Yeah, sadly those millions of people don’t matter in the grand scheme of things and were never going to profit off their work long term

What a bummer of a thing to say.

Those millions/billions of people matter a great deal.

They matter but not under the current system. Artists are a rarely paid profession, and there are professional artists out there but there’s now a huge amount of people that will never contact an artist for work that used to only be human powered. It’s not personal for me. I understand that desire to resist the inevitable but it’s here now.

For what it’s worth I never use midjourney or dalle or any of the commercial closed systems that steal from artists but I know I can’t stop the masses from going there and inputting “give me pretty picture in style x”

Resistance is important imo. If this happens and we, who work in this industry, say nothing, what good are we. It's only inevitable if it's socially acceptable.

Where the "grand scheme of things" are the quarter reports of a few AI-invested companies?

Absolutely agree we should allow people to accumulate equity through effective allocation of their labor.

And I also agree that we shouldn’t build systems that alienate people from that accumulated equity.

Is this utilitarianism?

Worth it.