How’s that working out in Hollywood? It seems the strike won’t end this year. I hear studios are hiring AI engineers intensively lately. Where is this labor power to wield?
If you think AI generated content can replace human artistry then we're living in worlds too different for me to hope to argue the point about human labor unions with you.
I'm not talking about what I think, nor does it matter what I think, or what you think.
I spoke about what's happening. Your emotional points about human artistry are irrelevant. And actually, no, as a human, I don't like what's happening to this world, but once again, what I like or you like is not the topic of discussion.
Labor is being replaced by technology, and the "power of labor" which is immense in theory is nowhere to be seen in practice. Care to show recent examples to contrary? I'll wait.
An "emotional" argument about human artistry isn't irrelevant, it's the entire point. Studio execs are betting they'll be able to make as much or more money by replacing the artifacts of human talent with computer generated artifacts. My worldview entirely precludes the possibility of this being successful because I don't see machines as creative entities, and I view generative AI as just clever autocomplete across a massive possibility space. It's fundamentally restricted to remixing the existing artifacts of human creativity, and anything it does will, by definition, be derivative.
We could have a whole separate discussion about human creativity and whether or not all art is derivative in some sense, but even if that's true the root of art is somewhere in humanity's collective consciousness. The machine will never have that because there's no room for true ingenuity there. It's limited by design to respond to prompts by looking at what has come before. The very nature of this tool is that it is of the past. Humans can look forward, dream, feel, imagine, and think and experience novel things.
What I think it most likely to happen in the short term is a schism of the entertainment market. Mass produced and cheap AI content owned (and prompted) by elite media execs and the already-wealthy. People that are so lacking in creative ability they've convinced themselves that somehow the humans making the artifacts are not the real value. They'll shit out derivative and drab content at breakneck speeds and it'll be "good enough" for the mass market to consume. The people who see Marvel movies for the spectacle will be just fine with this kind of content and it will be enough for these studios to make money and consider it a win. They'll feel very good about themselves for putting thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people out of jobs. These are the same people who have always viewed the human component of their business as just a cost, and have only been forced by the power of collective bargaining to grant the concessions to the human component that they have.
When the technology becomes common enough / good enough that every studio can fire the creative people and hire minimum wage prompt writers it will result in a flood of meaningless fodder being distributed at even faster rates than we get it today. There will be no real competition between these studios because they'll produce at exactly the same quality as each other, with the only possible distinction being intellectual property (Disney gets to make Marvel sludge, but Netflix gets to make House of Cards sludge.)
With that happening in the mass market space, simultaneously there will be a still very large market for genuine human-created content. The quality difference will be just as visible to this market as it is today: I would pick any A24 film over a Disney or Netflix movie any day. Organizations like A24 who understand the value of the human component will continue to exist, new ones will be created as this problem because more visible, and they'll do just fine. They'll never make the billions that Disney makes but that's okay. They'll make enough to continue to employ humans making content for other humans.
tl;dr corporate greed ruins everything, as usual, and this yet another stage in the enshittification of the world. The best we can do is continue to embrace the small corners of humanity that resist.
Once again, what you see AI as is not relevant. Watch what's happening. The art produced is directly utilized in games, advertisements, books, movies, TV series, what have you. This is what's happening.
I don't think facts will consult you personally and your opinions as to whether they exist or not. Will "execs profit" from this? Short term yes, long term no one will profit from AI, because it's abundant, and no one will have an edge in it. Profit is for those who can offer a scarce and useful resource to society. AI is not scarce at all, and it'll be only less scarce as time goes.
But it will replace humans in wide swaths of fields. And we'll have to deal with the consequences. The fact that AI will not turn out profitable won't make it go away, because you won't be profitable WITH it, but you'll be completely non-competitive WITHOUT it.
It's kind of like COVID. You can't get rid of it, it'll just mutate until it becomes part of everyday life and we get used to it. Even if that involves most people suddenly having no purpose in life and being dealt with as pest and deserving of their fate. We'll see what happens.
8 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 54.8 ms ] threadLabor needs to organize and wield the power they hold.
I spoke about what's happening. Your emotional points about human artistry are irrelevant. And actually, no, as a human, I don't like what's happening to this world, but once again, what I like or you like is not the topic of discussion.
Labor is being replaced by technology, and the "power of labor" which is immense in theory is nowhere to be seen in practice. Care to show recent examples to contrary? I'll wait.
We could have a whole separate discussion about human creativity and whether or not all art is derivative in some sense, but even if that's true the root of art is somewhere in humanity's collective consciousness. The machine will never have that because there's no room for true ingenuity there. It's limited by design to respond to prompts by looking at what has come before. The very nature of this tool is that it is of the past. Humans can look forward, dream, feel, imagine, and think and experience novel things.
What I think it most likely to happen in the short term is a schism of the entertainment market. Mass produced and cheap AI content owned (and prompted) by elite media execs and the already-wealthy. People that are so lacking in creative ability they've convinced themselves that somehow the humans making the artifacts are not the real value. They'll shit out derivative and drab content at breakneck speeds and it'll be "good enough" for the mass market to consume. The people who see Marvel movies for the spectacle will be just fine with this kind of content and it will be enough for these studios to make money and consider it a win. They'll feel very good about themselves for putting thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people out of jobs. These are the same people who have always viewed the human component of their business as just a cost, and have only been forced by the power of collective bargaining to grant the concessions to the human component that they have.
When the technology becomes common enough / good enough that every studio can fire the creative people and hire minimum wage prompt writers it will result in a flood of meaningless fodder being distributed at even faster rates than we get it today. There will be no real competition between these studios because they'll produce at exactly the same quality as each other, with the only possible distinction being intellectual property (Disney gets to make Marvel sludge, but Netflix gets to make House of Cards sludge.)
With that happening in the mass market space, simultaneously there will be a still very large market for genuine human-created content. The quality difference will be just as visible to this market as it is today: I would pick any A24 film over a Disney or Netflix movie any day. Organizations like A24 who understand the value of the human component will continue to exist, new ones will be created as this problem because more visible, and they'll do just fine. They'll never make the billions that Disney makes but that's okay. They'll make enough to continue to employ humans making content for other humans.
tl;dr corporate greed ruins everything, as usual, and this yet another stage in the enshittification of the world. The best we can do is continue to embrace the small corners of humanity that resist.
I don't think facts will consult you personally and your opinions as to whether they exist or not. Will "execs profit" from this? Short term yes, long term no one will profit from AI, because it's abundant, and no one will have an edge in it. Profit is for those who can offer a scarce and useful resource to society. AI is not scarce at all, and it'll be only less scarce as time goes.
But it will replace humans in wide swaths of fields. And we'll have to deal with the consequences. The fact that AI will not turn out profitable won't make it go away, because you won't be profitable WITH it, but you'll be completely non-competitive WITHOUT it.
It's kind of like COVID. You can't get rid of it, it'll just mutate until it becomes part of everyday life and we get used to it. Even if that involves most people suddenly having no purpose in life and being dealt with as pest and deserving of their fate. We'll see what happens.
‘We need to see pain’: Multimillionaire says unemployment must rise
57 points by robtherobber 21 hours ago | flag | past | 60 comments
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/we-need-to-see-p...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37493993