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In the case of a human studying, a person puts in effort and gets rewarded for their efforts. In the case of AI, a person puts in minimal effort to generate so

In the case of a human studying, a person puts in effort and gets rewarded for their efforts. In the case of AI, a person puts in minimal effort to generate something that devalues the work of all the people who did put in effort.

fho 3y ago
Stable Diffusion did cost 500k to train ... I wouldn't call that "minimal effort". (And that is only the computation cost.)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
arghwhat 3y ago
> In the case of a human studying, a person puts in effort and gets rewarded for their efforts. When someone needs something composed, they don't learn how to write music. They pay someone else the bare minimum, e.g. a few bucks on fiverr. The person will spend the least possible amount of effort to try to make their life go around with the little money they got. When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free. Neither the person you would hire or the AI credited those who created the material they trained on.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  > When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free. In other words, you pay a few cents to big tech for a generator that only exists thanks to work real composers, singers etc who now get the grand total of 0$.
  - arghwhat 3y ago
    As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft. On the other hand, the easy access may cause new types of artists to appear by lowering the bar of entry, or just make custom music more generally available and more widely used as the price makes it a commodity. We also stopped hiring computers (the occupation) and instead pay big tech companies which made computers (the device) available to everyone. And we stopped hiring people to do dangerous manual labor as companies started selling machinery to automate it. Markets change.
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      > As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft Yes. > computers > dangerous manual labor If people are not in danger and don't have to do mechanical work, it's one thing. If composers stop composing original music that was used for training current AI because they don't get paid anymore then the field stagnates. Same for writing and everything else
      - arghwhat 3y ago
        People doing mechanical work made art through physical objects. Woodwork, pottery, glassware, you name it. There are now far more options, both on the high and low-end, with the whole area being more affordable. The quality of most products also arguably went up, as factories beat handmade goods. And yet, if you want custom artisan goods, you can still pay a woodworker for it at more or less the same cost as you would have otherwise, as their labor costs are a function of time required and local living conditions. In some cases, those workers were the ones to automate, benefiting from the assistance - woodworkers using CNC mills and laser cutters even for handmade goods, or composers themselves can use the AI - to speed up their otherwise fully manual work. It benefits the majority creating the demand, and tends to improve the craft overall. > ... then the field stagnates. A market that is not changing has already stagnated.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        Dangerous manual labour like mining or tunnel building. In woodworking the art is art but if you use a machine to copy my original design then it's the same old theft again. :) > A market that is not changing has already stagnated. Yep. The way art is changing is thanks to original work and no one will be making it since anything you make gets stolen for free
- dsign 3y ago
  > When someone needs something composed, they don’t learn to write music… Speak for yourself! There is only one thing that scares me more than composing music, and that’s paying somebody a few bucks in fiverr to do it for me.
  - arghwhat 3y ago
    Despite your personal fears I believe I spoke for the vast majority of cases rather than just for myself. Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...
    - throwaway290 3y ago
      > Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely... That's by choice though?
      - arghwhat 3y ago
        By the composer, yes, but the composer here is the AI. In neither case did the musicians that the composer studied/trained on get asked. And that's the point: The difference is the replacement of 1 flesh-and-blood composer with 1 virtual composer, with the consequence being the lost business of the former. The artists studied were never part of the transaction in either case. Now, the long-term consequences for artists - e.g., reduced supply on the low end as they're out-competed - is harder to guess, but that's just market dynamics. It may very well increase supply as composition becomes more available, diversifying by allowing people with other skills or creative treats to create music that previously could not - even if the musical part is done by AI.
        throwaway290 3y ago
        I meant, royalty free music is released/licensed by artists who get paid or are OK not being paid but with AI whatever consequences there may be their work is highjacked/stolen.
drusepth 3y ago
> In the case of AI, a person puts in minimal effort to generate something that devalues the work of all the people who did put in effort. Worded differently: people who couldn't otherwise produce skill-based works of value have had the barrier of entry lowered for that specific medium of expression, allowing for more works across a wider spectrum of skill.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  It’s so bizarre when people say stuff like this. There is absolutely nothing preventing the unpracticed or untalented people from any form of creative expression. What instead people who use AI seem to want is for unpracticed or untalented people to perform at the level of the practiced and talented, but this is no net gain to anyone. Why? Because only a rare subset of people who ARE practiced and talented create anything of interest or value in the first place. What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient) Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works, AI-tuned to the level of being mediocre, is a creative and intellectual dead end.
  - IanCal 3y ago
    This feels like weird gatekeeping. Why is this the line? Where are the complaints about people using pianos to achieve rather precise notes instead of using their own voices? They are just untalented at singing and their use of any tool to create sound is of no net gain to anyone. This person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUE-LxhUR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUE-LxhUR8 ? They're recording and playing back on a loop! They should record full repeated playings, any use of the recording is of no net gain because it could be achieved otherwise. Songwriters? If they write lyrics and someone else sings them the result should be cast into the sea - it's of no net gain to anyone because they did not create the sounds themselves. Composers? Frankly pointless. > Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works I hate to break it to you but there are a vast number of terrible works of art out there already. > What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient) If it's a necessary thing, of course it's a barrier. That there are two barriers doesn't change that.

