Trading quality for price has been happening everywhere for long enough that it is easy to see how unfortunately it will now play out in the arts as well. I mean, not that long ago all clothes you wore were custom made by a tailor, all the music you listened to was played live by musicians, all stories were brought to life in front of you by theatre actors: now all of those while still available are significantly more expensive and niche than the mechanized (production or reproduction) equivalents.
ChatGPT, stable diffusion and I am sure upcoming music models will enable this mechanization in the arts, where great artists will be unaffected but making it nearly impossible for “good enough” artists to compete while also pushing up the floor of what is an acceptable competency level that merits being paid for making it more difficult for people to support themselves while improving their skills.
Means that many, many more people can have something of passable quality. For example:
> not that long ago all clothes you wore were custom made by a tailor
If you could afford a tailor; otherwise you had to make do with homemade rags that constantly needed mending and looked terrible.
> all the music you listened to was played live by musicians
If you could afford to go to concerts.
> all stories were brought to life in front of you by theatre actors
If you could afford to go to the theatre.
> now all of those while still available are significantly more expensive and niche than the mechanized (production or reproduction) equivalents
Which the vast majority of people can afford, and which significantly improves their quality of life. Now they can buy clothes at Walmart or Target instead of having to wear homemade; sure, not the same as a custom tailored suit, but good enough. Now they can buy digital recordings of world class musicians and theatre actors for much, much less than it would cost to see them live.
> ChatGPT, stable diffusion and I am sure upcoming music models will enable this mechanization in the arts
That already happened decades ago, as soon as mass produced recordings became widely available. It's already next to impossible for any artist who isn't world class (or, more precisely, is not publicized so that people think they're world class) to make a living at their art. ChatGPT and the equivalent in other arts aren't going to affect that much.
> > not that long ago all clothes you wore were custom made by a tailor
> If you could afford a tailor; otherwise you had to make do with homemade rags that constantly needed mending and looked terrible.
Or you bought clothes infrequently and maintained them, and they lasted longer because the quality was much better.
People are so used to fast fashion these days that they assume that the poor in previous eras suffered in this regard way more than they actually did, because people assume the poor quality of clothing today is representative of how it always was, rather than a recent phenomenon.
The quality of clothing was much, much higher - even for the relatively poor - and clothing wasn't treated as disposable, so people would maintain and repair it, so it would last much longer.
> Which the vast majority of people can afford, and which significantly improves their quality of life. Now they can buy clothes at Walmart or Target
Buying clothes at Walmart or Target is a step down, not a step up. (And ironically, it's not even necessarily cheaper!).
If we're talking about clothing, it's very clear that these trends have served to the detriment of the average person, not to their benefit. The ones who actually benefit are the ones capturing the profit - the Sam Waltons of the world.
You write like as soon as I put on a pair of jeans from Walmart it immediately begins disintegrating. It's not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be. I've had relatively cheap clothes for years without having to worry about it very much.
And it's nice that when my clothes are stained or irreparably damaged I can afford to replace them quickly.
People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones.
This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option.
So no, I don't believe it is clear at all how this is to the detriment of the average person.
> People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option.
This is extremely incorrect. First of all, fast fashion isn't actually necessarily cheaper. The real difference is that fast fashion exists in an industry that has gutted the entire infrastructure for alternatives, so people actually don't have the alternative options anymore.
It's like saying that "people prefer to drive cars, which is evident if you look anywhere in the US". Sure, almost everyone drives cars, but that's because the previous rail infrastructure was literally ripped up and destroyed by the auto industry, so now there's no alternative.
If you look at the developing world, it's very clear how incorrect your statement is, because there, fast fashion is more expensive, and other forms of clothing are far cheaper, far better quality, and far more common.
> I was never talking about fast fashion. There's a huge swath of clothing items between "dirt-cheap, disintegrating crap" and "high quality clothing".
It's all fast fashion, just different points along the line.
Yes, broccoli and kale look different, and one is a fancier class signifier than the other, but at the end of the day they're still the same species.
> It's all fast fashion, just different points along the line.
So there's only high quality tailor-made clothes... and fast fashion?, of which there may be a spectrum that goes from something like "very fast fast fashion", all the way to "slow fast fashion"?
> Yes, broccoli and kale look different, and one is a fancier class signifier than the other, but at the end of the day they're still the same species.
So you're against... clothes? And possibly also agnostic when it comes to the existence of taste buds?
I'm sorry but your line of reasoning is making zero sense to me. This is getting to the point where I have to ask: Have you ever bought clothes yourself or does someone else buy them for you? Can you put into words of your own (without googling) what makes an article of clothing like a shirt not fast fashion?
