Its oil paintings are some of my favourites though:
Over the last few months, there’s been a huge backlash in the artist community against ai art. Hoards of anti-ai posts across all artists social media. YouTube videos and articles arguing against the immorality of ai being trained on peoples art without their permission.
Some people even say artists are already losing jobs to AI. Which is absolutely insane if true - everyone predicted ai would take away all the stupid jobs first, the stuff no human really feels fulfilled in doing, and humans should thus get to spend more time making art, writing, being creative. The exact opposite is happening, arguably: we’re losing the need for humans in art first, so we can all spend more time packing boxes in Amazon warehouses.
It’s fascinating how it’s happening in exactly the opposite way to what everyone expected.
There’s also all sorts of debate about if what ai creates can truly be called art at all.
What do you guys think of all this?
Backlash from other sectors like folks who do content & codes that AI can do faster & with less errors.
I don’t have a problem with it unless AI are demonstrably conscious (same way human AI demonstrate which stage of development we’re at) & being exploited.
For me, when it comes to the job-taking aspect of it, if it expands to more disciplines than art then we as a society are going to see a wave of unemployment, possibly permanent unemployment, and we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with a country where there’s only enough jobs for, say, 30% of the able and willing available work force.
Do you just let all the people that lost their job starve, while the companies that replaced them with robots swim in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck?
I don’t know how far away this future is, if it will happen at all. But I fear it’s close.
They will cull the population not considered essential. They already do that. They get “better and better” at it with abortion policy, pandemic response (triage) policy, flooding the system with fentanyl, and so forth.
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There are different fields of human creativity… some will never/can never, be replaced…
for without human creativity there would be no AI creativity.
The art world is not panicking, at all.
Version 4 has been out for a little while now and is so much better than the previous version. It’s still struggling with fingers (in particular) but it’s getting better. The amount of styles it recognizes has also expanded and it’s getting closer to photo-level precision (if you know the right prompts).
It can produce ‘nonsense’ if that’s what you ask for but even nonsense can help artists, architects and designers break away from their programmed way of thinking.
In the near future, AI programs like midjourney (MJ) - which is the best I’ve seen – will be integrated with other knowledge bases to make it more practical. For instance, the architectural concepts MJ produces are phenomenal. Now if this was linked with engineering AI/databases then the structures it produces will be practical because the designs will incorporate the materials and engineering needed to build it. If it’s linked to current price databases, then the costs for each section could be calculated.
You could then ask the AI to find a way to keep the shape/size of the window but reduce the cost and BANG!!! You’ll have several different versions. Pick one version and ask about the changes you might want to see in another part of the project or simply ask for suggestions to reduce the cost overall and WAM!!!
For example, the architect might have a problem with screws being used externally. The architect would then simply ask the AI to find another solution only to find the AI has invented a different way to ‘screw’ wooden slats together. It might even design a machine that would do that. It won’t take long to be that clever.
I’ve been playing around with various AI models for months now and I’m blown away by their potential.
NOTE: These sorts of AI are just ‘text-to-image’ programs. There are scores of other AI programs out there now that will do everything from write and play music, design and code websites, write a book/resume/marketing copy etc all by simply telling the AI EXACTLY what you want. Soon they’ll accept voice prompts so it will feel like you’re directing a person.
Many creative fields will largely die off but the new artists, designers, architects, engineers, writers and musicians etc will have to be skilled DIRECTORS. They will have to know how to get the AI to do EXACTLY what they want much like a photographer or Photoshop expert knows how to do things unskilled people can’t do. These are the jobs of the future.
PS: These aren’t real AI. They aren’t ‘intelligent’ yet but give it a little time…
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There’s some beautiful irony in the fact that we can use a program to break away from our programmed way of thinking.
Yeah, good point. 
A lot of artists and writers use these programs when they have ‘writers block’. It forces them to articulate what they want – which is helpful in itself – especially if you need to keep refining what you want down to the styles, colours, perspective, focus etc.
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Some people enjoy the process of creating art, as opposed to finding something else to do a close enough approximation.
I think you’re completely right, though - the process of lots of future art is going to look very different than the past.
Just as with the advent of digital music creation altering the method by which lots of music was produced - people composing songs without touching an instrument or recording a single sound [excluding computer generated].
I don’t think we lose anything. People can still do exactly what they can now, if they so choose. The difference is, they’ll have new options to express their creativity.
A little bit of a political aside, if people didn’t need to ‘earn’ their means of survival, then the idea of protecting jobs wouldn’t be a concern, and we could embrace awesome technology without the fear of the livelihood of the public being negatively affected. It’s not the technology that’s the problem, it’s our outdated economic systems.
This is, in my opinion, something we will have to grapple with politically, possibly in our life time, maybe in the following generation. When the abilities of automation reach a certain level, we’ll have to decide if we are willing to democratise the gains of automation, and by what means, or if our political values are so focused on economic freedom that we’ll let, say, half of the available work force be jobless and with no reliable means to gain housing and food.
I’m very, very concerned for the generation that’s going to face this problem.
My father was a factory worker for decades. Doing a job a machine could do better. His job was mind numbing. And he gave a huge percentage of his life, to an outcome where he wasn’t really needed. In a way, he threw prime years of his life to the wind - per society’s expectations.
His story isn’t unique. Painfully common.
This problem has been expressing itself for a long time, and there’s already been many casualties. I agree with you, the following generations will be confronted by this very directly. Universal basic income will become more and more appealing. Whether it’ll be granted, only time will tell.
But from what I’ve seen of the next generations, there’s a strong awareness of societal flaws, including economic. There’s reason for hope.
Completely off topic but what does your name mean? What does the js stand for? I always think JavaScript haha, but sometimes I think it’s a reference to James s Saint. It’s probably neither of those things.
The connection to James is a happy coincidence, that I also noticed and like. He helped me a lot.
And JavaScript is also a good guess, as I’ve alluded in the past to experience in programming.
But you’re right, it is neither.
It is a reference to my previous name on this forum: Joe Schmoe.
Me saying: it’s still part of my history and I’m not trying to hide it.
Wearing it openly, perhaps also as a reminder.
It reminds me of how I previously treated myself -
and still sometimes have inclinations to act so.
My title before ‘Human Being’ was also ‘Meat Sack’ -
more neglect / dismissal of myself.
I hope I’ve grown as a person - I’ve tried.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to spout on about myself for a sec. 
EDIT:
The only reason I stayed on this forum initially was because of James.
Had he not responded to me, I wouldn’t have found what I was seeking here.
Thank you for the in depth response.
Please tell me, if you’re willing, what it is about James or his ideas that impacted you positively?
Also, do you know what he’s up to now? And why he’s not posting here?
It’s getting late for me, so I’ll try to respond later to your question regarding James’ influence on me -
but as to where James is - I’m fairly certain he has died.
There is a de facto farewell thread to him.
I’ll offer you this snippet of a private message sent to me:
Mithus said more, but none illuminating further on James’ welfare.
I think enough was said though.
James had dedicated so much time to this forum,
that there’s little other reason he would abruptly stop all communication.
Thanks for the exchange, friend.
I’ll do my best to formulate a proper answer as to what James offered.
Have a good one.
Goodnight, thank you. I’ll be pondering that for a while.
_
An interesting item…
Sabine - James’ Brilliant Daughter
[size=85]Postby obsrvr524 » Sat 18 Feb, 2023 11:1[/size] ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 4&t=198357
How will you know when it’s “more than a feeling”? How do you know you aren’t the directed? How do you distinguish between human and AI consciousness when we can’t even agree on the difference between human & nonhuman animal language?