Comment by throwaway30230 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway30230 | Hacker News Reader

At this point it seems pointless to even bother to try given that AI will generate all possible artwork within a couple years.

I mean. Say you get "good" at using this. What's the life expectancy at any kind of creative outlet you could have that would support you? I mean if we're talking this is fun as a toy, yeah ok. I could see that. But as a job? When everyone can paint no one is paid for it.

I suppose that we could all go back to paying people who can physically lift things or wait on tables, but that's about it.

I want to use this, but then I just think "Holy shit, what if I get good at this and then get my hopes up like I did with React? What am I going to do, sell artwork that anyone can make for next to nothing on the internet?" I believe I could probably come up with some cool paintings, but the question is "why"? Everyone else on the internet will generate all the possible content it's possible for me to come up with anyway, so why does it matter?

And if that makes me care about "money" then yeah, I care about money. So what?

All of that being said I'm now going to draw a latex glad ninja being molested by a demon. Also I'm broke and living in a homeless shelter. But I can get a supercomputer to make me draw sexy girls so I have that going for me.

Seems pointless to learn to make singular highly detailed visual art pieces? Maybe. Maybe it always was pointless.

But most visual art is not just single pictures in a vacuum. Say you want to make a game with 2d still-art, or say a comic. You will need dozens or hundreds of images and they will have to be tied together by a common design — characters and style that look similar in the different images, and most of all you have to have a story to back it up. This is not something AIs can do well, not for a long while, but a human artist now may do significantly better than before with help of "dumb AI", such as the featured Krita plugin.

Finally, most artists don't think like you. It's not "pointless" to do something that can be technically repeated by other humans or AI. You do art because you want to express yourself.

> Finally, most artists don't think like you. It's not "pointless" to do something that can be technically repeated by other humans or AI. You do art because you want to express yourself.

I've seen this sentiment a bunch of times, but I don't agree. Most people practice skills and make art in order to demonstrate their value to society. Art (and media) doesn't exist in a vacuum, it surely exists for societal reasons.

A person may want to make a game or a comic, but the reason they want to make those things, instead of just consuming existing media, is also to demonstrate their value to society. But they won't have any value either when everyone else can easily make games and comics.

I don't think you are disagreeing with me. I also mean by "expressing yourself" that the artist is trying to communicate with the community and be of value to them.

I'm saying AI does not allow anyone to easily make games and comics, at least not for a some while. Currently AI allows you to easily make still pictures, maybe a written chapter of a story. It does not yet compete with artists who do larger pieces of work like a book. And I'm not sure AI ever(?) will make "complete" works because it doesn't have full human background required to have "something to say". It only "mimics" in a manner that many artists focused on technical ability find threatening. So yeah some "artists" will be out of work because of AI, but it will not be a big loss for the community if they are merely replaced.

The surface area of "art with message or meaning" within "all art AI can randomly generate" is so vanishingly small that it doesn't matter. Humans will be in control of the message, and thus in control of art for the foreseeable future.

When the AI finally is smart enough to have something to say, it will be an AGI and humanity will quickly be enslaved to it. No point thinking that far.

Okay, I see. I'm less worried about AI running the whole thing, and more about the diminishing quality of life for creators. Also I'm less sure than you about AI being unable to compete with larger pieces of work in the near future, especially books and comics seem pretty doable. Humans might stay in control, but over time it moves from creation towards curation, which is pretty different and has different implications over who gets to experience artistic fulfillment, and who gets to make a living. But hopefully you are right and it takes long enough that we can make some sort of societal adjustment.

Value to society seems like a niche motivation, a very external focus.

To me it seems like a fundamental motivation - we do art because we want to impress those around us, gain respect, help to attract a mate, make money... Those reasons don't exist without other people to show our art to, and are much less effective if art is too easy to make and too common.

I'm sure there are people who don't have ambition to ever show others the skills they've been building, even in indirect ways, but I doubt it's common... What do you think the motivation is?

To make oneself happy, to look at something and say i did this. To pass time and gain skills. Even if you want to show it to people you care about, it's not about the rarity it's about sharing. I may have doubts of the existence of pure altruism but gaining the respect of others is a very A_type personality selfish type view. I don't think everyone is really that concerned with others.

I don't mean "gaining respect" like that's some explicit goal, but I do feel like people are pretty concerned with others, and most of us do really care about the opinions of others. It might be selfish on some level but it's a big part of being human. I can't speak to everyone's relationship with creating, I imagine if your social needs are being met already then you might just use art to pass the time and not care much about it. But usually the outcome we want when sharing our work is to feel appreciated, noticed or special in some way that scales with the amount of effort, time and skill we put in.

Maybe a nice analogy are the old trades: knitting, weaving, ceramics, glass blowing, woodworking, ... Still down for pleasure and a niche audience.

Being a painter, a photographer, a musician, an actor, a freelance artist in any medium, has never been a viable career for any significant fraction of the people that want to do so. It has always been a hobby that some very small percentage of people manage to make enough money from to scrape by, and some infinitesimal percentage make enough money from to be wealthy. AI is unlikely to change that, because there will very likely still be a demand for celebrities that some infinitesimal proportion of lucky aspirants will fill, and the vast majority of the industry by numbers will be hobbyist or hobbyists-in-denial who think their small business drawing commissions for some normies & wealthy furries on Twitter will be an economically sustainable career for all the people that want to do it. The most likely outcome of AI in the long run is that a lot of these people produce significantly more work of equivalent quality without being paid any more because demand won't rise (there is already massive oversupply of art, demand is the limiter for financial feasibility), a lot more hobbyists are making art because of the lower barrier to entry, and animators + VFX artists have their productivity go up by a lot and can maybe trade that into real gains in conditions if they're willing to unionise.

Never underestimate the number of kinks out there

I'm quite sure the will be models specific for all kind of kinks.

But not every permutation.

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