It’s still possible to mitigate without upending society (provided the Hansen paper is wrong), but just barely and not for long. It is absolutely dire and urgent but we’re not beyond hope for the future generations yet.
The vast majority of artists hate generative models with a passion. Many have stopped publicly sharing their work because they feel violated by their work being used to train them
It is my understanding that artists up in arms over AI are merely a noisy minority.
Artists who couldn't be chuffed or who like AI and perhaps even use it as a tool are not per capita likely to scream quite as loudly about their positions or try as hard to dominate the narrative.
Reading the headlines 200+ years ago it would have been easy to assume that all weavers hated Jacquard looms, as well. Especially in light of the fuming Luddites that had a tendency to break into shops and smash them up.
But at the end of the day, a person really has to pick a side: Is AI imagery worthless slop or is it a dangerous force that will replace human artists? I'd suggest that anyone legitimately unable to compete against worthless slop must be vastly overestimating the quality of their own work.
According to this survey [1] of 1000 visual artists, 95% believe they should have a say in whether their art is used for training. That much should be obvious. As for hating it with a passion: that's an anecdote from my circle and the discussions I've seen online outside of tech bubbles.
You say it's more efficient but I think if artists were fairly compensated for their work, or at the very least had a say in the process, it would be too expensive or not have good enough output to compete. On top of that, it uses A LOT more energy - which should be enough to exclude it as an option considering the current trajectory of climate change.
Aside from that we need to consider the more philosophical question of whether we want to make creative dream jobs even more impossible to find. Should we degrade the public space even more with an avalanche of "good enough" imagery simply to improve margins for the executive class? Computers have already made every level of developed economies significantly more productive and yet individuals are worse off financially than they were in the 90s. All this pipedream of replacing workers with AI will do is relegate them to manual labour or lock them into some barely-enough universal basic income scheme.
The anti-compute pro-climate argument is so tiresome and it ignores that compute requirements decay non-linearly over time.
Additionally, as an artist myself I don't really much care what "the majority" of artists I think, I didn't become an artist to follow trends and outsource my own critical thinking. As a software engineer, I have a level of understanding behind these models that far surpasses the average artist. As a technological visionary, I understand where the technology will lead, as well as its inevitability. The cat's out of the bag. So I don't very much value the average uninformed opinion.
> Aside from that we need to consider the more philosophical question of whether we want to make creative dream jobs even more impossible to find
Technological progress always leads to the destruction and creation of jobs. People similarly bashed the loom, the printing press, calculators, computers, the internet, cars, planes, you name it. There's no benefit in being a Luddite. Intelligent and aware engineers and artists are incorporating these tools into their workflows today, or at least staying informed, so that they find themselves still employed in whatever future is ahead of us.
It is a fact that the majority didn't consent to this, not an opinion. The foundation of these tools is, in my opinion, copyright violation. Building a product by transforming a collection of works cannot be fair use by any stretch of the imagination. The artists aren't being compensated because it would cause the business model to collapse.
This isn't ludditism. Ethical ML artistic tools do exist but none of these prompt-based generators fall into that category. None of the tools you mentioned are directly equivalent because they don't depend on a collection of existing work to produce derivatives.
All I will say about the climate is that emissions have to peak next year, and be halved by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement goal. I have to assume from your casual dismissal that you're not aware of the consequences of missing it.
> Building a product by transforming a collection of works cannot be fair use by any stretch of the imagination.
A) The courts are deciding this now, and B) we already live in a sick reality distorted by the DMCA and we need a major copyright reform.
> I have to assume from your casual dismissal that you're not aware of the consequences of missing it.
You managed to completely ignore what I said about diminishing energy requirements for compute. You're arguing disingenuously and now you're attempting to insult my intelligence instead of focusing on the argument.
It's really telling that this is the typical fashion in which these argument play out. I have no interest in continuing a conversation like this if you can't make good-faith assumptions in your argument as per the Hacker News guidelines.
The reason we hate them is we rarely reveal our true secrets and methods. These stacks of creative building blocks (digital and physical) serve an artist well. Now anyone can be almost as good as a resourceful artist with a little effort.
The reason we love them is the same reason we love art… To create something out of nothing with the resources at hand.
Most artist love and hate, xor love to hate while simultaneously hating to love ai.
I'm a 6'4" man and bought two pairs of trousers from the women's section recently. They fit perfectly but granted are what would have been marketed as "plus size" in the past. Would encourage everyone who doesn't mind a less utilitarian look to try it. There's a much, much wider variety of pieces and it's cheaper too - especially for more formal styles.
I've always been a strong supporter of space exploration and a big fan of SpaceX in particular, but my world view has taken a turn in recent years.
As a species, our emissions have to peak next year and then be halved by 2030 to prevent the worst of climate change. That won't even be enough if the recent "hot models" turn out to be accurate. Hundreds of millions of people (at least) are going to starve this century if that goal can't be met, and the less severe consequences will drastically roll back the average quality of life. We're living in the final years of a golden age.
I admire the aspirational vision the company and its employees are pursuing, but it's a naive one. All these brilliant engineers have been seduced by it but they will more likely spend their retirement in a refugee camp than on Mars if our priorities don't change.
SpaceX is one of the most competitive employers for engineers. They're vacuuming up young talent in the US faster than NASA and have a tremendous amount of funding from both the private and public sectors. Imagine if the same resources were being funnelled towards carbon capture projects.
It’s not just Swedish doctors. I was put on psychiatric medication for what turned out to be as simple as allergies and lactose intolerance.
In my experience unless you’re paying through the nose, you have to be pitiable/attractive enough for the average doctor to buy into your case enough to make a complex (or even simple with unusual symptoms) diagnosis. No different to any other profession ultimately we just put them on a pedestal because the studies are so intense.
That human would become another artist whereas the model could potentially replace the entire industry. There’s a comparison to the Industrial Revolution to be made but it’s not one which convinces me. Making artistic dream jobs even more impossible to land is so cynical and shallow. It’s like building a supermarket in Yosemite.
Thats not.... state sponsored hacking. Thats testing vulnerabilities by a small time criminal entrpise called mossad aided by a small batallion of henchmen collectively called the us army.
Stuxnet wasnt an attack on a foreign soil, on foreign secure facilities, it was merely nothing.
On the other hand, oh my my. Iran and russia and China are using ai to manipulate American elections. We must censor them and stop them from destroying democracy.
