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I despise the underlying belief here. That belief that the only reason people create art is based on desires for fame and monetary gain. Which is so demonstrabl

I despise the underlying belief here. That belief that the only reason people create art is based on desires for fame and monetary gain. Which is so demonstrably incorrect that it boggles my mind. This is where centuries of copyright law have gotten us, brainwashing people into thinking ideas are property ("intellectual property") and should be treated as rivalrous goods, and that the only reason to be an artist is to profit. Brainwashing people into thinking the only way we'll have art in the world is if we maximize the profits of commercial artists. Take one brief look at the internet, music, video, podcasts, a museum, the walls and refrigerators in people's homes, a kindergarten class room, an art class, or hell, this very forum. And you'll see that it's universally true that people like creating stuff because people like creating stuff. For free. Because it's fun and stimulating. That's inherent in us. We do not need laws to prop up an artificial business model for humans to maintain our drive to create.

throwaway5959 3y ago
Do you want to work for free?
- MacsHeadroom 3y ago
  No, that's why I do work and/or monetize my work in ways which aren't easily automated by a machine. Simples as.
renegat0x0 3y ago
... but you do have a rent to pay for? You know that artists also have to live somewhere? Why do we have stars on github? Maybe not for fame, but it is a good indicator of how somebody is good. Fame is important. We do not make github repositories for "stars", but I think it is a good motivator for people to continue what they're doing. If there is an author who spent years of his life into producing some kind of music piece, should not there be some kind of laws protecting his work from theft?
- Wissenschafter 3y ago
  You can pay rent by other means than art. Adapt or be homeless.
  - renegat0x0 3y ago
    If any work is used for AI training, then the author should be paid. I hope that artists will be protected. Abide the law, or meet consequences?
    - emanuele232 3y ago
      i agree in part with the parent comment, art can be done for hobby or for work, if the work part is being replaced by generators then art will be confined as an hobby and maybe that will be better for everyone. Stop at all the laundry-multimillionary "art" racket. btw, regarding copyright use, i don't see how AIs are not in the "fair use" category, they take human-generated content and apply a transformation to it, generating new images. The only problem is that generating images is a million-times quicker and cheaper
    - Wissenschafter 3y ago
      If any work is used for human training, then the author should be paid. See how ridiculous that sounds?
      - renegat0x0 3y ago
        If a 'work' was created for view only, and a "big tech company" sends employees to spy and capture anything 'work' related during human training, with mischievous intent to copy everything without permission, without compensation, so that author cannot use it anymore then NO, I do not find that ridiculous. I find that evil.
  - __loam 3y ago
    What a shit opinion. As most of us are professional programmers here, surely we can understand the benefits of professionalization? We as a society lose something if the economy can't support the mastery of these skills, including the ability to create the training data these models depend on.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nologic01 3y ago
You are going on an irrelevant tangent (whether people enjoying being creative - which is obviously true at least for some) instead of answering a very clear and simple question: how, in your evolved and less broken universe, will talented people dedicate their life to produce something that society does not acknowledge or reward but simply appropriates.
- Wissenschafter 3y ago
  Should I be able to dedicate my life to some obscure thing that nobody cares to buy as a commodity? That argument is absurd, you don't HAVE to be an artist. You can be a talented person and dedicate your life to something else. Or you can be like everyone else and do it as a hobby in your time off because people don't find what you do creatively to be valuable. I demand I get paid for my playing video games, I think it's valuable and I dedicate my time to it, I deserve to be paid. Fucking ridiculous.
  - xeckr 3y ago
    Do you listen to music?
- csallen 3y ago
  Why do we as a society need to answer that question? When automobiles were popularized, entire generations of families and people devoted to horsecraft suddenly found their business model obsolete. Did we as a society need to come together to ask how talented people in the horse industry might be able to continue to profitably dedicate their lives to that task? No, we just let the market figure it out, and allowed change to occur. Our take an alternate thought experiment. Imagine a world where recipes were patentable. The first person to make mac-and-cheese could patent that, claim ownership of mac-and-cheese, and ban every other person and restaurant from making and selling mac-and-cheese. There would, of course, be an entire industry devoted to this. There would be restaurant chains that own the idea of pizza, burgers, etc., and stop any and everyone else from making that. There would be small and boutique recipe crafters creating and profiting from their unique recipes, too. And of course, people in this industry would ferociously sue anyone who "stole" the recipes that they "owned." And they would ask the same questions you're asking: "What ever would we do in a world where recipe owners don't get to uniquely monopolize their creations because they're allowed to be appropriated by others?" And the answer is: that business model wouldn't simply exist, and the world would be just fine without it. It's not clear to me why any particular profession or business model needs to be protected into existence. The world will be just fine if some business model that always worked gradually ceases to become viable. I have sympathy for the people in those professions, but it happens all the time, and is a necessary consequence of technological innovation and progress. In the 1800s, the Luddites smashed up factory equipment and tried to make it illegal, because they wanted to protect labor jobs. Thankfully they lost, and now we have a world with better jobs, which they could not have imagined.
Capricorn2481 3y ago
I appreciate the sentiment but AI is not a panacea to copyright laws, it's a way to hoard ideas whether it's protected or not. And we still have copyright laws. Corporations are still hoarding IP. So rules for thee, not for me. The harder you make it for artists to get paid, the more people you get promoting Raid Shadow Legends
raynr 3y ago
I didn't get that from the poster you're replying to. I agree with you that people will create because people are people and want to create. But people also have to eat, need shelter, want kids, have to take care of health issues, and so on. For that they need money. If they can't get money from their creations they'll spend less time creating and more time engaging in activity that generates returns.
- csnover 3y ago
  > If they can't get money from their creations they'll spend less time creating and more time engaging in activity that generates returns. On the other hand, artists who adapt AI into their workflows will have vastly improved productivity, so the amount of time they need to create new works can also be much smaller for the same amount of output. There will still be some artists who can avoid using AI and make a living, but like all skilled industries that have already been disrupted by automation, the market for that kind of work will become smaller and more exclusive, and that’s probably OK. Live musicians were the only way to get music on the radio, or in the cinema, or at a party, until audio recordings decimated the industry[0]. You can still buy hand-made furniture, or clothing, or cars, but most people today get them from a factory. I do think there are serious issues with large players attempting to corner the market and extract all the wealth for themselves, but this is an old problem[1], and I think on balance these lawsuits perpetuate, rather than attempt to solve, the root problem: a missing social safety net and no guarantee that people will not have to scramble to survive every time a disruptive technology emerges. [0] https://timeline.com/live-musicians-were-so-terrified-of-recording-their-music-fdr-had-to-step-in-c03b6af16944 https://timeline.com/live-musicians-were-so-terrified-of-rec... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
  - antifa 3y ago
    > On the other hand, artists who adapt AI into their workflows This will benefit people who spam garbage 100x more than it will benefit the natural human desire to create art.
    - 3y ago
moose4400 3y ago
Well said.
__loam 3y ago
Professional artists have to eat. Holy shit.

