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Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by bawolff on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @03:13PM (#39018478)
I feel like the issue here, is you are giving AIs agency.

AIs are not magic. They are tools. They are not alive, they do not have agency. They do not do things by themselves. Humans do things, some humans use AI to do those things. Agency always rests with a combination of the tool's creator and operator, never the tool itself.

Is there really a difference between a human flooding the market using AI and a human flooding the market using a printing press?

Even if human's can't compete (An obviously untrue premise from my perspective, but lets assume it for the sake of argument), is that a bad thing? The human endeavor is not meant to be a make work project. Humans should not be forced to pointlessly toil out of protectionism when they could be turning their attention to something that can't be automated.

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by johnnyanmac on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @04:04PM (#39019118)
>Is there really a difference between a human flooding the market using AI and a human flooding the market using a printing press?

A magnitude of difference, yes. Even a printing press will be limited by natural resources, which require humans to procure.

A computer server can do a lot more with a lot less. And is much easier to scale than a printing press.

>Even if human's can't compete (An obviously untrue premise from my perspective, but lets assume it for the sake of argument), is that a bad thing?

When the AI can be argued to be stealing human's work, yes. A printing press didn't need to copy Shakespeare to be useful. And it'd benefit Shakespeare anyways because more people get to read about his works.

So far I don't see how AI benefits artists. Optimistically:

-an artist can make their own market? Doubtful, they will be outgunned by SEO optimized ads from corporations.

- they can make commissions faster? To begin with commissions aren't a sustainable business. Even if they 5x the labor and somehow kept the same prices they aren't living well. But in reality, they will get less business as people will AI their "good enough" art and probably won't pay as much for something not fully hand drawn

- okay, they can make bigger commissions? There's a drama about spending 50k on a 3 minute AMV, imagine if that could be done by a single artist in a day now!... Well, give it another 10 years. Lot of gen Ai is static assets. Rigging or animating is still far from acceptable quality, and a much harder problem space. I also wouldn't be surprised if by then any AI models has its own phase of enshittification and you end up blowing hundreds, thousands anyway.

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>Humans should not be forced to pointlessly toil out of protectionism when they could be turning their attention to something that can't be automated.

Until someone conceptualizes a proper UBI scheme, pointlessly toiling is how most of the non-elite live. I have yet to hear of a real alternative for these misplaced artists to move towards.

So what? So we all just become managers in meetings in 30 years?

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by tekknik on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @09:54AM (#39028521)
> A magnitude of difference, yes. Even a printing press will be limited by natural resources, which require humans to procure. A computer server can do a lot more with a lot less. And is much easier to scale than a printing press.

AI runs on some of the most power hungry and expensive silicon on the planet. Comparing a GPU cluster and a printing press then staring the GPU cluster not limited by natural resources is just silly. Where does the materials come from to make the processors?

> When the AI can be argued to be stealing human's work, yes. A printing press didn't need to copy Shakespeare to be useful. And it'd benefit Shakespeare anyways because more people get to read about his works.

The same can be true for AI as well. I could see a picture and then ask AI whose style it is. Then I could go look up more work by that artist, increasing their visibility.

- they can make commissions faster? To begin with commissions aren't a sustainable business. Even if they 5x the labor and somehow kept the same prices they aren't living well. But in reality, they will get less business as people will AI their "good enough" art and probably won't pay as much for something not fully hand drawn

Is this a complaint that something got cheaper to make? This one affects more than just artists. For instance, code quality output from LLM is quite high. So, wages across the board will decrease yet capabilities will increase. This is a problem external to AI.

> Until someone conceptualizes a proper UBI scheme, pointlessly toiling is how most of the non-elite live. I have yet to hear of a real alternative for these misplaced artists to move towards.

Again, not just artists and the path forward is the same as it’s always been with technological advancements, increase your skill level to above the median created by the new technology.

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @12:02PM (#39030360)
>Comparing a GPU cluster and a printing press then staring the GPU cluster not limited by natural resources is just silly. Where does the materials come from to make the processors?

Probably mined from 3rd world country slaves (in the literal "owning people" sense). But still, these servers already exist and scale up way more than a tree.

