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Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

petergabriel.com

101–110 of 167 posts

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#101
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time we saw a copyright struggle like this was Napster. After a lot of ire we eventually landed on Spotify, shows, and merch. Musicians seem fine this time around, but graphic designers are in for a world of hurt. Artists and musicians mostly already starve, unless they're extremely lucky and famous.

Every class of artist will now be able do more than they could alone in the world before AI. They no longer need institutional capital to make big, ambitious works. Graphics designers will have tools and will make movies and interactive fictions. They'll build their own following. It'll look like YouTube and the rise of the YouTuber, except bigger and broader.

Yeah and we can give money to AI so it can read/watch/review all the extra content we don’t already have enough of.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#102
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but this is a staggering leap More than industrialization? Come on. It's staggering because it's impacting us.

Industrialization was slow - it took many decades to happen, so people could adapt. I don’t see us having that luxury of time.

AI is slow, it's been coming since the 1980s and still has decades to go.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that someone looking at all the problems that Mississippi has, while existing inside the richest country in human history, and saying “well, it’s not as bad as XYZ poor country” is a textbook example of the nihilism and failed imagination that has led us to wealth inequality and declining lifespans.

> someone looking at all the problems that Mississippi has, while existing inside the richest country in human history, and saying “well, it’s not as bad as XYZ poor country” is a textbook example of nihilism and failed imagination I'm not saying there aren't problems. We're comparing medians. The poorest Mississippians struggles with problems on Maslow's hierarchy well above the median or even top quartile human. So…

If we’re comparing medians, it’s far better to be born an average person the UK or New Zealand than Mississippi, where your risk of dying from childbirth, disease, or injury are far more guarded against, you have the right to paid time off, better labor protections, etc. This is another classic example of Americans mistaking the wealth of some small percentage of society for its general well-being.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#104
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true of novel writing in the least, and clearly not what I was talking about. AI is already heavily impacting fiction and writing communities. How many active novelists do you hang out with? The ones I know are talking a lot about how much harder it's already making their lives, especially the ones who are still trying to get picked up by their first agent.

> How many active novelists do you hang out with? Small number. Acquaintances. Published. They complain about e.g. getting into the Paris Review or New Yorker , now. I imagine traditional gatekeepers are screwed. But not authors. Even if their job transitions to expert prompt engineering and editing, that's a niche.

So you didn't know how absolutely crushing it is to spend years trying to get your first novel published while working full time in a manual position, and find that you moved from competing with hundreds of other people every time you send a query to an agent to thousands of mostly AI generated queries, with signs pointing to dozens coming from the same people?

Or how crushing it is to be told that the right solution is to just abandon your dream and start generating a novel a month instead of writing?

I know a lot of authors, published and unpublished. This technology is thrilling for corporations, worrying for the established, and absolutely annihilating for somebody who is just trying to get started. Many of the unpublished ones have given up and just self publish to ~zero sales, because they want to actually have their book out there.

Expert prompt editing is not a niche most people want, and it's not one most people will get. It's not a movement from X authors producing Y novels to X prompt engineering editors producing Y novels. It's a movement to X/N prompt editors producing Y novels. Even as an expert AI user, the progression is way fewer people doing way more work, and the death of the dream for the very vast majority.

What's screwed is nearly everybody.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#105

I think it's only natural to think of AI as the enemy no? Sure theoretically it means better healthcare, scientific improvement. However what nobody has really answered well is what happens to the artists, writers, programmers, scientists, maybe even doctors and lawyers. As we become potentially obsolete what happens to us. Saying that you can do art as a hobby or programming as a hobby really isn't an answer people…

This comes off as incredibly passive. You are in control of how you use and adapt to AI. >if AI takes my job AI is not going to take anyone's job. People using AI will take jobs from people who don't use AI. >What happens to the doctors That's completely up to them. Some will use AI to research new treatments, to assist with their daily workload, or even to treat patients. Some doctors will stick their head in the sa…

> AI is not going to take anyone's job. People using AI will take jobs from people who don't use AI.