Fast fashion is certainly cheaper for "fashionable" clothes. The market they are disrupting is a relatively small one. Cheaper clothing is available to everyone through stores like target, Walmart, or other department stores. And the quality is perfectly fine.
> Fast fashion is certainly cheaper for "fashionable" clothes. The market they are disrupting is a relatively small one. Cheaper clothing is available to everyone through stores like target, Walmart, or other department stores.
All of that is part of fast fashion - including Walmart and Target; it's just the lower end or very far down the pipeline. You can't separate one from the other, because they are economically codependent.
> And the quality is perfectly fine
Fast fashion is indubitably much lower quality, and it's weird to see people here denying that, when the fashion industry itself is completely in agreement about that fact. It's not a secret - they discuss it openly.
No one in the world ever bought a wardrobe at Walmart because they could afford to drop $20k at a tailor but chose not to cause Walmart is good enough.
They made econmic trade offs depending on their level of poverty.
Clothing today is low quality? I literally have jeans and shirts I bought from Walmart ten years ago in my rotation today. I would have more if my wife didn't keep getting rid of them...
I think you’re romanticizing the past. For 99% of human history, 99 of women had to make do with one I’ll fitting “dress” from teenage to death, including pregnancy
> Means that many, many more people can have something of passable quality.
There is also a feedback loop where automation puts people out of work, and even though it helps make products cheaper, it also creates less of a market for the products. Your post makes it seems like there are only positives.
I was thinking more along the lines of the rich traditions of folk music. I'm peripherally involved in the fiddle music scene, so I have some contact with this. The sheer quantity and variety of folk tunes, songs, and styles, is huge, and is probably the tip of the iceberg. This is why I think that people were rich with music, even if they weren't necessarily immersed in it 24/7. But cost wasn't a barrier to the enjoyment of music.
Sure, people with more disposable income could enjoy more formal, and perhaps more professional, musical performances. The growing middle class created demand for music and other forms of entertainment.
Music was taught in the schools. Even small towns had a bandstand in the park. Music was used in public ceremonies, including church. Any tavern was likely to have a musician, paid or not. Sometimes the pay consisted of food and lodging.
Yep. Recording and photography killed almost all the value (social and financial) of middling artistic talent in music, storytelling, and visual arts, which may well have been what gave a lot of people a significant part of their sense of self-worth before that—plus, maybe, some income.
Now AI's coming for most of those who survived that first culling. And not just the middling-talent folks this time.
That's an interesting set of transition that I hadn't really comprehended. People used to be entertained by live performers in their local area.
Printing, photography, radio, film, television, etc have all increased the availability and 'quality' of entertainment available at the same time as reducing the number of creators involved. (Obviously there is some debate possible around quality)
That kind of assumes people consumed the same amount of entertainment throughout history, which I don't think is correct.
It also assumes that they were constrained to local creators.
It is possible that people simply did other activities that don't involve a creator. Another possibility is that most people consumed content from a small set of non-local creators, like authors with wide distribution.
It's Vonnegut's observation. He brings it up in a couple books or stories, IIRC, but like nearly all his themes or messages, it's included in Bluebeard.
Being a half-competent folk musician or good storyteller or being able to sketch pretty well used to be super valuable to your family and community. Not so much anymore. Expressions of those sorts of skills are more often tolerated than genuinely looked-forward-to, now. The need is gone.
People on this site complain about folks being consumers and not producers, not being creative—well, for a large swath of the arts, that's where it started. Recording and photography. Took it from something that was strongly socially encouraged & rewarded to something private. You can't fix that with "maker" movements—not in any major way.
Technology changed the social context and wiped out the external motivation & encouragement for a bunch of kinds of creative expression that were accessible to & achievable by the masses. AI is more of the same.
On the other hand, this is a great opportunity for new artists to embrace AI and make a career out of it, instead of cowering in fear.
There's a popular youtuber named Joel Haver who films videos, then uses an AI tool to convert them into animations, so they can be magically put into a space or fantasy setting.
AI dungeon is an text adventure where the content is AI-generated.
I also imagine tools similar to Github Co-pilot for other markets. Some AI could generate music or video games levels based on inputs from a user, then the user can take or modify the best bits. The goal hopefully being that they get something no human could have thought up, instead of just generating a bunch of mediocre content.
>There's a popular youtuber named Joel Haver who films videos, then uses an AI tool to convert them into animations, so they can be magically put into a space or fantasy setting.
Hang on, AI tool? Joel Haver converts every frame manually. His method is the literal opposite of using an AI tool. It's incredibly painstaking.
Uh no. Did you watch the video you posted in full? He uses software called “ebsynth”. He draws over a couple of frames in a scene and feeds the rest to the software, which attempts to match the style. It’s not perfect, which is why you see some weird glitches in the videos.
