Midjourney is optimized for beautiful images, while Nano Banana is optimized for better prompt adherence and (more importantly) image editing. It should be obvious for anyone who spent 20 minutes trying out these models.
If your goal is to replace human designers with cheaper options[0], Nano Banana / ChatGPT is indefinitely more useful than Midjourney. I'd argue Midjourney is completely useless except for social media clout or making concept art for experienced designers.
[0]: A hideous goal, I know. But we shouldn't sugarcoat it: this is what underpin the whole AI scheme now.
It is what has underpinned all of human progress towards automation. It isn't a bad thing. Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened.
>Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened
It has happened each and every time, it just haven't affected you personally. Starting of course with the original luddites - they didn't complain out of some philosophical opposition to automation.
Each time in changes like this a huge number of people lost their jobs and took big hits in their quality of life. The "new jobs", when they arrive, arrive for others.
This includes the post 1990s switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing, which obliterated countless factory towns in the US - and those people didn't magically turn to coders and creatives. At best they took unemployment, big decreases in job prospects, shitty "gig" economy jobs, or, well, worse, including alcohol and opiods.
With AI it's even worse, since it has the capacity to replace jobs without adding new ones, or a tiny handful at a hugely smaller rate.
Strickly speaking yes, I say the "switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing" though, which also includes lots of automation, but also because it's not just automation where people say removes jobs and others say it's fine, but also switches to different kinds of economy (which see the same arguments).
For the purposes of the discussion, even considering automation and outsourcing alone, the effect is the same though: the human job dissapears from the local market, but the company still gets the thing made.
It literally happens every single time - people DO lose jobs. They might get new jobs, but they definitely lose their old ones.
And not everyone gets new jobs, because usually the new job is fundamentally different and might not be compatible with the person or their original desire out of their employment.
The problem isn't so much automation, but that the benefits of automation are invariably reaped by a few tech CEOs. It's not society in general that benefits, it's that the rich get richer, and the rest of us barely scrape by. If wealth were evenly distributed, nobody would bat an eyelid at AI.
AI is not the problem. Late-stage capitalism and wealth disparity is.
Correct, and I am saying the Luddites were a group of people that suffered mass unemployment following a technological change. Specifically, the luddites were a group of 19th century textile workers that were left out of work due to the introduction of automated machinery in the textile industry. In other words, they are a perfect example of what GP claims hasn’t happened.
The "never rose above a couple of thousand" small group refers to the number of activist Luddites. It doesn't refer to the people working in the textile industry in general - which was a big group, and which was heavily affected.
But most work IS drudge work and the automation causes new different drudgery. Use to be you could dictate a letter and someone from the typing pool would clean it up, proof it, and send it. Now those same people get to write their own crappy email themselves
There's the concept, and then there's the painting.
AI slop from a generic prompt is not the same as "using AI to get my concept in physical form faster."
Imagine, for example, a one-man animated movie. But, like, with a huge amount of work put into good, artistic, key-frames; what would previously have been a manga. That's possible, soon, and I think that's huge and actual art.
Let's say it takes 10 units of work to build a house, and 200 units of resources to build a skyscraper; on average. Let's further assume, after a point, that skill tends to increase quality by a lot more than it decreases resource consumption, so this is "about the best you can do".
A very skilled craftsman/artist can build an amazing house with 10 units. A low quality bargain barrel contractor will build a skyscraper for 200, but it's not going to be pretty.
If new technology means you can now build a skyscrapers for 10, that means that many more exciting and experimental concepts can be tested by building a skyscraper right away, whereas previously they could only be built as a house.
- Some concepts are just better as a house. Even with infinite resources, people will still make houses to this concept; it's not like houses are devalued or less useful or less nice.
- Some concepts would be better as a skyscraper, but are very niche, so they were built as houses as a compromise. These can now be skyscrapers. This is no comment at all on the skill of the builder, only on the resources available to them (time, money, etc.)
I never said:
- houses are worse (or better)
- building houses is a skill issue
I merely said:
- the choice of what to build is not 100% based on artistic merit; resource constraints must also be taken into account
And hence concluded:
- if it becomes cheaper to build things, the choice of what to build depends more on artistic merit now
And speculated:
- since there are all kinds of things that are really cool but really expensive, meaning we often (due to resource reasons) need to substitute a cheaper thing (which can be just as good or even superior for other concepts, just not the particular concept in question), we will likely see a lot more of Really Cool Thing now that it's cheap.
In short, thinking photography will enable a new mass market of images whereas previously paintings were really expensive and difficult to make, while still respecting that:
- a master photographer can be just as skilled as a master painter
- a master painter's work is not necessarily devalued by the existence of photography
And yet noting that
- some paintings might be better as photographs, or would never be made at all because there simply wasn't enough money to paint them even if they in fact would be better as paintings
Think, for example, realistic war photography. Or realistic photography of non-privileged people and cultures. That's just... not painted very often.
Cheap is good for diversity of expression. It does not devalue what used to be expensive, except insamuch as the value was simply a shallow status signal about burning resources rather than real human expression.
Except all the manufacturing jobs got shipped overseas and now those people are Walmart greeters or similar unskilled labor. Having a shit job isn’t unemployment but it’s not a huge step up
That isn't what happened. American jobs are more productive than ever. Americans are richer than ever. The modern luddites dramatically underestimate how bad the past was.
By what metric? One way is to look at the Gini coefficient - that’s worse than ever.
The bottom 20% has 2-3% of total net worth in the US. The middle 40% has seen a decline from 36% in 1989 to 28% in 2020. The top 0.1% has seen their net worth capture double from 7% in 1989 to 14% today.
The subtle thing that net worth ignores of course is inflation from growth in costs, so actually it’s harder for most people than in 1989, unless you’re talking about the ease of buying a TV or phone. Technology is more available and cheaper than ever but food and medicine is more expensive than ever.
The numbers you cite are about zero sum redistribution. They don't capture that a rising tide lifts all boats.
You're also wrong about costs -- people are wealthier today than in 1989 in constant, inflation-adjusted terms. It's true that some good are more expensive; but others are less expensive, and quality has increased significantly across most categories.
Midjourney is optimized for beautiful images, while Nano Banana is optimized for better prompt adherence and (more importantly) image editing. It should be obvious for anyone who spent 20 minutes trying out these models.
If your goal is to replace human designers with cheaper options[0], Nano Banana / ChatGPT is indefinitely more useful than Midjourney. I'd argue Midjourney is completely useless except for social media clout or making concept art for experienced designers.
[0]: A hideous goal, I know. But we shouldn't sugarcoat it: this is what underpin the whole AI scheme now.