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Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

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Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#121

Post by surgical_fire »

JohnFen wrote: post #52
voidfunc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most artists, like most programmers are working in a commercial capacity. I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Do art for the sake of art on your own time. But expecting companies to not embrace AI to do their jobs is foolish just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future.

> I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Companies can and will do whatever they want. However, on the level of the individual, I see no reason why profit-seeking should overrule my passion. I don't code to make money, I code because I love doing it. I make money to allow myself to engage in an activity I find rewarding, I don't engage in that activity to make money. If that activity is n…

> I don't code to make money, I code because I love doing it.

Then keep doing it.

No amount of generative AI will stop you from writing your own code.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#122

Post by tayo42 »

HumanOstrich wrote: post #72
tayo42 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is still tedious stuff when your doing content creation. Like if your hacking a website together and need something that doesn't look bad as your favicon. maybe your making a 2d game and need a bunch of tree pictures

It's "you're" x 3.

R u OK?

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#123

Post by wizzwizz4 »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #41
robofanatic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future. I don't think corporate programmers are obsolete. How will a sophisticated AI programmer in the future be any different than a human programmer in an outsourcing firm?

The role will remain, but the job will change dramatically into one with a higher level of product focus. The "software craftsmen" type will become more obsolete than they are already. RAM used to matter. Now, who even looks at how much RAM their app uses?

I constantly look at how much RAM other people's software uses. I have to work hard to keep it down, otherwise my computer hangs. I would appreciate if software authors cared a bit more.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#124

Post by throwawaysleep »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #62
throwawaysleep wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this viewpoint is the only reason a shirt doesn't cost a month's wages. Weavers once had similar arguments, decrying machinery that made cloth. Imagine how many more video games and movies can be made when we don't need anywhere near as many artists as before. How many more diagrams in textbooks. How many extra illustrations for Wikipedia. There are tremendous benefits to making art something anyone can get for d…

> No, this viewpoint is the only reason a shirt doesn't cost a month's wages. But that shirt would last you decades with good maintenance, because it was a quality product that was made to be repaired by other craftspeople throughout it's service life (or even just yourself!). Now we have can have hundreds of shirts for that same money but all of them suck, are made cheaply, fall apart after a couple of years if we'r…

You mention many enormous improvements:

> with good maintenance

So modernity has eliminated my need to spend time looking after clothes? That is a big win. Not having to put time into repair and maintenance is a huge improvement. It has eliminated my need to be careful with my clothes? That is also a huge win.

My grandmother used to spend hours at a time repairing socks. It is a huge win that nobody knows how to do that anymore, as time has value.

> Now we have can have hundreds of shirts for that same money

Even if we accept the decades of life for an old shirt, you only need tens of shirts to match its lifetime, so this is an order of magnitude reduction in cost.

> are made by people who can't afford to buy them in a country we've never seen

So? Plenty of employees cannot afford what their employer produces. And it is a step up from where they were before. We freed up more capable people in our own country to do more productive things than made clothing.

You are right on the environmental part.

> And, for all that, we still have people who don't have enough fucking clothing.

Where would that be? Even the poorer African countries are chaffing at how much clothing is being dumped there.

So the main loser is the environment. As a customer, I am otherwise a tremendous winner. And when AI takes over most mundane art, like animating instructional videos or making logos, I will also be a tremendous winner.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#125

Post by bjornlouser »

caconym_ wrote: post #111
bjornlouser wrote: post #91

"[Artists] would much rather be properly compensated for their work..." 'Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze). "Artists would much rather... focus more on fulfilling creative tasks." Like the two penis jokes shown on that site? Incredible.

> Properly compensated'... determined by the market, right? That's being driven close to $0, just like with software (and was headed that direction before the recent AI craze). This is just completely false, and there are so many obvious counterexamples I don't know where to begin, so let's just start with artists working in the film and video game industries. These are real working, earning people who do art and des…

"film and video game industries..."

Oh I thought they were talking about silly web comics and random art on the internet that was 'stolen'. Film and game industries of course embrace all types of tech to make money (didn't Disney use generative AI for the opening sequence of a Marvel series last year?)

