I hope she’s wearing an N95? Otherwise the plastic disposable ones do really only work for preventing getting spittle on others, but does fuck all for your own health.

My dude, my grandfather got fired after the collapse of the soviet economy because “artist” wasn’t a productive enough job to be kept around, but he still made art for 20 years after without getting paid because his purpose in life was to create art, not to sell it.

And sure the theft argument would be valid, but that’s a strawman, because Adobe have already trained their own image gen model on fully licensed images and real life artists are already paying money to use it, so they must see the value in it.

But like, it will happen anyways. You can’t stop Musk from shoving Grok down everyone’s throats and firing 80% of his work force to replace them with AI drones.

If we saw the potential in these tools, and decided as a society to just let the machines do all the stuff we don’t want to do, and we all got to do whatever meaningful beautiful things our hearts wanted, then sure.

Yes, literally this, my argument is literally we use all our efforts to fight for this, as making something beautiful out of a shit situation is literally all life has and I feel always will be.

Any artist who stops being an artist because someone else can put words into a computer and get a big tiddy goth gf pic out, wasn’t really that interested in making art in the first place.

That’s a good attitude to have and I’m not advocating for putting down our arms and waiting for big tech to steamroll us all.

But as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the people making the AI models are fully aware they are contributing to a technology that will take away their own jobs, because they think that it will create other, even more interesting jobs in the process. (see trad artists swearing off photography in it’s early days because it was “mechanical and soulless”, only to realize it’s creative potential years later)

My advice would be to continue being aware of the negative history of things, but don’t let it blind you to the positive aspects either.

See, that’s the crux of the argument I feel. You can’t have one without the other, you can’t have voice generation for the mute without that technology also displacing voice actors in the process.

That’s why I think the Luddite approach doesn’t work, we can’t forcefully break the machines that are capable of so much good because they’re also capable of so much bad.

Instead we should focus on helping those that are most negatively impacted by their existence, while supporting everyone that is already being positively affected by them. (like the UBI mentioned in my other comment)

PS. Totes down for replacing CEOs with AI and distributing their salary among the workers

It’s fine to get paid for your skills, but from experience I can say that developing skills just to get paid is also rather soulless.

Since, sure, I can bet there’re furry artists that love drawing sexy tigers to bits, but I can guarantee there’s a not-so-small percentage that would much rather draw something else, but the yiffing money is too good to pass up on.

Do you think the software engineers who are developing the AI models (which have been trained on freely given away code) are just stupid and are willingly creating a machine that will take away their jobs because they don’t understand the impacts? Or could it be that they do understand the stakes, but continue on despite that because of (as you mention) the unfathomable good the technology can bring? I would hope most people would be willing to sacrifice their wellbeing now for the betterment of everyone else in the future.

If you’re still understandably worried tho - just start a garden and begin building tightly knit communities now, since you never know when a solar flare will wipe all our technological progress away…

Ah yes, because the favorite part of the process for every artist is the hours spent going back and forth with their client touching up the most minor details instead of creating art they actually want to make…

Idk, I feel AI art only affects commercial artists who first and foremost care about making money off their art form. The ones that actually make art for the love of the craft (without expectation of getting anything in return) aren’t really affected in any way.

TL;DR Let UBI free artists from the capitalistic yoke and let the oligarchs use AI to automate the soulless part of art creation that nobody enjoys anyways.

Look I’m not supporting mega rich assholes extracting even more from working people, but would you use the same argument for textile weavers and the Jacquard loom? Sure a lot of people lost their jobs at the time, but most, if not all, respecialized and we got computers in the end so would you say it wasn’t good progress? 🤷

So you’re the same person who says “do a flip” when somebody is on the edge of a building?

The real estate company’s ads for ‘presale’ lots in Gaza and plans to ‘prepare the groundwork for a return’ to the enclave were meant to be ‘a joke’ for its followers

Ha ha, what if we pretend to build houses on bombed people’s land. that would be funny i think.

Exactly? As in, I identify as gender fluid not because my gender defines me, but precisely because the binary “male” and “female” genders don’t directly apply to my identity, so a new term that better aligns with how I feel is useful.

So if it’s “silly” to “create” a “new” gender, what do you suggest as an alternative?

Which is why so many people struggle to empathize. But I agree, just because most people can walk, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build more access ramps.

Gender≠Sex

"We could define two colours: Reds are all wavelengths longer than 600nm Blues are all that are 600nm or shorter.

Or we take the amplitude of the intensity of light and sort it from brightest to dimmest.

We could go by genetics. Then we only have a handful of colours (blue, red and green)

What I am saying is: we’ve already defined what it is and the discussion is very simple. By all definitions, colour means different things to different people and by trying to fit them all in a predefined box all you’re doing is limiting yourself to seeing only in black and white."

You don’t genuinely believe the US cares about Israel and doesn’t just give out trillions of their defense budget so they have a strong foothold in the middle east to prevent the caliphates from uniting, do you?

Yeah, I agree that OP’s explanation right above is precise and short.

Obviously every culture has their own definition of things (same way Japanese people considered blue and green to be the same colour) but that doesn’t mean either is right, they’re both made up to serve a purpose.

Eg. It’s useful to break down the gender spectrum as it allows us to be more precise and descriptive with our language, same way it can be useful to differentiate between blue and green. Still, if you’re blue-green colour blind you probably don’t really care if someone else has two words for what you perceive to be the same colour…

Oh oh, are we on Jeopardy! I’ll take “Brutal Middle Eastern Imperialistic State” for 500, Alex!

If I “donate” 12 billion dollars and use it to buy stocks in the company I personally own that made all that money - would you say my concern is funding good cause NGOs until I’m no longer a billionaire or am I just dodging taxes?

Also, if he’s so adamant about giving away his wealth, why does it keep increasing? No way he’s actually more concerned about getting an ROI than his most noble goal of helping others through his “philanthropy”…

I do appreciate your concern but what do you think is the “real fix”?