Seconded, Luna is fantastic.

deepseek can save some time here :)

Maybe you could do a game where you list off a set of events and then the audience has to pick which one they think is real.

• The City and the Stars
• Rendezvous with Rama
• Hard to Be a God
• Blindsight
• Roadside Picnic
• Diaspora

Personal attacks really underscore the quality of your character.

Last I checked, Marxists are not opposed to automation and development of productive forces.

Since you clearly just ignores the totality of my arguments and just reduces them to the simplest forms there’s is no reason for me to continue this discussion, this is gonna be my final reply.

I put a lot of effort to try and understand your position, I’m sorry you feel that I’m ignoring your argument. I don’t think I’m reducing anything here, I’m simply asking you what the tangible actions you support based on the logic of your argument. I find your statements to be contradictory in nature, and I’ve simply asked you to clarify your position here.

You keep ignoring what I’m saying and just reducing it to “should use”, “should not use”.

I’m not ignoring what you’re saying, I’ve directly engaged with your argument. However, I do want to understand what tangible actions you support and you’ve given contradictory statements in that regard.

I have repeated this statement multiple times in this thread, read what I’m saying, I’m not gonna repeat myself further.

I have read what you’re saying, and my point remains unaddressed. If this tech is not developed in the open and not used outside corporate environment, then it will be developed and used solely by corporations. When I bring this up, you say that you’re not against the use of this tech, but then you immediately say that it should not be used until certain conditions are met. I do not understand how these conditions could possibly be met if this tech is not developed in the open.

Doesn’t make it any less art, but is not made by the person that prompted it, it is made by the machine and it’s at best curated by the human. It is a tool, it is art, it is not made by user, the drawing skill is not learned, but other skills are.

So, you agree that this is a distinct art form just like photography. Great!

I have never seen this argument before in my life and I don’t understand what it accomplishes in separating differing types of art made.

🤷

I already argued that genAI is not human made, and you’re arguing that AI generated art therefore is not art because only humans can make art.

What I actually argued was that gen AI is a tool humans use to make art, but at this point it’s clear that you have no intention of actually engaging with what I say.

You’re not engaging with my arguments in good faith.

I did my best to engage your arguments, and I was met with hostility and verbal abuse in response.

I will repeat yet again, just in case you missed it somehow: a genAI user does not know how to draw, no matter how complex is the image generated, they have a different set of skills.

And I’ve repeatedly addressed this very point in my replies to you pointing out that you conflate the technical skill of being able to draw with artistic expression.

Except you didn’t.

People reading this thread can certainly make up their own mind on that. I very explicitly explained what I think effective ways to organize are.

I will continue to be unwaveringly on the side of the artists and in how collectives like UNIDAD and Soberana are fighting in this issue, not denying the tech, but heavily fighting against it on it’s current form.

Nowhere have I argued against this position, and all I tried to explain to you here is that messaging and tactics could be improved. You took this as a personal attack.

I’m sorry this turned out to be a pointless discussion where we could not constructively engage in good faith. I’ve genuinely tried.

That’s fine, but I disagree with the personal use in it’s current state.

So, should these tools be used or not? When I point out that if people reject using these tools then they will be used solely by corporations you say you’re not against using these tools. Then you turn around and say that you’re against using them in their current state. So, which is it?

You are right that both work in the same way fundamentally, but like I said previously, there are other stuff the will influence someone’s art, their material reality, like the place they were born, the education they had, etc, that the AI can’t do because it doesn’t have that context and knowledge of that.

Once again, I’m going to point out that LLM is a tool and not the artist. The experiences the person had during their lifetime that shape their aesthetic lens is precisely what the human adds to the process. That’s what allows the human to select images that look visually meaningful.

Does a photographer claim they make photos? Or do they claim to take photos and edit them? Also, if the photographer tells the camera to take a photo and edit it by itself, does it do that? Now, if I tell ChatGPT or whatever other AI to generate a statue of a cartoon character crying, did I make that image or did the AI make it for me?

I do photography, and the process is that I runs a couple of knobs on a camera and press a button to capture the image. For example, I took this picture last weekend at a park

The process of creating the image was simply me pointing the camera at the bird and pressing the shutter button at the right moment. If I give you my camera gear, assuming you’ve no experience in photography, do you think you’d be able to capture this sort of image yourself?

