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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

#301

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 replace "Startup culture" with "Modernity" and it reads like many conservatives' feelings about progressive culture. I don't think anyone has ever cared about that, and I don't see why that should be changed because it now affects different people.

I know people like to politicise things since it usually creates a simple sense of unity and to gives people a sense of moral superiority. Simple is good. We humans like simple. If we didn't go and simplify things we don't deal with every day our already complicated lives would become too difficult to juggle. Their political compass is generally irrelevant. And there's always people who don't like SOME type of change. Conservatives think trans people are crimes against God; Progressive people think more process and regulation in trans conversations is a sin against humanity. Everyone has it hard.

I'm only mentioning this because it helps to sympathise with every person, not just the ones that agree with you. Life has more flavour when you're not focusing on "us or them"

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

#302
post #52

Some people say there isn't enough empathy to go around for those creatives that are seeing their jobs either endangered or automated to a degree they've become sweatshop janitors with little prospects to be anything else. I wonder if that sort of empathy was so plentiful when the automation was shredding the prospects of farmers, miners, truckers and other blue collar workers? Make no mistake, generative AI is going…

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

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about striding for one of the core societal values that make many advanced democraties (including the European nordics) so much better/happier than the US? It’s called Equality. Insert strong progressive taxes, especially on wealth, and use it to fund a strong public sector, so _everyone_ has as access to basic goods and services for free, like education/health/transport/… . I think you vastly underestimate how m…

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That’s the total opposite most people around me (many immigrants from the US!) experience for the like last 2 decades actually, where have you been to that draws such a funny picture?

Europe has more % Entrepreneurs/Self-employed people than the US, lots of great companies even though not leading in the richest top5-ranking, and the work ethic is focussed during working hours instead of chitchatting/looking busy 12h+ per day.

Maybe you are also fooled by one critical thing: US companies are muuuuch better at marketing than European ones, outshining them so you tend to see exclusively US blogvertising and not where real innovation actually happens: all around the world now and the US actually falling behind.

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

#304
Maybe it's a bit like professional software development where developers no longer get to create products, they just are code monkeys that complete tickets that are specified to the Nth degree and there's no creativity or fun and indeed if you do anything except what's on the ticket then you'll have to answer for it.

If you are a developer who loves the art and craft of creation then you have to do that at home.

Work is just being a cog in an agile machine.

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

#306

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.

This has been said for years, first about robotics, now about AI. And today, most developed nations have trouble finding people to work because there's so much work that needs to be done.

The opposite is happening, yet it's still repeated.

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

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When electric sound amplification came along, it put most professional musicians out of business. Instead of an orchestra all you need is a band of 3 or 4. Making music expanded though. In the sense that more people played, there was more variety, and indeed more professional musicians today than 100 years ago. (the bar for entry is also lower, and most are permantly broke - take that as you will.) Some orchestras st…

Amplification allowed for more original creation.

AI is opposite of human creation. Its definition of anti-creation. Its a spell that locks visual culture to year 2025. And it can only do this by illeagly stealing all the human work.

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

#308
post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Um...Python, C++, Linux, Erlang, mobile phones (Nokia), Spotify, HTML... Having worked for both European and US companies, I would say that a) innovation is mutual (we learn from each other) and talent/mediocrity are pretty much evenly distributed. The US has a more "dynamic" economy in some sense - for example the VC ecosystem is far better funded - but is detrimental in others (Byzantine health care system deters w…

And yet if we take a snapshot literally right now:

Guido van Rossum - Microsoft Distinguished Engineer

Bjarne Stroustrup - professor of Computer Science at Columbia University (City of New York)

Linus Torvalds - Nationality American/US since 2010 (should I write GNU/American/US? Someone educate me).

Erlang - I don't know anything about Erlang so I've got nothing to say.

Nokia - brutally ejected from the market by the Americans, bought out and sepukku-ed under Microsoft leadership. Now phones may as well be an Asian technology. Oversaw the collapse of European leadership in the mobile space, to the point where it is going to be a case study in how to fail at innovation.

Spotify - Leading EU tech success story. Makes up 50% of the counterexamples, along with ASML. Not detectable as a serious tech company when compared to Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc, etc.

HTML - I mean, we'd probably have managed without the Europeans on this one. Although useful, HTML isn't a very technical accomplishment. Anyone could invent this, including most CS undergrads.

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

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Accept that professions come and go. 2. Expect jobs to disappear every decade or so and plan accordingly. 3. Look forward to an awesome new job after your current one is made obsolete. That goes for all of us. What can we do? Hope to save enough to not go into more debt for a second degree? Hope that second degree isn’t obsoleted either? As AI becomes more advanced the minimum education and likely IQ required to…

> What are we gonna do about the ever increasing N+1% of people who won’t be cost effective versus an AI? Fairly tax companies' profits. And then you can afford to just feed 10% of society even if they don't contribute a thing. Also, free world-class education seems to do wonders in Europe ;)

That is step 6. Step 1 is “fundamentally change how modern Capitalism considers making money the only moral good.” It will collapse first.
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