I don’t get this. AI bros talk about how “in the near future” no one will “need” to be a writer, a filmmaker or a musician anymore, as you’ll be able to generate your own media with your own parameters and preferences on the fly. This, to me, feels like such an insane opinion. How can someone not value the ingenuity and creativity behind a work of art? Do these people not see or feel the human behind it all? And are these really opinions that you’ve encountered outside of the internet?
We don’t mourn the loss of blacksmiths who put time and skill into creating a pan or pot. We don’t care about the glass blowers who are no longer hired to blow drinking glasses. We don’t miss the portrait artists who painted not just for art, but to create an historical record.
History is filled with jobs performed by skilled labor that were made redundant with technology. AI is just a point in a long line.
There are still blacksmiths and portrait artists
Yeah, and I’m sure there will still be human writers and artists. There just won’t be as many of them employed compared to today.
I think the difference is that blacksmiths created things that were tangibly useful, that people needed, and that they needed in large quantities quickly and cheaply. The whole point of art is that it does not have real-world usefulness, past the enjoyment of it for the sake of the enjoyment of it.
For example, people frequently refer to cars as “art”, because they are beautiful, but “beauty” isn’t necessarily the same as “art”. Cars are beautiful because they invoke the principles of art, whatever they may be. The base principles themselves are complex and intangible, and you’d be hard-presses to find a book that explained what art actually is, because it is not well defined.
Only people can do art, as far as we know. AI can only produce things that resemble art, and they have only been able to do so by copying what real people have done. If real artists stop outputting material, there will never be an original artistic expression created ever again.
AI may be able to generate clip art and pretty text, but nobody is going to flock to the theaters, or attend auctions to acquire what is basically clip art.
This is not at all like creating a metal blade, imo. The tech bros just don’t understand art.
I mentioned painters as portrait artists and artists of historical record; their work has been replaced by photography.
Most animation today is done via a computer instead of being hand drawn. Some of the techniques to reuse sprites come from hand-drawn techniques from Hanna-Barbera.
Art Deco is filled with architectural elements that are mass produced with machines instead of created by skilled labor.
We’ve mechanized art to make its construction easier. AI is part of that.
I feel like this is a bad take but more importantly, nothing you’ve said answers the main question. Why would someone be happy to remove all of that art from people?
In every example you gave, nothing was being removed at any point, they were just being moved around and not even always… Historical record painters got replaced with the new profession of photography but people who can paint extremely accurately still exist and are now an extremely valued skill.
The question above is not about that process, one which is as old as invention, but more about the joy of removing those jobs.
Why are some AI people so incredibly overjoyed that artists are no longer making money? Why are they so happy that writers will have to find new work? What about all of this makes them think that it’s a good thing that human programmers will be replaced?
Art hasn’t been removed with AI. It is offering a lower quality substitution for a lower price. We aren’t smashing paintings to feed the electricity turbines to power AI. And I’ve provided examples of where people lost artistic work because of changes in technology.
And the joy is likely from being able to do more with less, which has been consistent when other technology was adopted. You don’t need to hire any one to make a drawing, you can do it on a computer. Sure, the drawing isn’t as good, just like how a photo isn’t as good as a portrait painting.