If your boss fires you because your colleague uses AI sooner or better than you, sure, AI didn’t take your job, but what’s the distinction? If you are in a team of 10 translators and 9 get fired overnight, I would say AI took their jobs. Which is happening.

Also, this is probably shortsighted; when going forward, it will be possible for a manager/hr to chuck a resume and typical tasks into an AI and ask it if it can do it or they should hire a human. Now the AI will lie it can do it, but a lot of work goes into making that better and the execution of the provided tasks for the job will show if it’s lying.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#107
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scale is different by a grand margin. If 50% of US jobs are replaced by AI in the next 20 years, and those jobs aren't replaced by other jobs, and people depend on income to survive, what happens? I'm not saying to ban it. I think the productivity gain could be a gift. Everybody being freed from the need to work would be amazing. But without actually dealing with it, what's the proposal for dealing with the major…

> If 50% of US jobs are replaced by AI in the next 20 years, and those jobs aren't replaced by other jobs, and people depend on income to survive, what happens? Which 50% are you seeing replaced? We can, and have, always imagined mass income eradication. I'm not arguing we do nothing. But zero problems surfaced so far are even remotely actionable, as they're all well within the realm of hypothesis versus evidence.

Potentially? Most artists, programmers, musicians, most teachers, huge amounts of finance, marketing, legal and especially paralegal, most journalism and technical writing positions, stock trading (most traders don't do anything that AI can't fully replace), and even more of customer service.

The majority of those will probably be staffed at 10% what they are now at best. Some, like stock trading, will probably be almost completely erased as a human job.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#108
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many active novelists do you hang out with? Small number. Acquaintances. Published. They complain about e.g. getting into the Paris Review or New Yorker , now. I imagine traditional gatekeepers are screwed. But not authors. Even if their job transitions to expert prompt engineering and editing, that's a niche.

So you didn't know how absolutely crushing it is to spend years trying to get your first novel published while working full time in a manual position, and find that you moved from competing with hundreds of other people every time you send a query to an agent to thousands of mostly AI generated queries, with signs pointing to dozens coming from the same people? Or how crushing it is to be told that the right solution…

> you didn't know how absolutely crushing it is to spend years trying to get your first novel published while working full time in a manual position, and find that you moved from competing with hundreds of other people every time you send a query to an agent to thousands of mostly AI generated queries, with signs pointing to dozens coming from the same people

No, I don't. But I don't see this as the end of the art. I certainly see no evidence of those AI-generated queries pushing out legitimate novelists.

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I really hate this line of argument as well. We obviously understand it can have a lot of beneficial effects in society. It's a strawman to say that people don't see that. The problem is nobody seems to be properly discussing the bad things that can and will occur.

> We obviously understand it can have a lot of beneficial effects in society Really? Because nobody seems to be talking about them. You talk about how bad things "will" occur. What about bad things that are literally happening right now?

Do you think throwing “AI” problems at scale into this mix is a good thing to do right now ?

Re: Peter Gabriel: AI competition statement

#110
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every class of artist will now be able do more than they could alone in the world before AI. They no longer need institutional capital to make big, ambitious works. Graphics designers will have tools and will make movies and interactive fictions. They'll build their own following. It'll look like YouTube and the rise of the YouTuber, except bigger and broader.

Yeah and we can give money to AI so it can read/watch/review all the extra content we don’t already have enough of.

There isn't enough content that tailors to my interests. In fact, there's barely any.

Nearly every film I watch, I question the director's choices. I'd do casting and set dec differently. I'd change the music and design.

The plot and writing and character development are the things that can irk me the most.

Very seldom do I finish an experience and feel sated. When it happens, I feel elated and the experience sits with me for days. But that's not frequent enough.

We all deserve more, not less.

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