throwaway5959 3y ago

Do you want to work for free?

MacsHeadroom 3y ago
No, that's why I do work and/or monetize my work in ways which aren't easily automated by a machine. Simples as.

renegat0x0 3y ago

... but you do have a rent to pay for? You know that artists also have to live somewhere? Why do we have stars on github? Maybe not for fame, but it is a good indicator of how somebody is good. Fame is important. We do not make github repositories for "stars", but I think it is a good motivator for people to continue what they're doing. If there is an author who spent years of his life into producing some kind of music piece, should not there be some kind of laws protecting his work from theft?

Wissenschafter 3y ago
You can pay rent by other means than art. Adapt or be homeless.
- renegat0x0 3y ago
  If any work is used for AI training, then the author should be paid. I hope that artists will be protected. Abide the law, or meet consequences?
  - emanuele232 3y ago
    i agree in part with the parent comment, art can be done for hobby or for work, if the work part is being replaced by generators then art will be confined as an hobby and maybe that will be better for everyone. Stop at all the laundry-multimillionary "art" racket. btw, regarding copyright use, i don't see how AIs are not in the "fair use" category, they take human-generated content and apply a transformation to it, generating new images. The only problem is that generating images is a million-times quicker and cheaper
  - Wissenschafter 3y ago
    If any work is used for human training, then the author should be paid. See how ridiculous that sounds?
    - renegat0x0 3y ago
      If a 'work' was created for view only, and a "big tech company" sends employees to spy and capture anything 'work' related during human training, with mischievous intent to copy everything without permission, without compensation, so that author cannot use it anymore then NO, I do not find that ridiculous. I find that evil.
- __loam 3y ago
  What a shit opinion. As most of us are professional programmers here, surely we can understand the benefits of professionalization? We as a society lose something if the economy can't support the mastery of these skills, including the ability to create the training data these models depend on.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nologic01 3y ago

You are going on an irrelevant tangent (whether people enjoying being creative - which is obviously true at least for some) instead of answering a very clear and simple question: how, in your evolved and less broken universe, will talented people dedicate their life to produce something that society does not acknowledge or reward but simply appropriates.