>well. I could see a picture and then ask AI whose style it is. Then I could go look up more work by that artist, increasing their visibility.

Sure, and you can use p2p to download perfectly legal software. We know how the story ends.

>Is this a complaint that something got cheaper to make... not just artists and the path forward is the same as it’s always been with technological advancements, increase your skill level to above the median created by the new technology.

It's a complaint that people even woth more efficiency still can't make a living. While the millionaires become billionaires. I'm not even concerned about software wages. Some Principal SWE going from 400k to 200k will still live fine.

Artists going from 40k to 40k (but now working more efficiently) is exactly how we ended up with wages stagnating for 30 years. And yes, it is affecting everyone even pre-AI. The median is barely a living wage anymore, which is what "minimum wage" used to be.

If we lived in a work optional world I don't think many would care. But we don't and recklessly taking jobs to feed the billionaires is just going to cause societal collapse if left unchecked.

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by cwkoss on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @12:24PM (#39030643)
> Probably mined from 3rd world country slaves (in the literal "owning people" sense).

Why do you think the device you're using to make this comment is better than a GPU?

Was your comment written by some new flamebait AI? You say so many arguments that fall apart under the slightest examination

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:36PM (#39032341)
I'm not. But I'm going to hold a company who's responsible for the production more accountable than a consumer who can't research the sourcing of every single part of their personal device.

>Was your comment written by some new flamebait AI

IIRC AI focuses on formal language and discourages slang. Either way:

>Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by cwkoss on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @12:19PM (#39030587)
It's like you are mad at gravity. That sucks you feel that way, but very unlikely to change anything.
Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by freejazz on Tuesday January 16, 2024 @11:55PM (#39023474)
It'd be a good point if it wasn't for the fact that search engines didn't exist until google, because of technology, and that courts didn't need to consider the issue until then. So where does your point get us? We are here now.
Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by scheeseman486 on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @12:26AM (#39023626)
Search engines are an index, which have existed for centuries.
Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by bawolff on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @12:49AM (#39023757)
When i was in university, i remember there was this humanities professor who had a concordance for the iliad on his shelf. As a CS person it was so cool to see the ancient version of a search engine.
Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by Piskvorrr on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @11:17AM (#39029722)
"search engines didn't exist until google" - you might want to, uh, google that
Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by tanseydavid on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @07:01PM (#39035459)
The post you are replying to is poorly-worded.

I think the post is making reference to the "thing" which made Google stand out in a sea of existing search engines.

"Using the idea of relevancy, they built Google in a way that - in comparison to other search engines at the time - was simply better at connecting users with more pertinent results.

"A query typed in Google provided more utility and relevancy than did Excite, Yahoo and other search engines.

"To put it simply, Google had a superior product.

https://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/125-why-google-won.h....

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by bawolff on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @08:26PM (#39036287)
Why? I dont see any way the ranking algorithm would affect this discussion, and if it did, i think old style (ranking based on keywords) would make the comparison slightly better than google (pagerank) style search engines.
Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by m4x on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @05:17PM (#39034346)
> Is there really a difference between a human flooding the market using AI and a human flooding the market using a printing press?

Yes. A printing press only floods the market with copies. An AI floods the market with new derivative works.

A human producing a single creative work and then flooding the market with copies leaves lots of room for other humans to produce their own novel work. An AI flooding the market with new derivative works leaves no such room.

I work with DNNs a lot professionally and remain a proponent of the technology, but what OpenAI et al are doing is highly exploitative and scummy. It’s also damaging their social licence and may end up setting the field back.

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by Viliam1234 on Thursday January 18, 2024 @04:21PM (#39047940)
"AI flooding the market with new derivative works" sounds nice if you are the consumer.

Now that we can finally have lots of amazing things almost for free, should we create artificial scarcity to protect the existing business models?

Re:On being listed as an artist whose work was used to train... by m4x on Saturday January 20, 2024 @06:01AM (#39066383)
It’s potentially nice for the consumer. If I could get personalised audio and video content created on demand for me, that would be pretty amazing. But it does disincentivise people from creating content rather than just consuming it, and I think that could end up taking away a lot of the magic from life.