill up.

908B64B197 4y ago

I'm not surprised. There's a race to the bottom in the video game industry to farm content to "best cost countries". Most man-hours aren't spent on engineering problems but on gameplay and asset generation. The Chinese industry is even more brutal in terms of the race to the bottom. Purchasing power is much lower than in the west and there's barely any export opportunities, so the only way to make money is to crank out "good enough" games by having the same engine run with different assets.

Woeps 4y ago
>" so the only way to make money is to crank out "good enough" games by having the same engine run with different assets." This reminds me of the countless dress up games I worked on during the Flash-era. And you know what, a hand full of those dress up games made us more money then all our other games combined ...
Pet_Ant 4y ago
> Most man-hours aren't spent on engineering problems but on gameplay and asset generation. Which is a shame. I'd really like to see more done in procedural generation and reactive content. Just read about a mod for CyberPunk where killing certain characters can effect the stockmarket. It would be cool to see all the NPCs become agents. It also means that after say 40 hour already your game world would become unique and unlike any other.

rcarr 4y ago

Video game and movie illustrators are completely fucked which is sad. Very interested to see how this plays out in the comic/graphic novel space. I could theoretically see the big hitters getting behind human artists for the marketing points, but if some new or smaller comic book studio starts churning out AI content and it takes off they might be forced to follow suit. I think a lot of this might depend on how comic book stores themselves operate e.g if they also get behind the artists and refuse to stock AI generated works. But I don't know how many people are buying comic books from stores vs online, as a relatively outside observer it seems to be one of the only types of retail businesses that seem to have stood up pretty well against the online onslaught, probably because of how much they operate as a community hub. Other prediction: Theoretically anyone with a semi-interesting TTRPG campaign could just feed in their weekly adventure into the program and have a comic book generated from the results. We could end up with a Soundcloud style situation but instead of songs there's 100,000 new comic books being generated a day. From there, it's not a stretch to say the same is going to happen to movies, because once you've got the comics (which are essentially storyboards) and the technology gets perfected for video, it's probably not a lot of effort to feed the comics into the AI and have it generate the movie. Will be interesting to see how the quality vs quantity dynamic plays out. Either we'll start consuming more content from local creatives and indie studios or there will be so much dross to sift through we'll happily pay globo corps more money for the highest quality stuff. It'll probably be somewhere in the middle. At the minute, I'm about 8 episodes into Critical Role's 2nd Campaign and questioning why I even still have Netflix when I can access entertainment like this for free on Youtube.

Clubber 4y ago
I think all of this will probably be true. I also think that AI generated art is novel at the moment. Eventually it will get boring because it's essentially just retreads of what it already knows. Since it's now doing all the "creating," based on what it knows, really new and interesting creations it can create will become rarer and rarer. Companies will of course milk it as long as they can, but eventually, the world will hunger for something new that AI can't provide, because it hasn't been trained. I give it 5-20 years before it becomes boring and predictable, like most corporate art already is.
4y ago

GaggiX 4y ago

I've seen impressive work done with AI in these Chinese companies such as: https://twitter.com/NIKKE_en/status/1607331147452911622 https://twitter.com/NIKKE_en/status/1607331147452911622 (dec 2022), although I have a keen eye for AI-generated content I couldn't figure it out, it's funny that people use AI to detect AI.

chrisbrandow 4y ago

We’ve always had cognitive jobs to fall back in when previous automation advances displaced jobs. It is not clear what happens when the fallbacks are more manual work that currently does not pay a lot.

stuckinhell 4y ago

It's definitely shocking, but creating a platformer in Unity with my entire family participating was amazing fun this weekend. My husband and I coded it, and our kids had a blast creating the artwork in stable diffusion. We then animated the avatars using another AI based on the vidoes of the faces our kids made. We created a whole game fairly easily.

donclark 4y ago
That sounds great! Could you share a link or a screenshot please?

ulfw 4y ago

We are all fucking ourselves and our future. AI will take every single job away until there's only a small sliver of "owners" who will eventually sell to fewer and fewer consumers. Oh sorry yes downvote me. I forgot. I am on Hackernews, were we blindly run after all technological progress even if it's detrimental to real life society.

