Supporter
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2020
- Messages
- 2,156
@Hitspark - thank you for an excellent response that is both civil and well reasoned! I will do my best to respond in kind.
-The textiles that were the focus of the technological change were needed to make clothes - the end product being produced was a necessity. While art certainly improves the quality of life for nearly everyone (it certainly does for me), it is a luxury rather than a necessity.
-There is a difference in scale - from what I can find, well over 10% (one source gives close to 50%) of the rural female population in some portions of England was involved in the textile trade prior to the industrial revolution, and the economic effects of mechanized textile manufacturing were massive on the rural economy as a result. Certainly nowhere close to that share of the population today are graphic artists, and the impact is nowhere near as large on the economy as a whole.
-Early manufacturers of both yarn and finished textiles tended to employ children and young women in terrible conditions, and some part of the objection to the mills was due to this mistreatment. While artists do tend to get abused, I don't think anyone is getting beaten for not being able to work 6 16 hour shifts a week.
Morally/ethically, scraping a massive site (Facebook, Twitter, DeviantArt, etc.) without prior notice to those who have used the site to post works is poor form at best (more directly - it's bullshit), and my personal opinion is that it ought not be done, though I'm unsure as to what if any legislation should be passed to prevent it - it's been my experience that a legislative body trying to draw a clear line through a gray area tends to create more problems than it solves. [Again, this starts heading toward a broader debate that I'd like to tread gently around, in order to stay focused on the AI art question.]
Call me defeatist; perhaps, but from where I sit I have other challenges that occupy my time and energy, and this isn't one I'm going to take up a banner for. There will be people who do want to take up this fight, and will. In the meantime there will be some company that makes salad dressing that uses AI to come up with a new mascot and slaps it on their bottles and plasters it all over their advertising, and I'm not going to stop buying their product because of that - I like their salad dressing, regardless of what's on the bottle. Ultimately, the fact that one graphic artist was denied a job because of the use of AI means less to me than that. I understand that if this situation gets multiplied a hundred thousand times, the impact is a lot greater, but I'm still so insulated from its effects that I struggle to justify the personal cost of taking significant action - going out of my way to avoid products that use AI art, speaking out about it, etc. Perhaps a better word for what I am is 'lazy,' but this is something I think is common to a lot of people (if not nearly all people), particularly when dealing with a change or challenge that isn't a direct threat to their way of life. Maybe this makes me a terrible person in the eyes of many, but a quote attributed to Winston Churchill comes to mind: “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” I used to think this was hyperbole, and I would always be willing to stand up for everyone's rights... and then I started getting old, and realized if I spent all my time fighting everyone else's battles I would have no time left to fight mine.
I also want to point out that even if there was a groundswell of support for banning AI art, the technology already exists, and isn't simply going to stop existing because the US Congress or some other legislative body bans it (consider the failed experiment that was Prohibition, for instance). Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it doesn't go back in cleanly.
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Hopefully I have been coherent and respectful with my response, and I do want to reiterate that after all I've said, I'm still not really that keen on AI art taking the place of the work of traditional artists. Like I have noted previously, the AI is a tool, and can be used to benefit or to harm; at the moment, it seems to be greatly harming a slice of the artistic community, with considerable concern being expressed over that spreading to other areas both within and external to that community. Someone pointed out to me a number of years ago that artists and musicians tend to be canaries in the economic coal mine - their rise and fall in employment opportunities tends to foreshadow changes to the broader job market - so it makes sense to me that there are a number of people who are watching this ongoing change with considerable interest.
It is absolutely true that none of the examples I gave were 'creating' works the way that the art generators do. However, they were all devices or tools that removed barriers to access - you no longer had to go to a concert hall or theater to see/hear a work, or wait for a broadcaster to choose to play a particular work - and in this respect, removed 'art' (in some form) from a more tightly controlled (and generally upper class) realm to one that was more accessible to a broader population. I suggest the generators are doing the same thing - one no longer has to find an artist, make a request, and wait for them to create a customized work, and can instead generate a work on demand; the barrier to 'art' depicting exactly what one wants to see has been removed. The differences between the examples I gave and the generators are the incredible level of individual personalization and customization available from a widely accessible tool, and - more to the point in this discussion - the complete removal of any direct human involvement within the 'creation' of the work. This is new, at least within the artistic world, and we're trying to figure out how to deal with it. As with a lot of things, I expect we'll get it wrong a number of different ways before we get it right.
I specifically wanted to avoid referring to the Luddites, mostly because of the bad connotation the term has, and their use of violence to try and achieve their ends. However, I am not convinced the parallel is quite as strong as it may appear.
