How else do you get influence and inspiration without feeding other people's work into your own brain? Do you know a single artist, writer, or musician who hasn't seen other artists' paintings, read other writers' books, or listened to other musician's music? Ingesting content is the core of how influence, inspiration, and learning work.

> The camera enabled something that was not possible before… The only thing this stuff revolutionises is new ways to not pay people.

It's never been possible to generate thoughts, writing, and images so quickly and at such a high level. It's made creative pursuits accessible to billions who previously didn't have the skill or time to do them well, or the money to hire others. As a random example, I have friends using ChatGPT to compose creative and personalized poems and notes about each other. Not something they were doing before.

> The only thing this stuff revolutionises is new ways to not pay people.

The camera lessened the need of people to go to plays and pay for tickets to see things in person. Just like records, CDs, and mp3s lessened the need to go to concerts and shows. Technology is always creating and destroying ways to pay people. The ways that people get paid are not suppose to be fixed and unchanging in time.

I would just add two points:

- The rate of change that AI forces upon us has never before been experienced.

- The scale of these changes is nothing like we've ever seen before.

The adoptions of the camera, radio, automobile, TV, etc., didn't happen practically overnight. Society had a good decade+ to prepare for them.

Similarly, AI doesn't just change one industry. It fundamentally changes _all_ industries, and brings up some fundamental questions about the meaning of intelligence and our place in the universe.

My fear is that we're not prepared for either of these things. We're not even certain how exactly this will affect us, or where this is actually all taking us, but somehow a very small group of people is inevitably forcing this on all of us.

Because of this I think that being conservative, and maybe putting some strict regulation on these advancements, might not be such a bad idea.

Humans still need to adapt and we are slow. If singularity is near [it isn't] we can be afraid, until then we are the limiting factor here. Displacement will happen but growth will happen faster with these new tools

On what timeline?

I don't want much out of life, but I do want the ability to influence my own personal situation. If we wind up in the UBI-ified, dense urban housing future where AI does all the work and no one owns anything, how much real influence will I have over my life?

Will I live out my days in a government issued single bedroom apartment, with a monthly "congratulations for being human" allowance from the government? I don't want that. People say it will free us up to pursue whatever we want, but to me it sounds like the worst cage imaginable. All the free time, and no real freedom to enjoy it with.

Because make no mistake. If you live on handouts from your government, you aren't free.

So with that as a potential, maybe even likely outcome, why aren't you afraid of change?

I understand this fear, and sympathise with it even though I have multiple income streams.

> I don't want much out of life, but I do want the ability to influence my own personal situation. If we wind up in the UBI-ified, dense urban housing future where AI does all the work and no one owns anything, how much real influence will I have over my life?

Why do you fear "dense" urban housing future? I think most people choose relatively dense environments because that's where all the stuff they want is, but rural areas are cheaper[0], and the kind of future where humans must live on UBI due to lack of economic opportunity is necessarily one where robots do the manual labor such as house building and civil engineering, not just the intellectual jobs like architecture and practicing real estate law.

Likewise, while I can see several possible futures where nobody owns stuff, the tech to make it happen is necessarily also good enough that any random philanthropist who owns just one tiny autofac would find it trivial to give everyone their own personal autofac — "my first wish is infinite wishes" except the magic gene doesn't say "no".

[0] The only reason I'm looking to get somewhere a bit more rural is that the sound insulation in my current place is failing, and I'm right by a busy junction with multiple emergency vehicles passing each day — and the more less built-up areas are the cheap ones. Still the biggest city in Europe, but I'll be surrounded by forest and lakes on most sides within 15 minutes' walk.

Because I hated living in Apartments when I lived in them. They are noisy and small, and I like quiet and space. For me, being closer to walk to stuff is not really appealing enough to deal with how awful the experience of living in dense housing is.

I strongly think that dense housing is only positive for people who don't spend much time at home.

> "my first wish is infinite wishes" except the magic gene doesn't say "no"

The problem with this is that we haven't actually solved resource scarcity, and until we do there is still going to be an upper limit to what you will be allowed to buy, controlled by the number printed on your UBI cheque. I am anticipating this number to be much lower than what I currently am capable of achieving in my career.

Of course this is the fear that my career won't exist in the future. Or simply that AI will eat enough jobs that I will be edged out by better human competition. I'm under no illusions that I'm near the top of my field, I am firmly in the middle of the pack at best.