Wissenschafter 3y ago
Should I be able to dedicate my life to some obscure thing that nobody cares to buy as a commodity? That argument is absurd, you don't HAVE to be an artist. You can be a talented person and dedicate your life to something else. Or you can be like everyone else and do it as a hobby in your time off because people don't find what you do creatively to be valuable. I demand I get paid for my playing video games, I think it's valuable and I dedicate my time to it, I deserve to be paid. Fucking ridiculous.
- xeckr 3y ago
  Do you listen to music?
csallen 3y ago
Why do we as a society need to answer that question? When automobiles were popularized, entire generations of families and people devoted to horsecraft suddenly found their business model obsolete. Did we as a society need to come together to ask how talented people in the horse industry might be able to continue to profitably dedicate their lives to that task? No, we just let the market figure it out, and allowed change to occur. Our take an alternate thought experiment. Imagine a world where recipes were patentable. The first person to make mac-and-cheese could patent that, claim ownership of mac-and-cheese, and ban every other person and restaurant from making and selling mac-and-cheese. There would, of course, be an entire industry devoted to this. There would be restaurant chains that own the idea of pizza, burgers, etc., and stop any and everyone else from making that. There would be small and boutique recipe crafters creating and profiting from their unique recipes, too. And of course, people in this industry would ferociously sue anyone who "stole" the recipes that they "owned." And they would ask the same questions you're asking: "What ever would we do in a world where recipe owners don't get to uniquely monopolize their creations because they're allowed to be appropriated by others?" And the answer is: that business model wouldn't simply exist, and the world would be just fine without it. It's not clear to me why any particular profession or business model needs to be protected into existence. The world will be just fine if some business model that always worked gradually ceases to become viable. I have sympathy for the people in those professions, but it happens all the time, and is a necessary consequence of technological innovation and progress. In the 1800s, the Luddites smashed up factory equipment and tried to make it illegal, because they wanted to protect labor jobs. Thankfully they lost, and now we have a world with better jobs, which they could not have imagined.

Capricorn2481 3y ago

I appreciate the sentiment but AI is not a panacea to copyright laws, it's a way to hoard ideas whether it's protected or not. And we still have copyright laws. Corporations are still hoarding IP. So rules for thee, not for me. The harder you make it for artists to get paid, the more people you get promoting Raid Shadow Legends

raynr 3y ago

I didn't get that from the poster you're replying to. I agree with you that people will create because people are people and want to create. But people also have to eat, need shelter, want kids, have to take care of health issues, and so on. For that they need money. If they can't get money from their creations they'll spend less time creating and more time engaging in activity that generates returns.

csnover 3y ago
> If they can't get money from their creations they'll spend less time creating and more time engaging in activity that generates returns. On the other hand, artists who adapt AI into their workflows will have vastly improved productivity, so the amount of time they need to create new works can also be much smaller for the same amount of output. There will still be some artists who can avoid using AI and make a living, but like all skilled industries that have already been disrupted by automation, the market for that kind of work will become smaller and more exclusive, and that’s probably OK. Live musicians were the only way to get music on the radio, or in the cinema, or at a party, until audio recordings decimated the industry[0]. You can still buy hand-made furniture, or clothing, or cars, but most people today get them from a factory. I do think there are serious issues with large players attempting to corner the market and extract all the wealth for themselves, but this is an old problem[1], and I think on balance these lawsuits perpetuate, rather than attempt to solve, the root problem: a missing social safety net and no guarantee that people will not have to scramble to survive every time a disruptive technology emerges. [0] https://timeline.com/live-musicians-were-so-terrified-of-recording-their-music-fdr-had-to-step-in-c03b6af16944 https://timeline.com/live-musicians-were-so-terrified-of-rec... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
- antifa 3y ago
  > On the other hand, artists who adapt AI into their workflows This will benefit people who spam garbage 100x more than it will benefit the natural human desire to create art.
  - 3y ago

moose4400 3y ago

Well said.

__loam 3y ago

Professional artists have to eat. Holy shit.