-The textiles that were the focus of the technological change were needed to make clothes - the end product being produced was a necessity. While art certainly improves the quality of life for nearly everyone (it certainly does for me), it is a luxury rather than a necessity.
-There is a difference in scale - from what I can find, well over 10% (one source gives close to 50%) of the rural female population in some portions of England was involved in the textile trade prior to the industrial revolution, and the economic effects of mechanized textile manufacturing were massive on the rural economy as a result. Certainly nowhere close to that share of the population today are graphic artists, and the impact is nowhere near as large on the economy as a whole.
-Early manufacturers of both yarn and finished textiles tended to employ children and young women in terrible conditions, and some part of the objection to the mills was due to this mistreatment. While artists do tend to get abused, I don't think anyone is getting beaten for not being able to work 6 16 hour shifts a week.
Agreed. But legality and ethics are not the same thing, and ethics don't pay the shareholders. [This is one of the places where the discussion starts veering into a much broader topic - in this case, the ethics/morality (by whatever scale one chooses to measure) of capitalism, and I don't particularly want to derail into that debate, so if I seem to be sidestepping some things here, it's because I am.] I will point out that the legal question at issue here seems to be what copyright actually protects, and to what extent, and what rights the creators are surrendering by making their works available to the general public on a website in some form. As with all new technologies, there's a big uncharted area that's going to have to be worked through.
Morally/ethically, scraping a massive site (Facebook, Twitter, DeviantArt, etc.) without prior notice to those who have used the site to post works is poor form at best (more directly - it's bullshit), and my personal opinion is that it ought not be done, though I'm unsure as to what if any legislation should be passed to prevent it - it's been my experience that a legislative body trying to draw a clear line through a gray area tends to create more problems than it solves. [Again, this starts heading toward a broader debate that I'd like to tread gently around, in order to stay focused on the AI art question.]
Except, after somewhat over four decades watching the world work from my small corner in the Midwestern US, that isn't something I think is going to happen, because most people simply aren't interested enough in spending their time and energy and other resources to prevent it. There are dozens of issues that are more pressing for most people than AI art, and there are a few companies with very deep pockets who have some vested interest in making sure the generators keep generating. And as I already noted, my take is that if you want a problem to go from bad to worse, the most spectacular way to accomplish that is to get legislators involved.
Call me defeatist; perhaps, but from where I sit I have other challenges that occupy my time and energy, and this isn't one I'm going to take up a banner for. There will be people who do want to take up this fight, and will. In the meantime there will be some company that makes salad dressing that uses AI to come up with a new mascot and slaps it on their bottles and plasters it all over their advertising, and I'm not going to stop buying their product because of that - I like their salad dressing, regardless of what's on the bottle. Ultimately, the fact that one graphic artist was denied a job because of the use of AI means less to me than that. I understand that if this situation gets multiplied a hundred thousand times, the impact is a lot greater, but I'm still so insulated from its effects that I struggle to justify the personal cost of taking significant action - going out of my way to avoid products that use AI art, speaking out about it, etc. Perhaps a better word for what I am is 'lazy,' but this is something I think is common to a lot of people (if not nearly all people), particularly when dealing with a change or challenge that isn't a direct threat to their way of life. Maybe this makes me a terrible person in the eyes of many, but a quote attributed to Winston Churchill comes to mind: “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.” I used to think this was hyperbole, and I would always be willing to stand up for everyone's rights... and then I started getting old, and realized if I spent all my time fighting everyone else's battles I would have no time left to fight mine.
I also want to point out that even if there was a groundswell of support for banning AI art, the technology already exists, and isn't simply going to stop existing because the US Congress or some other legislative body bans it (consider the failed experiment that was Prohibition, for instance). Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it doesn't go back in cleanly.
I certainly appreciate it! There isn't much market for large scale organ works these days, but I do still write a bit for my own amusement and enjoyment, which I personally think is the best reason to create.
--
Hopefully I have been coherent and respectful with my response, and I do want to reiterate that after all I've said, I'm still not really that keen on AI art taking the place of the work of traditional artists. Like I have noted previously, the AI is a tool, and can be used to benefit or to harm; at the moment, it seems to be greatly harming a slice of the artistic community, with considerable concern being expressed over that spreading to other areas both within and external to that community. Someone pointed out to me a number of years ago that artists and musicians tend to be canaries in the economic coal mine - their rise and fall in employment opportunities tends to foreshadow changes to the broader job market - so it makes sense to me that there are a number of people who are watching this ongoing change with considerable interest.