The only difference I see with gen AI here is that it allows you to create any kind of an image, including those that don’t exist in the real world. But I fail to see the fundamental difference between the two mediums. In both cases, capturing the image is the easy part, learning to identify a visually appealing image is the hard part. You have to learn about composition, lighting, subjects, perspective, and many other things that we refer to as taste or style. This goes back to the point I made above that the human experience is what allows us to use tools like gen AI to make images that are meaningful to other humans. The tool is just a tool.

It’s a ridiculous comparison. GenAI and cameras are not comparable that way. You can compare how disruptive both mediums are in relation to what was the status quo, but that’s it.

I completely disagree, and I do not think you’ve actually made an argument that they are different. All you’ve said is that the range of images gen AI can produce is bigger than what a camera limited by real world can capture. That’s not a fundamental difference.

You’re clearly conflating art only being “real” if it is made by a human, and therefore need to justify that by saying generated images are human made. This is a whole another conversation.

I’m not conflating anything here. What makes art real is that a human is conveying something to another human. It’s an inherently subjective thing.

Art does not need to be human made to be considered art. Here’s an example of Ruby, an elephant that was known for making paintings.

Sure, another conscious being can also produce art and if our mental states are sufficiently compatible then we are able to appreciate it. The context of our discussion has very clearly been focused on human art however. Meanwhile, the LLM fundamentally cannot create art precisely because it’s not a conscious volitional being that has anything to convey to others.

The same cannot be said of genAI

Yes it can, and I gave you a concrete example of comfyui which introduces sophisticated workflows that require learning just as much skill as using a tool like Krita. You’re using a straw man argument here that ignores how these tools actually work.

Do I really need to be more clear than this? Because I’m done repeating myself.

Yes I do, because what you’re saying seems completely arbitrary to me. You’ve made an arbitrary distinction between some skills and others and claim that certain skill constitute art while other skills do not. You’ve provided no basis for how you decide this. You just state this as fact.

If you’re a Marxist, then you surely understand the concept of organizing the working class and fighting for our rights in capitalism while maintaining the horizon of revolution in sight, right? Or do you think we should just accept things how they are and that’s it? Cause if it is the latter, then fuck unions and I need to tell the workers here in Brasil to just give up fighting for the re-estatization of our recently privitazed water.

Kind of weird of you to say this given that I explicitly explained in multiple replies what I think the effective way to organize is. If you’re just going to ignore what I say then I don’t think there’s much point continuing the discussion.

Workers have, through organization conquered rights and regulation in the past, yes these rights are not guaranteed to stay and are just crumbles the capitalist class throws at us to keep us from further revolting, and that’s precisely why marxism-leninism is important and the horizon of revolution needs to remain in sight and be actively sought after. Organization do not stop you from pressuring your capitalistic government from change, and in fact, fighting is needed while in the system. You claim to not be defeatist but is already throwing the towel in that front. I don’t think you have the right to keep questioning if I’m a Marxist and in fact, that’s beyond insulting and I expected better from someone I call a comrade.

Literally nobody is arguing against organizing. The discussions is regarding what the effective methods of organizing and messaging are that actually meaningfully advance the cause of the workers.

So, to be clear, I am against its use while these concerns are not tackled. Artists are right in fighting it, and need to organize and push harder into regulation.

I’m against corporations using it for profit, but I see no issue with personal use for the same reason I do not think copyrights should exist.

I don’t see how that answers what I’m pointing out in there. Learning through repetition is just one aspect in common.

It’s not just repetition, the process is fundamentally the same. Artificial neural networks are inspired by the way natural ones work, and while there are many differences they do operate on fundamentally the same principles. Human artists learn by example from other artists, art is very much derivative in nature, just like technology and science are. We gradually build upon work other people did. Things don’t just appear out of the blue.

No it is not. If you ask for a bucket of chicken wings did you make it or did you order it? It’s the literal exact same thing with AI, you didn’t do it, you asked it do to it for you. You can argue that you have a much finer degree of say in how the AI will spit out it’s output then how the chicken wings will be prepared, but it is still the same relationship.

So, using this logic a photographer is just ordering a bucket of chicken wings when they use the camera right?

Really? I’ll have to say AGAIN that I never claimed it isn’t real art? I directly addressed that before, this is beyond ridiculous that you keep trying to attribute that to me. JUST STOP PUTTING WORDS INTO MY MOUTH. If you’re just gonna keep doing this I have no reason nor interest to continue this discussion.

