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This style of AI doesn't generate value, it extracts value. You can deliver a 90% as good product for 10% of the cost. That's great for the person arbitraging t

This style of AI doesn't generate value, it extracts value. You can deliver a 90% as good product for 10% of the cost. That's great for the person arbitraging the 90% savings, but worse for anyone actually using the service. In this regard it functions primarily as a wealth transfer mechanism, so it ends up like blockchains anyway.

majormajor 3y ago
If you want to be reductive, you can say the same about delivering knowledge over the internet. You get "90%" of the value of the world's best library - access to information - but lose things like a well-organized professional scheme, expert humans to assist you with your queries, and the ability to fill up a table with a bunch of books and reference materials side by side vs what you can fit onto your screen at once. But you also add some new things - you don't have to travel, multiple people can use it at once, etc - that all basically could be thrown into the "10% the cost" bucket: a company doesn't have to spend to send researchers around, they don't have to wait, etc. And publishers and artists of course were convinced that the internet would be the death of their current business models, that they were just extractive tools, not creative, and bad for their world; and weren't exactly wrong. They're both just moving bits around and summarizing more than doing the original research to figure out atomic theory, say. But "10% the cost" - and especially "10% the time required" unlocks A LOT of ability to do more, fancier things. As does bypassing gatekeeping requirements (pay to travel, pay to have marketing copy written, pay/have connections to get access to the right archives, "sponsor" an artist to create stuff personally for you...). I think ChatGPT is generally bad as a creative agent (vs a carefully used tool) and is gonna result in the internet being full of even more low-value BS than before, but I think it's inaccurate to say that it's not going to unlock anything new. It's just gonna look way different than today's internet.
- morelisp 3y ago
  Paying an artist to make art is not "gatekeeping", what the fuck.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    It's sorta a two-sided thing. Is a world with Patreon more or less gate-kept from the perspective of "influencing things to your taste" than one where you had to be rich enough to sponsor a Mozart or such? Is a world where you can't afford to make your own compositions because you don't have the money to afford the tutelage or the free time to master every single step more or less gate-kept than one where you can play around and learn on free or cheap software tools? It'll be different but there will still be artists - creation will be open to more people than ever before - and I also don't expect that the power-law function of cultural products and taste will change, so there will still be big winners from those artists able to command $$$.
    - morelisp 3y ago
      It's not two-sided! That's just not what "gatekeeping" is! You're talking about like ten other things, none of which are gatekeeping.
      - majormajor 3y ago
        Sure, what are those ten other words, sub them in where you like. Maybe "barrier of cost of entry" for most of the ones beyond historical wealthy-person-patronage? I'm not too concerned with what specifically to call examples of how things will change. Overall I believe that this is certainly a disruptive, possibly revolutionary, information systems technology but I don't believe it's more uniquely purely extractive than something like the internet or previous disruptive ones.

majormajor 3y ago

If you want to be reductive, you can say the same about delivering knowledge over the internet. You get "90%" of the value of the world's best library - access to information - but lose things like a well-organized professional scheme, expert humans to assist you with your queries, and the ability to fill up a table with a bunch of books and reference materials side by side vs what you can fit onto your screen at once. But you also add some new things - you don't have to travel, multiple people can use it at once, etc - that all basically could be thrown into the "10% the cost" bucket: a company doesn't have to spend to send researchers around, they don't have to wait, etc. And publishers and artists of course were convinced that the internet would be the death of their current business models, that they were just extractive tools, not creative, and bad for their world; and weren't exactly wrong. They're both just moving bits around and summarizing more than doing the original research to figure out atomic theory, say. But "10% the cost" - and especially "10% the time required" unlocks A LOT of ability to do more, fancier things. As does bypassing gatekeeping requirements (pay to travel, pay to have marketing copy written, pay/have connections to get access to the right archives, "sponsor" an artist to create stuff personally for you...). I think ChatGPT is generally bad as a creative agent (vs a carefully used tool) and is gonna result in the internet being full of even more low-value BS than before, but I think it's inaccurate to say that it's not going to unlock anything new. It's just gonna look way different than today's internet.

morelisp 3y ago
Paying an artist to make art is not "gatekeeping", what the fuck.
- majormajor 3y ago
  It's sorta a two-sided thing. Is a world with Patreon more or less gate-kept from the perspective of "influencing things to your taste" than one where you had to be rich enough to sponsor a Mozart or such? Is a world where you can't afford to make your own compositions because you don't have the money to afford the tutelage or the free time to master every single step more or less gate-kept than one where you can play around and learn on free or cheap software tools? It'll be different but there will still be artists - creation will be open to more people than ever before - and I also don't expect that the power-law function of cultural products and taste will change, so there will still be big winners from those artists able to command $$$.
  - morelisp 3y ago
    It's not two-sided! That's just not what "gatekeeping" is! You're talking about like ten other things, none of which are gatekeeping.
    - majormajor 3y ago
      Sure, what are those ten other words, sub them in where you like. Maybe "barrier of cost of entry" for most of the ones beyond historical wealthy-person-patronage? I'm not too concerned with what specifically to call examples of how things will change. Overall I believe that this is certainly a disruptive, possibly revolutionary, information systems technology but I don't believe it's more uniquely purely extractive than something like the internet or previous disruptive ones.