fho 3y ago

Stable Diffusion did cost 500k to train ... I wouldn't call that "minimal effort". (And that is only the computation cost.)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

arghwhat 3y ago

> In the case of a human studying, a person puts in effort and gets rewarded for their efforts. When someone needs something composed, they don't learn how to write music. They pay someone else the bare minimum, e.g. a few bucks on fiverr. The person will spend the least possible amount of effort to try to make their life go around with the little money they got. When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free. Neither the person you would hire or the AI credited those who created the material they trained on.

throwaway290 3y ago
> When you then use an AI model, the work done for those five bucks is replaced by work done for almost free. In other words, you pay a few cents to big tech for a generator that only exists thanks to work real composers, singers etc who now get the grand total of 0$.
- arghwhat 3y ago
  As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft. On the other hand, the easy access may cause new types of artists to appear by lowering the bar of entry, or just make custom music more generally available and more widely used as the price makes it a commodity. We also stopped hiring computers (the occupation) and instead pay big tech companies which made computers (the device) available to everyone. And we stopped hiring people to do dangerous manual labor as companies started selling machinery to automate it. Markets change.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    > As opposed to paying $5 to a singular composer that only exists because of other real composers, singers, etc., as they studied the craft Yes. > computers > dangerous manual labor If people are not in danger and don't have to do mechanical work, it's one thing. If composers stop composing original music that was used for training current AI because they don't get paid anymore then the field stagnates. Same for writing and everything else
    - arghwhat 3y ago
      People doing mechanical work made art through physical objects. Woodwork, pottery, glassware, you name it. There are now far more options, both on the high and low-end, with the whole area being more affordable. The quality of most products also arguably went up, as factories beat handmade goods. And yet, if you want custom artisan goods, you can still pay a woodworker for it at more or less the same cost as you would have otherwise, as their labor costs are a function of time required and local living conditions. In some cases, those workers were the ones to automate, benefiting from the assistance - woodworkers using CNC mills and laser cutters even for handmade goods, or composers themselves can use the AI - to speed up their otherwise fully manual work. It benefits the majority creating the demand, and tends to improve the craft overall. > ... then the field stagnates. A market that is not changing has already stagnated.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        Dangerous manual labour like mining or tunnel building. In woodworking the art is art but if you use a machine to copy my original design then it's the same old theft again. :) > A market that is not changing has already stagnated. Yep. The way art is changing is thanks to original work and no one will be making it since anything you make gets stolen for free
dsign 3y ago
> When someone needs something composed, they don’t learn to write music… Speak for yourself! There is only one thing that scares me more than composing music, and that’s paying somebody a few bucks in fiverr to do it for me.
- arghwhat 3y ago
  Despite your personal fears I believe I spoke for the vast majority of cases rather than just for myself. Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely...
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    > Although I suppose royalty-free stock music is the norm nowadays for most commercial uses, which takes it a step further, anonymizing the composer entirely... That's by choice though?
    - arghwhat 3y ago
      By the composer, yes, but the composer here is the AI. In neither case did the musicians that the composer studied/trained on get asked. And that's the point: The difference is the replacement of 1 flesh-and-blood composer with 1 virtual composer, with the consequence being the lost business of the former. The artists studied were never part of the transaction in either case. Now, the long-term consequences for artists - e.g., reduced supply on the low end as they're out-competed - is harder to guess, but that's just market dynamics. It may very well increase supply as composition becomes more available, diversifying by allowing people with other skills or creative treats to create music that previously could not - even if the musical part is done by AI.
      - throwaway290 3y ago
        I meant, royalty free music is released/licensed by artists who get paid or are OK not being paid but with AI whatever consequences there may be their work is highjacked/stolen.

drusepth 3y ago

> In the case of AI, a person puts in minimal effort to generate something that devalues the work of all the people who did put in effort. Worded differently: people who couldn't otherwise produce skill-based works of value have had the barrier of entry lowered for that specific medium of expression, allowing for more works across a wider spectrum of skill.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
It’s so bizarre when people say stuff like this. There is absolutely nothing preventing the unpracticed or untalented people from any form of creative expression. What instead people who use AI seem to want is for unpracticed or untalented people to perform at the level of the practiced and talented, but this is no net gain to anyone. Why? Because only a rare subset of people who ARE practiced and talented create anything of interest or value in the first place. What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient) Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works, AI-tuned to the level of being mediocre, is a creative and intellectual dead end.
- IanCal 3y ago
  This feels like weird gatekeeping. Why is this the line? Where are the complaints about people using pianos to achieve rather precise notes instead of using their own voices? They are just untalented at singing and their use of any tool to create sound is of no net gain to anyone. This person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUE-LxhUR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbUE-LxhUR8 ? They're recording and playing back on a loop! They should record full repeated playings, any use of the recording is of no net gain because it could be achieved otherwise. Songwriters? If they write lyrics and someone else sings them the result should be cast into the sea - it's of no net gain to anyone because they did not create the sounds themselves. Composers? Frankly pointless. > Flooding the world with unpolished, unpracticed works I hate to break it to you but there are a vast number of terrible works of art out there already. > What this tells you is that skill or level of performance is not the barrier, but a means through which great things CAN be achieved (i.e. necessary, but not sufficient) If it's a necessary thing, of course it's a barrier. That there are two barriers doesn't change that.