I mean you wrote this literally after you wrote that using gen AI is like ordering a bucket of chicken wings. If you’re saying I’m putting words in your mouth then you need to explain what you’re trying to say here a lot more clearly.

My interpretation of your argument is that you claim that using a tool that automates the labor involved in creating an image means the artists did not produce it. I’ve given you prior examples of using tools like Krita compared to oil painting, and asked you where you draw the line. You never really addressed that.

So, please do clearly explain what you mean. If you’re not saying that it’s about the manual labor involved in producing the image, then what is the argument precisely. If I have an idea and I use a tool to turn that idea into an image then why is using one tool means I produced the image and using another tool means the tool did it. If it’s not about the ease of use then what is it precisely?

Not intentionally, but it’s how the way you are framing it is coming across. You talk about how artists need to adapt and change their discourse, which is true to a certain extend, but the hostility other workers show them is beyond that and shows a general lack of empathy that needs to be acknowledged and fought against.

I’m saying that rallying against this technology is demonstrably not effective and it’s not achieving the desired result.

This is a joke right? I’m yet again reiterating that it’s about fighting it in its current form that is controlled by big techs, not being a bunch of Luddites against the tech. This is about a strategic position to push for regulation.

And I’ve noted in several replies now that there is no meaningful path to regulation because that would cut into profits for the companies. If you are a Marxist, then you surely understand the concept of class dictatorship and that we live under dictatorship of capital in the west?

Honestly you just stating it’s highly doubtful just looks like defeatism to me.

Now you’re putting words in my mouth, because I was very clear explaining my position and nowhere did I talk about any sort of defeatism. What I actually said was that artists need to learn or organize the same way people have been organizing in other professions where their trades feel victim to automation. This is not a unique situation.

I also never made the argument we should ignore it or that we shouldn’t ensure it is developed in the open.

Then I don’t know what you mean when you say “I am against its use while these concerns are not tackled”. Should people be using and developing open source models or not?

Not what I’m saying. I never said that it should not be automated, rather I gave other options that I believe should take precedent, specially because these workers still exist today and still struggle today, and it is undeniable that such an individualistic society atomizes us and creates the contempt people have for artists and their labor.

You are literally saying that work should be done manually for the sake of preserving jobs here. Meanwhile, automation has very little to do with society being individualistic.

I would still prefer to consume human made art on a personal level, but that’s just me.

I don’t think I’ve argued against people’s personal preferences one way or the other here.

You need to prove these are analogous to each other. The human brain and the machine model used are not the same, does not work the same, does not “learn” the same way, does not derive information and form connections the same way. To compare both is not fair.

I don’t think any of that changes the fundamentals of what’s happening. People do learn through repetition, and we understand enough regarding how the brain works to know that reinforcement training strengthens certain neural pathways that allow us to become better at doing tasks we practice doing.

A human have agency, a machine don’t. One can choose to deliberately do something, the other is just a prompt that spews out whatever was requested.

I’ve repeated this many times in this thread, and I will repeat it once again here. The AI is a tool that humans use, it’s not an independent volitional agent.

In my eyes human made art, again, irrespective of skill level, is in general much more unique and expressive because of this.

You’re once again conflating a tool and the medium with what an artist actually does. I’ve repeated this many times, and you’ve always ignored this point.

The value of what an artist does lies beyond mere technical ability. What really matters is their vision and the idea they’re trying to convey, not the medium being used. The AI is just a tool that a human uses to convey the idea they have to others.

With other workers ignoring the issues raised by artists and even going the path of hostility like I already demonstrated does not help and further alienate and fracture the working class.

Except, nobody is saying that problems created by artists by new technology should be ignored. What’s being said is that there needs to be realistic and constructive discussion regarding these problems instead of reactionary takes on this technology.

It has nothing to do with difficult level and I never claimed AI art is not real art, don’t put words into my mouth. My opinion is that human made art is much more unique and expressive than genAI, again, IRRESPECTIVE of skill level.

All art is human made art. The AI is a tool a human uses. You continue to refuse to engage with this key point. The AI has no volition of its own. A human uses this tool to create the imagery they want to create and share with other people. The art is not created by AI, it is created by the human using this tool.

As far as I can tell, the reason you claim this isn’t real art is because the tool takes care of all the technical aspects of producing the image.