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#126

Post by renewiltord »

stared wrote: post #107
esafak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mantra is "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes". - Joanna Maciejewska ( https://x.com/AuthorJMac/status/1773679197631701238 )

I think that this quotation captures the essence of the problem. It is nice to have the boring things automated - be it proofreading, generating mundane pieces of code, and stuff. The sad part In programming (at least, for now), I feel that it is a net positive for my happiness - less stuff spent hunting simple omissions, checking StackOverflow, or checking (not always so complete) documentation of changes between ve…

My wife is a creative director and she loves using this stuff. It's just another thing that she's added to her toolkit. It's actually remarkable to me how different people react to this stuff and just one more reason she and I are well-matched. Our reactions to LLMs and Diffusion Models are very similar. These are just new tools for us to accomplish what we want to do.

She used to draw on paper, then a Wacom, now she only ever doodles on her iPad. She designed our wedding clothes with Dall-E + Adobe AI + illustrating in PS/Illustrator.

I used to write code painstakingly in a text editor, then a rudimentary language-aware text editor, and then an IDE, and then an IDE with integrated LLMs. I ask my Mistral to find bugs and to tell me how to work with obscure systems.

These tools are really wonderful for doing things. They're not perfect and don't replace humans. But at every stage I recall most people opposing this stuff. And at every stage I recall enjoying the new tool. So I can only assume that the opposition to LLMs is the same as the opposition to search engines back in the day: "Real knowledge isn't about just looking up stuff. You only really grok something if you read the manual. There's lots of bits that relate to each other that you have to know".

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#127

Post by suyash »

esafak wrote: post #27
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

The mantra is "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes". - Joanna Maciejewska ( https://x.com/AuthorJMac/status/1773679197631701238 )

I think the problem is because AI is mostly created by engineers who have no clue about 'art', all they know is how to automate and optimise for the sole purpose of efficiency which has been the cause of AI eating creative fields including programming ironically as there an art to coding as well.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#128

Post by bloopernova »

indoordin0saur wrote: post #28

I really cannot fathom enjoying any "art" produced by an AI, excepting art that uses it as an assistant for boring tasks like texturing a video game.

Friend of a friend decided they could make art with generative AI, and they wouldn't need to practice any skills to do it. They honestly thought they were going to make billions from D&D art. They had also been incredibly jealous of the people who had practiced enough to get good at art or music. Generative AI art was their intended shortcut to money and respect, because practicing is difficult and tedious.

They gave up after being told that nobody wanted their pictures. Now they're even more resentful because in their eyes their "valuable skill" was mocked.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#129

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

voidfunc wrote: post #7
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

> most artists love their work and do not want to outsource their passion to a machine that does this for them. This was the money quote. I love what I do (which tends to be programming, but I approach it as a craft), and often do things by hand, that others automate, because I love my work, and also the people that use it.

Most artists, like most programmers are working in a commercial capacity. I see no reason why "their passion" should overrule profit-seeking. Do art for the sake of art on your own time. But expecting companies to not embrace AI to do their jobs is foolish just like it's foolish to think corporate programmers will be a thing at some point in the future.

The linked article is from a duo which publishes a webcomic. This is their own time.

Re: Another AI company wrote us and here’s our response

#130

Post by temporarely »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #65
temporarely wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Cotton is not Culture.

Most art is not culture either. It is mundane movie shots, textbook drawings, logos, etc. Tailored shirts have not gone away. Custom fabric patterns have not gone away. All that has disappeared is every shirt being tailored, custom, and expensive.

I make art for pleasure and the magical post creation beholding of what has emerged - it's a serious high :) That is of course a private concern, and that said, in my mind there are good points on both side of this argument. It is not a black/white issue.

To amplify my OP, there are certain intangibles regarding cultural artifacts which are strictly non-utilitarian. Culture is expression & is a product of the human psyche (of a coherent civilization). And past will affect the future. Culture minimally is a social tonic, maximally informs societal character.

The germinal question in context of 'high culture' (arts and letters) is whether the omission of the 'bar to entry' that requires acquisition of skill, dedication, and 'a development of a vocabulary' (etc) will have a degenerative long term effect on high culture, given that cultural development is generational and progressive, and the process of becoming an artist is a filter.

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