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I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

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Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#141

Post by justrealist »

gwbrooks wrote: post #115
rafaelero wrote: post #78

When DALL-E 2 was released, I remember reading lots of people here in HN saying it would never take the jobs of artists. Well, seems like this argument is aging badly. This is exactly the type of conversation we need to have as a society. Instead of deluding ourselves that our skills are impossible to be reproduced by a machine, we should strive to build a system with values in which we can find a way to build a good…

>> This is exactly the type of conversation we need to have as a society. Comments like this always make me wonder: How would that happen? Here in the U.S., there's relatively little appetite for job-saving labor protections and, once you leave the regulatory sphere, everyone -- employers, employees, consumers of products and services -- is consistently self-interested. Not saying that sort of societal conversation i…

It doesn't even really matter what the US regulations are. If a firm in the Philippines can run Midjourney for pennies to generate content that would take hundreds or thousands of dollars in illustrator costs, there's simply no way to mandate labor protections in the US that would keep customers from outsourcing the work.

The gradient is just too strong, and you can't keep a pedigree on every image you publish that originated from a design firm.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#142

Post by jay_kyburz »

kodah wrote: post #116
rafaelero wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI won't take a thought workers job. I don't understand how you can hold this position considering not only where we are but also the rate of progress in AI. It has been taking thought workers job and it will increasingly do so in the future until the surplus cognitive workers offer is just so minimal that it's not worth to automate it.

What jobs have been totally replaced thus far?

Companies are slow to move on things, but I think "video game concept artist" is done. An art director can now sit down in front of Midjourny and pump out years and years of a concept artists work in just an afternoon.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#143

Post by ChatGTP »

mrcartmeneses wrote: post #19
enumjorge wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share examples of this? I've been doing some searching on my own because I find this stuff interesting, and I haven't seen evidence that current versions of AI tools are capable of helping generate entire apps in minutes, at least non-trivial ones. I keep seeing some real dramatic premonitions about AI, and I'd love to see something to back them up. Even the original post, I'm having trouble understanding. I…

All knowledge workers are completely screwed. The only way out is UBI and a maximum three-day work week.

Sounds like absolute paradise, I don’t give a shit about “work”, or status or anything of that.

I hope Silicon Valley builds itself a starship and ships itself off to Alpha Centuri and leaves me to live a pretty simple life with way less grind.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#144

Post by maxdoop »

nullsense wrote: post #79
muyuu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, whatever output people can do, generative AI can do to the point you wouldn't be able to tell it apart.

I think the point is it's not going to suddenly give us surprises like Banksy shredding art.

How do you know it won’t? I don’t mean to sound like a doomer , but I never see evidence for these claims around “AI not ever being creative like a human!”

These AI’s are literally trained on all of human creativity… i struggle to see how there’s any indication AI would fail to be as creative as a human in even the near-ish future.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#145

Post by LesZedCB »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #129
pkdpic wrote: post #128

This is a tragic disappointment a lot of (if not most (if not an overwhelming majority (if not literally all))) artists experience at some point early or late in their professional careers. I taught art for a long time and I would always try to frame this inevitable experience as an important moment of growth. When you have to form a deeper relationship to your creative work and think strategically about how you want…

What's an analogy in the software world to this sort of tragic disappointment? Going from building fun videogame side projects to having to crank out dozens of over-engineered B2B SaaS microservices, for the sake of job security, for yet another sales workflow optimization tool?

yes.

instead of spending weeks thinking about and designing some sweet algorithm Knuth himself would be proud of, you write the same CRUD app with the same design patterns.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#146

Post by whateveracct »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #142
kodah wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What jobs have been totally replaced thus far?

Companies are slow to move on things, but I think "video game concept artist" is done. An art director can now sit down in front of Midjourny and pump out years and years of a concept artists work in just an afternoon.

This feels like a comment written by someone without practical experience with concept art (creator or consumer) - correct me if I'm wrong though!

Like personally, I think I will still draw concept art instead of asking a GAN. Feels like that greases my creative wheels more. Just me though.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#147

Post by eropple »

causality0 wrote: post #140

Man is it hard not to feel a little schadenfreude. For decades the white collars watched the blue collars lose their jobs to machines and said "well I'm so sorry for you, but you really should've realized the purpose of a human being is to use their mind and create, they can never take that from us". This is going to do for art what YouTube did for video production: obliterate the grind. Now what counts is your genui…

> This is going to do for art what YouTube did for video production: obliterate the grind. Now what counts is your genuine creativity, your inspiration.

These two sentences are so violently at odds as to be comical. YouTube is nothing but the grind. It is an unending content mill and if you stop, you may literally never regain even the precarious position you'd managed so far.

Creativity? Inspiration? It's time served above everything else.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#148

Post by kmeisthax »

markles wrote: post #27

The lack of empathy the HN community has really shines through in many of these replies: > There were no doubt quite a few nail makers pre-industrial revolution that took pride in making consistent, quality nails. > And nothing of value have been lost. > LOL at the reply a couple posts down, where OP admits they work at a mobile shovelware sweatshop.

/r/stablediffusion is arguably worse. Lots of people on there who have active disdain for any human (non-AI-assisted) artists who complain about AI.

It's like watching 17th-century Parliament winge about machine breakers.

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#149

Post by orbital-decay »

nirvdrum wrote: post #137
orbital-decay wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't take OP's job, though. It gave them another tool that produces better output, but which they don't happen to like (in contrast to their colleague who doesn't have issues with it).

It didn't take the job in the sense that the OP is still employed. It changed the job into something that barely resembles what the OP was hired to do. It's not quite constructive dismissal, but many people choose fields for reasons of maximizing income. It's hard to stay motivated doing something you hate, especially when a week ago your job had you doing something you love. And that says nothing about the OP's ethi…

The reality is that an artist in a mobile games company is hired for their technical skills, with very little creative freedom. The real artist is usually the art director or a similar position responsible for stylistic/creative/conceptual decisions.

If your job is mostly technical, be ready to re-learn and reshape your skills when your tool goes the way of cel animation. I personally had to do this at least three times in 25 years, not entirely from scratch of course, but I had to relearn the vast majority of my skills. And I think I'll need to do more of it to stay relevant. So to me it's pretty normal.

The work of a creative professional is to deliver meaning. If you can't separate this from your tools and are only able to enjoy one specific tool, you have to question yourself what you're doing in the field. (yes, I'm also being too cynical)

Re: I lost everything that made me love my job through Midjourney

#150

Post by whateveracct »

Julesman wrote: post #124

We are going to be seeing so much of this. It is sad. Start up culture at times seems to insist that all progress must be good, as though progress itself will be thwarted by reflection or honesty. Something is lost and something is gained, but that doesn't make the losses painless or irrelevant. We can be pragmatic and have empathy at the same time. What I don't think we should do is act like every change is inherent…

You can still do the old ways. I'm still gonna keep drawing and stuff, myself. I don't really see how the AI actually helps me accomplish my goals on an art or coding front as a gamedev. Where the goal is "make something meaningful and beautiful."

I don't like to shout "philistine" or "luddite" but it feels like all the people excited for these tools were tasteless to begin with and already weren't producing works that meet my bar of consumption. I guess we already knew that about the AAA game industry, for instance.

I guess it always pays to have taste - doubly in an AI-oriented world. The old ways aren't going anywhere imo.

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