Why are only artists in the wrong here? When other workers are literally hostile to their concerns, discussions and pleas, it is not framed as an issue.

I never made this argument. In fact, I’ve pointed out how other fields, such as my own, have very much similar concerns and similar discussions are happening within them.

I get what you’re saying, but this just comes across as throwing them under the bus. Artists are not happy that their unpaid labor is being used without consent, and therefore refuse to use the tools that currently exist that way.

I don’t see how acknowledging the reality of the situation and saying that artists need better messaging is throwing artists under the bus.

We should be pushing against these tools in their current super exploitative form until they are regulated to take all these issues into account, like UNIDAD is doing.

Pushing against these tools is a quixotic endeavour. As you’ve admitted yourself, this tech won’t go away no matter how much people complain about it. Pushing for regulation of these tools is great, but it’s highly doubtful that any sort of regulation that cuts into business profits would be tolerated.

You’ve also completely ignored my point that ignoring this technology only ensures that it ends up being developed in a proprietary fashion which will make the situation worse.

It is easy to you that have used them extensively, what about the general populace? I completely agree that it is not creative, but right now you’re the one agreeing with I have been saying here.

My point remains entirely consistent here. AI itself is a tool, creativity does not come from the tool itself, it comes from the human trying to convey something to other humans. The tool merely makes this easier for more people to express themselves.

AI generated slop is not creative precisely because there is no thinking behind it, and no depths. That’s what makes it slop. However, somebody using these same tools with a clear idea they want to convey is not slop.

I agree, but it does pose a new issue. Humans can subvert the message while producing the corporate mandated slop, the machine can’t for it has no thinking nor will.

Humans using a tool can produce whatever they want. The real question is who controls this tool. Your concern directly supports my argument here. If these tools are controlled by corporations then it will be corporations who decide what sort of content is produced. If people reject using these tools and open development stops, then all we will see will be corporate mandated slop. I think we can both agree this is not a desirable situation.

I think you can see how this is a problem for anyone that needs to do research online.

This is a whole separate issue, and there should be a discussion on how to curate things such as historical content. This is a whole separate topic of discussion however.

It’s difficult to be sure. As others pointed out, we are predisposed to trust people we personally know more. You can point out things like selection biases and so on, but it only goes so far.

I find I’ve had better luck discussing the outcomes. Now that the war is lost, it’s clear that Ukraine finds itself in a worse position than they would’ve been if they accepted the deal Russia offered two weeks into the war. And that deal was worse than Ukraine implementing Minsk agreements. So, regardless of what people think of Russia, we have to look at the tangible outcomes for Ukraine which are horrific.

If we accept the liberal premise that Putin is an existential evil bent on dominating Ukraine, their strategy has backfired catastrophically. By pushing Ukraine into a ruinous proxy war instead of accepting negotiated neutrality that was nearly achieved in Istanbul, the West created a demonstrably worse situation for Ukraine.

Ukraine lost over 20% of its population and around 40% of GDP. It is likely to remain a failed state going forward which will make it easier for Russia to dominate politically. On the other hand, liberals can be pointed to Warsaw Pact states like Poland, which transitioned to the West after the fall of USSR precisely because they retained intact institutions and populations.

So, if you are a liberal who thinks Ukraine is better off under western sphere of influence, then destruction of Ukraine through war is directly at odds with your stated goals. A functional Ukraine under Russian influence could have pivoted westward over time. Instead, NATO’s maximalism turned Ukraine into a radioactive buffer zone where no EU/NATO membership is possible.

Liberals also claim to prioritize Ukrainian lives, yet their policy has caused at least half a million deaths, over 10 million refugees, and a demographic collapse unseen since WW2. Meanwhile, Russia now controls more Ukrainian land than in 2014, with no peace in sight. How does this help the people of Ukraine?

Yes, because in a heavily individualized society people don’t care about other people’s labor.

You realize that you’re arguing for doing labor for the sake of labor here. You’re saying that a task that can be automated should not be automated in order to preserve the need for human labor. This is not a Marxist position.

Sure, but the current iteration of gen AI is only possible with the stolen labor of thousands of artists that never consented to their work being used by big techs to train these AI models, which not only copies their unique artstyles, but contribute to them being laid off the working force.

