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Enforcing artificial scarcity is idiotic and counter progressive. There will be other things that will continue to be uncommon that humans will continue to appr

Enforcing artificial scarcity is idiotic and counter progressive. There will be other things that will continue to be uncommon that humans will continue to appreciate. This is what human progress looks like. Imagine someone said this when agriculture started up- “The great thing about fruits and vegetables is that they taste so sweet the few times we find them. We shouldn’t grow them in bulk”

__loam 3y ago
AI Art models are completely dependent on human labor to function. "Out-competing" human generated images will damage the commons and make it harder to train these models over time as they push human creative labor out of the market, if we believe it's even competitive. Personally I think this guy has a point and he's pointing to something that I don't believe a lot of ai art advocates have considered: the attention economy. There isn't actually any scarcity in the current market for artistic content. There are literally millions of people producing art every day, and the market is very winner take all. There are few artists who are able to support themselves on their work, and their skills are exceptional and specifically in demand. My theory is that the supply of AI generated content will be so vast, and the perception around it will be that it's low effort and low quality, that so called AI artists are going to have trouble distinguishing themselves in a market where they're saturating it and all using the same models. I think your perception of this market is flawed. Art is not a fungible good like food or clothing.
- soligern 3y ago
  So what if art is devalued? We are hardwired to appreciate beauty so art of some form will always be sought. Obviously there is the matter of artists losing their livelihoods but that is also an inevitable outcome of progress and always has been.
  - __loam 3y ago
    Lol. I hate this industry sometimes. It's not obvious, to me at least, that our society should accept the automation of the production of culture. Maybe I'm a luddite or whatever lazy quip you'd like to use, but I prefer the story of a human mastering a skill and producing something beyond contextless aesthetic sludge.
    - I_am_uncreative 3y ago
      Yeah, that's why I always laugh when I see people use cars instead of walking 100 miles. It's an inspiring story for people to do marathons, and cars devalue that.
      - __loam 3y ago
        Imagine talking about artistic expression like it's just a fucking car trip that should be automated.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    I disagree. The problem is that AI will flood the market to an extent that humans will barely be able to keep up, moving from one AI-generated thing to the next, barely having time any more to spend any real effort on enjoying life.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
There is a great chasm between "don't grow vegetables" and "grow them the way we do them today". I wouldn't advocate not growing vegetables. But today we grow them in a monoculture for instant availability everywhere, and those monocultures are susceptible to disease and also are not terribly ecologically friendly. AI is like an ultimate monoculture of diseased fruits. Also, I believe counter-progressive to be a good thing. Human beings should not progress in certain ways, as we don't have the wisdom to use the technology we have developed. Humans in general cannot appreciate things very well, and computers and AI will only make it worse.

__loam 3y ago

AI Art models are completely dependent on human labor to function. "Out-competing" human generated images will damage the commons and make it harder to train these models over time as they push human creative labor out of the market, if we believe it's even competitive. Personally I think this guy has a point and he's pointing to something that I don't believe a lot of ai art advocates have considered: the attention economy. There isn't actually any scarcity in the current market for artistic content. There are literally millions of people producing art every day, and the market is very winner take all. There are few artists who are able to support themselves on their work, and their skills are exceptional and specifically in demand. My theory is that the supply of AI generated content will be so vast, and the perception around it will be that it's low effort and low quality, that so called AI artists are going to have trouble distinguishing themselves in a market where they're saturating it and all using the same models. I think your perception of this market is flawed. Art is not a fungible good like food or clothing.

soligern 3y ago
So what if art is devalued? We are hardwired to appreciate beauty so art of some form will always be sought. Obviously there is the matter of artists losing their livelihoods but that is also an inevitable outcome of progress and always has been.
- __loam 3y ago
  Lol. I hate this industry sometimes. It's not obvious, to me at least, that our society should accept the automation of the production of culture. Maybe I'm a luddite or whatever lazy quip you'd like to use, but I prefer the story of a human mastering a skill and producing something beyond contextless aesthetic sludge.
  - I_am_uncreative 3y ago
    Yeah, that's why I always laugh when I see people use cars instead of walking 100 miles. It's an inspiring story for people to do marathons, and cars devalue that.
    - __loam 3y ago
      Imagine talking about artistic expression like it's just a fucking car trip that should be automated.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I disagree. The problem is that AI will flood the market to an extent that humans will barely be able to keep up, moving from one AI-generated thing to the next, barely having time any more to spend any real effort on enjoying life.

vouaobrasil 3y ago

There is a great chasm between "don't grow vegetables" and "grow them the way we do them today". I wouldn't advocate not growing vegetables. But today we grow them in a monoculture for instant availability everywhere, and those monocultures are susceptible to disease and also are not terribly ecologically friendly. AI is like an ultimate monoculture of diseased fruits. Also, I believe counter-progressive to be a good thing. Human beings should not progress in certain ways, as we don't have the wisdom to use the technology we have developed. Humans in general cannot appreciate things very well, and computers and AI will only make it worse.