throwbadubadu 4y ago
But..lets take AI and latest developments out of the picture for a second.. Imagine e.g. whole food providing world consists of only few coorps, run by few individuals that run a bot army to plant and harvest crops.. and they reap all the profits, while everyone else is unemployed: Isn't that a problem of the system? Shouldn't at least at that point everybody agree that pure free market capitalism needs to stop here and we should communize food creation? And now for everything else: Why shouldn't we favor all technical progress and gets us rid of "stupid" jobs.. there is so much more from caring for others, doing science, doing (human) art.. yes everyone needs a purpose, but there is enough to be done (like imagine Star Trek utopia). The problem is just, this won't get paid well or not paid at all, while few people own the essentials forever and can reap profits.. We should reconsider our wealth and power systems.. in the end some Star Trek utopia where noone is forced tio do something he doesn't want to but can pursue his purpose should be great, or why not?
- ulfw 4y ago
  That's all nice and cute and wonderful for in a couple generations from now. Society doesn't adapt quickly. There will be blood on the streets way more likely than a utopian society growing out of nowhere.

qwery 4y ago

It should be obvious that `Thing` generating tools/machines will displace/replace `Thing` generating humans as soon the tool meets the employer's threshold of affordability/quality/speed. This is how capitalism works and you don't have to be a communist to understand or accept that. With that said... Forty times! ... Seventy percent?! ... This seemed a bit extreme, so I had a look through the source article[0] to try and find out what these claims and figures (40x, 70%) were based on. The 40x productivity spike is drawn from a professional illustrator's claim that without AI tools, an illustrator could draw one piece in a day, but "with the help of AI, they could make 40 a day for their bosses to choose from." (quoted from article, not direct quote from the illustrator) The 70% job loss is similarly based on a single individual's claim. They reckon that illustrator jobs (listings?) dropped by 70%, with no indication of how they arrived at that figure. Furthermore, although they are assigning blame to the AI tools, they think that "regulatory pressures and a slowing economy" are the primary causes. To be clear, I'm not saying that either of these people are doing anything wrong. The reporting could be a little more critical, but this is not unexpected these days. The readers could be a little more critical as well... [0] https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layoffs/ https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layof...

dahwolf 4y ago

Consider creative/content jobs such as illustrators, freelance writers, translators as a spectrum or perhaps a pyramid. A big part of that pyramid is mass produced "good enough" output that was already squeezed before AI. That part will be almost entirely replaced with generative AI operated by a relatively tiny group. And with "will" I mean right now. The top of the pyramid will be semi-safe but production methods will still drastically change. I'm not convinced of the "we'll just create new jobs" narrative. From land to factory to office. What would be the next step in this cycle? I'm talking a billion people, not 3 super AI coders overseeing things.

falcolas 4y ago

Imagine being a concept artist - basically a professional Photoshop compositor - in the face of Dall-e and crew. Imagine being a script writer - taking other people's ideas and creating a script - in the face of GPT. Imagine being a D&D campaign writer. Technical writer. Tier 1 support. Any job that involves the previously tedious work of transforming ideas into writing or images.

taylodl 4y ago
But GPT's writing isn't that great. I would use it as a starter, because it can get you 60%-70% of the way there - but I wouldn't let it create the finished work. I'm not as familiar with the typical illustrator's workflow, but wouldn't something be similar? Could you use GPT to quickly create some different kinds of ideas to see what you like and then use that as the starting point to finish off the work? In both cases aren't there copyright concerns you'd have to address? How do you know GPT isn't using copyrighted material?
- falcolas 4y ago
  > because it can get you 60%-70% of the way there Which means you can reduce the time spent by that same amount. Or to flip it, one person can do the work of 3-4 people. You'd still want an editor, but you've always wanted an editor. > How do you know GPT isn't using copyrighted material? It quite obviously does use copyrighted material, but it's a dirty secret of these industries that so do their people. GPT and Dall-e will probably hide it better, but it's something the industry already has playbooks around.
- badpun 4y ago
  Concept artist is basically the idea generator. They quickly paint a bunch of loose ideas and present them to art director and rest of the team for discussion. None of their art makes in into final product. I could see concept art as being disrupted by generative models.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    Thanks - this is what I meant when I said I'm not familiar with their workflow! Sounds like GPT will impact jobs. Do you see a way GPT could actually create jobs?