Yes, models are trained on existing art just the same way human artists train on work of others. However, I don’t see any more problem with this happening in non profit context than somebody making a fanfic or emulating a style of the artist they like. The only issue is in the context of companies using models trained on work of artists to create profit for themselves. That issue is entirely separate from individual people using these models to create things for their enjoyment. And companies will continue do this regardless of whether people use models for non commercial purposes or not.

I can still point out that I believe doing it yourself is much more expressive than using a image generating machine to do it, and I truly believe that.

Sure, that’s your opinion but it’s grounded in your biases that art has to be difficult to produce to be real art.

Keyword CAN. The reality is that the vast majority of people are not computer literate enough and don’t know how/have the time to do that, so they will just use the online tools available, ChatGPT for example, to generate whatever they want, giving way their real information, likeness and whatever else the machine needs, to these big data centers controlled by a bunch of tech capitalist pigs.

Seems like that’s an argument to embrace using this tech outside big tech companies, and to make it more accessible. Rejecting use of this tech leads precisely to the problem you’re outlining here.

A drawing in Krita cannot be sold and/or presented in an oil canvas because it was never made in that, it is a digital artpiece, of course you can print it, but it’s not the same thing.

Same applies to AI generated art. It’s a different and distinct medium.

but traditional art has not been replaced by digital art, they both coexist, and even if it was, the traditional artist could easily transition to digital art and vice-versa since their skill sets transfer from one another, the same cannot be said for a gen AI user that does not know how to draw/paint, unless that person already had that skill set before

I entirely disagree. AI does not replace traditional art, and there will always be demand for art created by humans. And artists absolutely can transition their skills to use tools like comfyui if they want to. The skill being that of developing an intuition for visually interesting scenes, lighting, composition, storytelling, and so on. Again, it’s exactly the same set of skills that photographers use.

And in fact, here in Brasil that is already happening, like the collective UNIDAD.

That’s good to see and I think that’s exactly the right direction to move in.

There is a myriad of skill levels and if taught from little, people would be able to express themselves in yet another way that would change how we see and interact with the world around us.

I don’t think that’s at odds with generative AI though. People still can and should learn about art. The fact that AI makes certain aspects of producing art easier, doesn’t remove the skill involved in understanding art.

A lot of comments are either offensive or just shitty towards artists in general, and that matches the public perception I have been seeing on other places too, it’s a big fuck you to artists with no or very little empathy for them, a clear reflection of our capitalistic society.

I think that underscores the need for artists to communicate the value of their skills better and frame it in the context of this new technology existing. We both agree that this tech isn’t going away, and artists complaining about it ends up coming across as whinging. It’s far better for artists to focus on what they would be able to do using this tech and why they’re not obsolete in face of it.

The moment we stop learning how to do these things and simply start generating it, we are automating creativity.

Again, I think you’re conflating the skill of understanding what makes a scene interesting and visually appealing with the technical skill of producing it. I will continue to bring up photography here.

There is already a bunch of AI generated books flooding stores like Amazon, is that not automating creativity?

It’s not, and having used language models extensively, it becomes very easy to spot AI generated text. It’s not creative in the slightest. However, neither is much of manually produced media. There are mountains of content produced by humans under capitalism that are as much slop as anything AI produces. The only difference is that production of slop is now automated, but the essence of it has not changed.

Some time ago people started to notice that some searches would return a wall of generated art in Google that’s good enough to fool most people and whatever it generates that is incorrect won’t be noticed by most people, but will impact others, it is dystopic as fuck.

If a person can’t tell the difference and the image is meaningful to them, why does it matter how the image is produced?

We should be automating work to free the labor force so that we can pursue our own hobbies and interests, instead we are stuck in a capitalistic hellscape that is doing the exact opposite.

Right, nobody is arguing that technology is not used for social benefit under capitalism. That’s the root problem here, and we all agree that capitalism needs to go.

I hope that is the case with gen AI, but I don’t see how it is like when photography was invented. I can see the parallel, but not the end result like that. A photo is a moment of reality frozen in time, and while it’s invention heavily diminished the need for photo-realistic drawings/paintings, it didn’t and couldn’t replace art because of it’s myriad of forms and expressions, nor did it make these photo-realistic drawings/paintings less impressive. The same cannot be said about AI art, since it can completely replace the artist, designer, writer, etc.

