Comment by gonzo41
3 years ago
Sorry if this comes off as harsh but, AI is not stopping anyone from drawing. The person looking at AI and then fretting about the future, and then not drawing is the person preventing the drawing from happening.
The same thing happened to bank tellers with the ATM. Jobs change and so do industries. Art's become more niche.
You're right. This is harsh. Some people make a living off art. Having valuable skills is good for people's self esteem. We're not replacing a factory line job, we're automating something that takes people 100hrs of classes and self practice to master and people have put themselves in debt to achieve.
But they can doodle in their spare time while they search for another job that isn't being phased out or spend most of their day crafting text prompts. Maybe go back to college take on some more debt.
I was under the impression that it has _always_ been hard to make a living as an artist.
I think this is just a truth people will have to accept. I used to make music and quickly realized I would have to dedicate 1000s of hours to it if I ever wanted to make it a career. This is simply because there were 1000s of other people that wanted to also make it a career.
Your lack of empathy for factory workers is hurting your case. They are real, and train for their jobs, and care about the families they provide for.
“technical disruption is hard on people” is a much more sympathetic position than “artists should be exempt because they’re special”.
We all face risks. We all have to adapt. We all have opportunities from adapting to the world rather than clinging to the past. Artists are no different from factory workers (or programmers, or bus drivers)
No a lack of empathy here. OP was saying there is little difference between automating art and automating a bank teller. For factory workers, I'm not saying its a job that requires no training but it doesn't requires years of college and 40/60k in debt. Clearly the ceiling for getting a decent paid job to raise a family without massive time/money/education investments is skyrocketing but I didn't point that out in my post so obviously I don't care.
Honestly this whole "adapt" thing is a load of nonsense parroted by people who aren't immediately under threat and have nothing to fear. Who is going to adapt at 30/40/50 years old? How about people who just graduated art school? Go right back into college? Please.
Edit: For the record, I care about anyone getting displaced but not all displacement is of equal level. If highly educated/skilled labor is now at risk this world isn't prepared for what's about to come.
Edit2: Removed my mischaracterization comment. Was wrong to assume bad faith in this response.
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Many people have hobbies that are low value skills and they have to work doing things outside their passion if they want to be higher value. This isn't unique to people who draw for a living it's just new to them and they'll have to adjust.
You’re not wrong, but when we replace a factory line job that person also goes through their own little hell, and they probably don’t even have the possibility of going back to college and taking more debt.
If anything, if it is true that AI will render lots of jobs obsolete (I have my doubts), at least there’s a chance this may allow some empathy to grow in those affected. Perhaps we finally get some meaningful social change.
I'm unclear how people got the impression that I'm okay with people's lives getting upended by automation. As I elaborated on elsewhere, my post was to say there was a difference in what is being automated, highly skilled labor with high time/money/education costs vs something you shouldn't require a degree to learn to do.
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Whenever I read a thread like this it makes me wonder how little most individuals know about the history that came before them.
I could take artist out of your statement and put blacksmith in and it would be difficult to tell if this was wrote in 1890.
Everyone seems to fight automation in an individual/industry battle rather at the society level. We keep measuring our worth based on work and when we finally run out of work we're going to have a problem.
"We keep measuring our worth based on work and when we finally run out of work we're going to have a problem."
Yeah, because work pays the bills. Guess what happens when you automate faster than social policy changes? More unemployed artists than blacksmiths. Also people resist change when it threatens their way of life. It's almost like the luddites resisting automation are saying slow down automation people "when we finally run out of work we're going to have a problem".
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One big difference is that art is typically a passion job, whereas most of the previously automated jobs weren't. Being able to draw for a living also takes way longer to learn than being a bank teller, or data entry etc, did.
Not that it matters, AI is only going to get better from here. I'd also feel depressed if I made my living doing digital art.