My grandfather and group sang.
From what tapes I have heard of them, they didn't sound worse than any other group of Appalachian gospel/blue grass singers.
My parents' wedding photos weren't 'professional' and I think they came out pretty well, perhaps even charming.
Sometimes I think people are putting too much stock in the notion of a 'perfect' life, rather than a lived one.
Most people wouldn't and millions of the cds are sold from the most popular bands (world best is subjective). When it comes to live most people would pay 10x times more to sit 100x further away to see world class vs a cover band playing the same music.
This is going to push us back to making our own music like we use to. Singing/playing should be a fun group activity rather a performance given to a group of non performers. We are all artists.
I mean the whole concept of "world's best" in terms of art doesn't even make sense. It rarely, if ever, makes sense in other areas or fields as well. (even sports, where it is is sometimes objective, records and acheivements are broken all the time again and again)
Also have to consider the kicking of the ladder away. Nobody gets to excellent without passing through the lower stages. Hard to stay motivated if it'll be 5 years just to see if maybe you have something a computer can't offer.
Not impossible, but definitely a raising of the bar.
This. How are people going to learn/become better if all the base work is being done by an AI.
Reminds of the Empire in Asimov's Foundation where they knew just enough to keep the current tech running, but not enough to fix it if something major breaks or create new tech.
When the AI breaks something, we will be missing the people who knew how all this s$%T works.
Reminds me of the guy who built his own os but took 17 years so the UI is terrible but a few years ago he finally finished. Someone will but that person isn't following a typical or even sane life and the results will be brilliant messes.
> now all of those while still available are significantly more expensive and niche than the mechanized (production or reproduction) equivalents.
No, they cost exactly as much as they always had. Before machines, people didn't have wardrobes full of tailor-made clothes. Each person had, give or take one, exactly as many tailor-made clothes as we have today.
> Each person had, give or take one, exactly as many tailor-made clothes as we have today.
Many, perhaps most, people don't have any tailor made clothes because they can't afford a tailor. Which has indeed always been the case. But before machines, people who couldn't afford a tailor had no other option for clothes except homemade. Now, with machines, they do.
Supporting industries losing economies of scale drives up costs. If you have fewer tailors, local cloth suppliers become insolvent. This leads to the few tailors having to import cloth and increase prices.
Closely related to Baumol's cost disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease If one option becomes many multiples cheaper, anything that can't also get that cheap will almost inevitably rise in expense as a result.
I’m not sure tailored clothes have become more expensive at all. You can have a tailored suit for what, a couple of thousand? So 1-2 months of the average wage? That’s peanuts historically
> all the music you listened to was played live by musicians, all stories were brought to life in front of you by theatre actors
well, no, you probably didn't listen to much music or see many stories at all because the average person couldn't afford to experience such things more than a few times in their life. shocking that Luddites are still a thing in the 21st century, especially here.
I think this misses the point that _everyone_ used to sing and tell stories. What do you all think families did in the winter around a fire? Where do "folk tales" come from? It's as if you think joy in sharing stories and music is restricted to a monetary transaction. Sure, some people were better story tellers than others, or more beautiful singers than others, but that gave reason for communities to exist, to share food and company; not for money, but because once you have shelter and food, what more than that do you really need? And also, without community, can you even have shelter and food? The vast majority of humans that have lived, let's say since spoken language developed, have shared stories and music as a gift. It wasn't until very recently (relatively) that sharing these things became transactional.
Whereas now we have the complete opposite problem, we're inundated by (much) lesser variants of these things to the point of saturation, addiction, and emotional depletion. I'm not sure either one of the extremes is particularly desirable, nor how acknowledging issues that mass-market consumerist societies currently visibly suffer from makes one a Luddite.
I think you'd be surprised at the degree to which the "little people" did experience live entertainment before the advent of mass market recordings. Festivals, traveling troubadours, other traveling performers...
Yeah, I guess all those groundlings standing around eating oranges and laughing at the dirty jokes at the Globe Theater in Shakespeare's day just didn't exist in this guy's universe.
It always amuses me when people on Hacker News use Luddite in the pejorative "caveman" sense of the word instead of the actual "skeptical of the societal drawbacks of advancing technology" sense, especially since people on this site like you effect an air of being so much smarter than the average pleb.
ChatGPT, stable diffusion and I am sure upcoming music models will enable this mechanization in the arts, where great artists will be unaffected but making it nearly impossible for “good enough” artists to compete while also pushing up the floor of what is an acceptable competency level that merits being paid for making it more difficult for people to support themselves while improving their skills.