I don’t think it can because ultimately it’s the human who ends up coming up with the idea for what they want the AI to generate and the vision. Therefore, you still need people with a good intuition for what makes an interesting image. This intuition is developed by studying things like composition, lighting, color theory, and so on.

My point is that even if AI art was magically banned tomorrow, the energy demand isn’t going to drop as a result. Instead, we’ll just start using energy for something else. That’s a feature of how our civilization functions.

There are other ways of doing that, like commissioning an artist or doing some basic editing using photos or collages to represent their point. AI is not the only way of doing this, and if that person resorted to the second example I gave, it would also make them learn a new skill that can be useful in a myriad of other situations for them in the future.

Nobody is going to commission an artist to make a meme, and I really don’t see an issue of using AI in this context given that you’re not using it for profit. However, the fact that AI makes it very easy for anyone to do these things is precisely the point. It’s an automation tool that lowers the barrier for people wanting to express themselves. The fact that there are other ways to do this in no way detracts from the fact that this tech makes it easy for people to take an idea they have in their head and make it real.

Except I’m not complaining about people having fun, I said it shows that people like Ghibli and that’s it. You were arguing that it lets people express themselves and I argued that there are more ways to express themselves better than that.

I think people should be free to decide how they want to express themselves. Saying that people have to spend a lot of time learning how to draw so they can make a picture and they shouldn’t use a tool that can do the drawing for them is just gatekeeping.

Also, there is a problem if it is coming at the expense of the normalization of willfully giving way your data to these big tech companies to do that while also spitting at the face of artists.

You can run models locally, and you don’t have to give anything to big tech companies. There are plenty of open stable diffusion models available nowadays.

What? Krita and oil canvas are two different mediums of art that do not necessarily compete and/or are in contrast with one another, each one have it’s own quirks and differences and require the person to be able to draw/paint. This is not comparable at all to gen AI.

I’m not really following why it’s not comparable to gen AI. You can make oil painting style effects using Krita, and it’s much easier to master that than actual oil painting. AI is just another medium that further automates the effort involved in producing the desired effects in the image.

Gen AI as it is right now is fucking over artists hard and needs to be regulated asap.

AI is not going to be regulated because capitalists see it as a source of profit, that’s really the short of it. The only thing that can happen is that artists start unionizing and doing collective bargaining. In my opinion, that’s where the discussion needs to be focused. It’s not about begging the oligarchs to restrain themselves, it’s about workers talking to each other and organizing.

I can’t argue about the programming part because I don’t have knowledge in that, and I already talked about different mediums. But this is not making the process easy, it is replacing the whole process, the skill is not learned, you cannot do it yourself, it’s a completely different situation.

Simply typing a text prompt has incredibly limited utility and gives you pretty much no control over what’s generated. Meanwhile, tools like comfyui are quite sophisticated and there is a learning curve to using them effectively. Using such a tool still requires skill, it’s just a different skill from a traditional tool like Krita.

Also, you completely ignored my question about how properly teaching the skill from childhood would completely change how we interact with art and would change how we view the necessity of gen AI.

The reality is that you can only learn so many skills in your lifetime, and different people have aptitudes for different kinds of skills. Some people enjoy drawing, other people enjoy writing, yet others enjoy solving math problems, and so on. If gen AI allows people to produce an image they wanted to create without having aptitude or training, then I don’t see a problem with that. The tech is simply lowering the barrier so that more people are able to take ideas in their heads and share them with others.

I never argued that artists jobs are special, and I don’t think anyone is arguing that. At least I haven’t seen that. But that doesn’t mean we should simply accept that. We communists are on the side of the workers, and right now artists are the workers getting the short end of the stick, simple as. In our capitalistic world, these workers aren’t granted even the minimal dignity of being moved to another job, they are simply thrown out like garbage, and that is unacceptable.

As communists we shouldn’t engage in wistful thinking. We have to engage with reality as it is, and create effective strategies for improving our conditions. When new technology, such as gen AI, is developed then we have to be realistic about how it will be applied. The discussion has to focus on what effective strategies workers can use to mitigate negative impacts of this tech.

Two things I can think of are ensuring that this tech is developed in the open and accessible to everyone, and for workers to organize and to do collective bargaining. This has been the case with every technological advancement, and gen AI is not any different in that regard.

There is already issues with developers having to spend time fixing AI spewed code. There are also issues with the alienation of artists having to fix AI spewed images instead of creating it themselves. And of course there is the issue of both of these workers being completely replaced in some cases.

