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Who said that's not okay? The problem with AI-produced art is its potential to supplant human art, i.e. to destroy the incentive for any human to gain artistic

Who said that's not okay? The problem with AI-produced art is its potential to supplant human art, i.e. to destroy the incentive for any human to gain artistic mastery. Here's how they're not equivalent: if you take human inputs out of AI, it disappears. If you take AI inputs out of human art, basically nothing changes.

deadbabe 1y ago
If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. I think you’ve failed to articulate any kind of real problem with AI art replacing human art, you just don’t like it personally so you want to see it gone.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  > If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. Deploying fortune-cookie wisdom to defend against allegations of astounding ignorance of the real world is... a choice. Which "true masters" didn't do do art commercially? According to your theory, not only should this list be of non-zero length, but it should include every master. So please tell me which ones.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    You don’t think there are? Then what do you care if masters go extinct and all masterworks are produced by AI? The end result is the same.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Give me examples please. If you think the end state is the same, it's because you misunderstand the argument being made. Try being more curious and less fortune-cookie! Nobody said "making money from art is bad."
      - deadbabe 1y ago
        I have no examples.
        sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        Does that disprove your thesis that people cannot make great art (or become “true masters”) with commercial incentives? What does this imply for your broader thesis that nothing is lost if AI destroys commercial incentive for humans to master and develop art further?
        deadbabe 1y ago
        No, because commercially motivated artists are inherently more well known than people who master an art but don’t need to promote it. Ultimately if one wants to master an art, money cannot be the incentive, it’s only a byproduct.
        sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        Ah, I see. So just running with this theory on an article of faith, with literally zero evidence. Nice! Art: The one thing in the whole world where incentives don't matter. The stuff of fortune cookies.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    An obvious example would be Van Gogh, who famously during his lifetime only sold a single painting. I don't fully agree with the statement you quoted, as I think it overstates things a bit - there certainly are famous artists who not just lived of their work but sometimes were on permanent contracts. E.g. Haydn spent much of his career as music director for the Esterhazy family. Haydn also credited his relative isolation from other composers due to his position as part of the reason for his originality. But at the same time, we see the vast majority of artists of all kinds not making much money. In the UK, the average full time author would do better as a fry cook at McDonalds if it was money they were after, for example. A lot of these fields skew very heavily toward a very tiny sliver of the top, and while some of them are undoubtedly great artists, the correlation between the highest earners and most critically celebrated is rarely straightforward. Furthermore, often the wealth comes after many of their great works, with the odds so long that very few people have a rational basis for going into it chasing the odds of a large payout. Chasing the hope of eeking out an existence, maybe.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      Van Gogh spent his life failing to sell his artwork. I.e. he was commercially motivated, just failed. None of your other points are relevant. People get good at art when they dedicate absolutely obscene amounts of time to it. If you take away all commercial incentive to do so, people won't spend as much time doing that craft. This is called basic incentives and it applies to artists too.
      - vidarh 1y ago
        After a few of those failures, it stopped being rational to think he'd make money from his art, yet he persisted with his art. Your argument is entirely backwards. Artists who dedicate a lot of their time to art sometimes want to sell for whatever reason, sometimes commercial, often ego, but also a lot of the time are forced to spend some of their time trying to sell because they want to eat and would rather not take another job. That doesn't mean making money was their primary or even a motivation for their art, but a reflection that money is a necessity to survive, and that if you make the art anyway there's often very little reason not to at least try to sell it. It is not rational to assume that this mean that if the odds of finding a buyer becomes even much smaller that it will cause fewer people to make art, or even try to sell it, given that the choice to continue making art to sell it is already an emotional, irrational choice already.

deadbabe 1y ago

If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. I think you’ve failed to articulate any kind of real problem with AI art replacing human art, you just don’t like it personally so you want to see it gone.

sorcerer-mar 1y ago
> If you need incentive to pursue artistic mastery, you will never really be a true master. Deploying fortune-cookie wisdom to defend against allegations of astounding ignorance of the real world is... a choice. Which "true masters" didn't do do art commercially? According to your theory, not only should this list be of non-zero length, but it should include every master. So please tell me which ones.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  You don’t think there are? Then what do you care if masters go extinct and all masterworks are produced by AI? The end result is the same.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Give me examples please. If you think the end state is the same, it's because you misunderstand the argument being made. Try being more curious and less fortune-cookie! Nobody said "making money from art is bad."
    - deadbabe 1y ago
      I have no examples.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        Does that disprove your thesis that people cannot make great art (or become “true masters”) with commercial incentives? What does this imply for your broader thesis that nothing is lost if AI destroys commercial incentive for humans to master and develop art further?
        deadbabe 1y ago
        No, because commercially motivated artists are inherently more well known than people who master an art but don’t need to promote it. Ultimately if one wants to master an art, money cannot be the incentive, it’s only a byproduct.
        sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        Ah, I see. So just running with this theory on an article of faith, with literally zero evidence. Nice! Art: The one thing in the whole world where incentives don't matter. The stuff of fortune cookies.
- vidarh 1y ago
  An obvious example would be Van Gogh, who famously during his lifetime only sold a single painting. I don't fully agree with the statement you quoted, as I think it overstates things a bit - there certainly are famous artists who not just lived of their work but sometimes were on permanent contracts. E.g. Haydn spent much of his career as music director for the Esterhazy family. Haydn also credited his relative isolation from other composers due to his position as part of the reason for his originality. But at the same time, we see the vast majority of artists of all kinds not making much money. In the UK, the average full time author would do better as a fry cook at McDonalds if it was money they were after, for example. A lot of these fields skew very heavily toward a very tiny sliver of the top, and while some of them are undoubtedly great artists, the correlation between the highest earners and most critically celebrated is rarely straightforward. Furthermore, often the wealth comes after many of their great works, with the odds so long that very few people have a rational basis for going into it chasing the odds of a large payout. Chasing the hope of eeking out an existence, maybe.
  - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
    Van Gogh spent his life failing to sell his artwork. I.e. he was commercially motivated, just failed. None of your other points are relevant. People get good at art when they dedicate absolutely obscene amounts of time to it. If you take away all commercial incentive to do so, people won't spend as much time doing that craft. This is called basic incentives and it applies to artists too.
    - vidarh 1y ago
      After a few of those failures, it stopped being rational to think he'd make money from his art, yet he persisted with his art. Your argument is entirely backwards. Artists who dedicate a lot of their time to art sometimes want to sell for whatever reason, sometimes commercial, often ego, but also a lot of the time are forced to spend some of their time trying to sell because they want to eat and would rather not take another job. That doesn't mean making money was their primary or even a motivation for their art, but a reflection that money is a necessity to survive, and that if you make the art anyway there's often very little reason not to at least try to sell it. It is not rational to assume that this mean that if the odds of finding a buyer becomes even much smaller that it will cause fewer people to make art, or even try to sell it, given that the choice to continue making art to sell it is already an emotional, irrational choice already.