Comment by DrewADesign

The LLM and diffusion model businesses stole the lunches of a huge chunk of commercial artists, digested it, and then shit it back in our laps, saying it was our fault.

I have zero problem with the technology as a technology. None. The vast majority of its output is garbage but that’s true of a lot of things. Towards the end of my coding career, I even found early copilot to be pretty useful.

However, I have a giant goddamned problem with the way the industry has conducted itself, and the way the most vocal industry boosters have not only been bereft of empathy, but overtly contemptful. That’s even before you get into the completely unapologetic ways these companies are shoving AI ‘features’ down creative throats trained on our own stolen work, and shoving data centers down the throats of lower-income people nationwide. Speaking frankly as a commercial artist, the entire commercial bloc the AI universe could be shot straight into the fucking sun and I’d throw a very well-attended celebratory party.

Societally, AI is deeply unpopular. If you don’t understand why, you might be in an algorithmic bubble. Try to deliberately go into non-tech-business-adjacent intellectual spheres and listen to what people are saying without getting defensive. You might realize that you’re making a lot of unfounded assumptions about the place of AI companies and tools in other people’s lives.