I agree, this is a disruptive technology and it is changing the nature of work in many domains. There are always negative aspects associated with any new technology such as this.

I’m not arguing that this tech should go away, that’s not possible and it would just be Luddite behavior from me. I’m questioning it’s need and how it is intrinsically linked with how our current capitalist world and education works that can’t even teach us how to be creative and express that creativity by ourselves, generating the need for gen AI, which instead of automating the menial work, is automating creativity while we work ourselves to death.

I disagree taht AI automates creativity. Generic images people produce with simple text prompts are boring in nature, and the novelty is already wearing off. I’d argue that the fact that it’s very easy to create a generic looking image simply means that people will be finding new ways to express themselves. Incidentally, a lot of very similar debate happened when photography was invented. People made almost identical arguments that art was dead because you could just take a picture with a camera. Yet, today photography has become its own art form, and traditional art is far from dead.

I completely agree, but where in the world is it owned publicly right now? And it being open source is a step in the right direction, but it can still be abused by companies, in fact companies do that all the time. Right now I think the push for heavy regulation is a necessity.

Models that have open source licenses and can be run locally are what I’d consider to be publicly owned. Corporations will use these models as well, but not much can be done about that. This is exactly what’s been happening with open source code for many years now. Corps freeload on it and save billions while contributing practically nothing back. That’s just a general problem of living under capitalism.

Personally, I’m very skeptical that any sort of heavy regulation would happen here. The reality is that the capitalists are the ruling class, and they will have disproportionate influence over what laws and regulations are passed. I think the real push should be for unionization within the art community. These tools will require human workers to operate them, and the one power workers have under capitalism is in collective bargaining.

For programming, I find DeepSeek works pretty well. You can kind of treat it like personalized StackOverflow. If you have a beefy enough machine you can run models locally. For text based LLMs, ollama is the easiest way to run them and you can connect a frontend to it, there even plugins for vscode like continue that can work with a local model. For image generation, stable-diffusion-webui is pretty straight forward, comfyui has a bit of a learning curve, but is far more flexible.

I mean that’s just Jevons Paradox, it’s not really AI specific problem.

I don’t really see how a human curating an image generated by AI is fundamentally different from a photographer capturing an interesting scene. In both cases, the skill is in being able to identify an image that’s interesting in some way. I see AI as simply a tool that an artist can use to convey meaning to others. Whether the image is generated by AI or any other method, what ultimately matters is that it conveys something to the viewer. If a particular image evokes an emotion or an idea, then I don’t think it matters how it was produced. We also often don’t know what the artist was thinking when they created an image, and often end up projecting our own ideas onto it that may have nothing to do with the original meaning the artist intended.

I’d further argue that the fact that it is very easy to produce a high fidelity images with AI makes it that much more difficult to actually make something that’s genuinely interesting or appealing. When generative models first appeared, everybody was really impressed with being able to make good looking pictures from a prompt. Then people quickly got bored because all these images end up looking very generic. Now that the novelty is gone, it’s actually tricky to make an AI generated image that isn’t boring. It’s kind of a similar phenomenon that we saw happen with computer game graphics. Up to a certain point people were impressed by graphics becoming more realistic, but eventually it just stopped being important.

Incidentally, there’s a similar case of corporate freeloading when it comes to open source. Corporations use projects developed by volunteers and save billions of dollars in the process, but rarely contribute anything back or help fund the projects they depend on.

The good news is that efficiency is rapidly improving, so energy use problem does look like it’s being solved. There is a lot of incentive in reducing energy costs as well which means that there is a concerted effort being applied here.

I very much agree, and I think it’s worth adding that if open source models don’t become dominant then we’re headed for a really dark future where corps will control the primary means of content generation. These companies will get to decide what kind of content can be produced, where it can be displayed, and so on.

The reality of the situation is that no amount of whinging will stop this technology from being developed further. When AI development occurs in the open, it creates a race-to-the-bottom dynamic for closed systems. Open-source models commoditize AI infrastructure, destroying the premium pricing power of proprietary systems like GPT-4. No company is going to be spending hundreds of millions training a model when open alternatives exist. Open ecosystems also enjoy stronger network effects attracting more contributors than is possible with any single company’s R&D budget. How this technology is developed and who controls it is the constructive thing to focus on.