> sound insulation in my current place is failing

The sound insulation in the apartments I've lived in was nonexistent. This is a big part of why I never want to do that again.

I meant more along the lines: why do you expect that to be the future, such that you have reason to fear it?

> The problem with this is that we haven't actually solved resource scarcity, and until we do there is still going to be an upper limit to what you will be allowed to buy

Yes, but the AI necessary to make human labour redundant is that tech. In the absence of that tech, humans could still get jobs doing whatever the stuff is that AI can't do.

Because if I don't have an income I don't expect to be able to afford anything bigger.

> In the absence of that tech, humans could still get jobs doing whatever the stuff is that AI can't do

Which will be manual tasks that I am aging out of being able to keep up with, or.. what? Stuff that traditionally doesn't pay as well as knowledge work, right? And may not pay much more than the UBI anyways?

A big rural place is cheaper than a tiny city place.

> Which will be manual tasks that I am aging out of being able to keep up with, or.. what?

Automation started with the manual stuff, well before computers were invented. Even for humanoid robots, their hardware is better than our bodies, and it's the software which keeps it from replacing specific workers, though telepresence is one way around that.

We are still animals in the animal kingdom. It’s survival of the fittest as long as resources are not infinite. You can never expect this luxury. You are predator or prey.

That has never worked out

Nah, we're cells in a distributed super-organism, or possibly a holobiont.

So my monthly Social Security check makes me a prisoner? I don't think so.

Also, how about if you get into trouble. If you're arrested for a crime (even if eventually found not guilty), will you continue to receive social security?

Is there any circumstances where your government could refuse to continue paying it?

And most importantly: could your government invent such a circumstance in the future, and then invoke the new circumstance to deny you the payment?

Living on government money reminds me of my cat. She relies on me to feed her and provide for her, and I do happily take good care of her because I love her very much.

Does the government love you very much?

I don't feel mine does.

2. "Also, how about if you get into trouble. If you're arrested for a crime (even if eventually found not guilty), will you continue to receive social security?"

"If you receive Social Security, we'll suspend your benefits if you're convicted of a criminal offense and sentenced to jail or prison for more than 30 continuous days. We can reinstate your benefits starting with the month following the month of your release." — Social Security Administration

3. "Is there any circumstances where your government could refuse to continue paying it?"

If it goes broke, certainly.

4. And most importantly: could your government invent such a circumstance in the future, and then invoke the new circumstance to deny you the payment?"

Of course!

It's about money — not love.

This isn't actually the problem since we need and will continue to need UBI for non-AI related reasons

>People say it will free us up to pursue whatever we want, but to me it sounds like the worst cage imaginable.

This is where you missed the bit that "pursue whatever we want" will also be limited by AI, and secondary effect of people growing up consuming and enjoying AI productions that tailored to their interest. At best, you'll have a few people commanding Patreons who have some skill, but generally you'd have to find a domain to pursue that isn't already automated. Luddite subcultures will have to develop. But generally you yourself and most others, particularly children of millennials who'll grow up with this stuff progressing in sophistication, might just spend your time watching your video prompts come alive; and who would wanna. do anything else when you can get straight to what you wanna see.

This mentality is why bitcoin is going to cruise through 1 million dollars a bitcoin and on and on. Print Monopoly money and people who earn will keep seeking out sound money.

What you seem to think would devalue money will be the very thing that keeps it going as a concept.

And I hope you understand somewhere deep down that Bitcoin is the epitome of monopoly money.

I see it as the polar opposite, backed by math. A politically controlled money supply with no immutable math-based proof of its release schedule is Monopoly money. Cuck bucks. Look at the 100 year buying power chart.

On your second point, in spirit I agree. You need a stable society to enjoy wealth so it’s in the ruling classes best interest to keep things under control. HOW to keep things under control is the real debate.

Crypto does some things well (illegal stuff, escaping currency controls/moving lots of money "with you") but in the end that also requires it is only just big enough for reasonable liquidity, but not so big it has an impact on the actual economy. For what it's being pushed for... it's a negative-sum game only good for taking people for a ride. It should stay in its goddamn lane.

All money is politically controlled, including Bitcoin (although it's debatable if Bitcoin even counts as money). The politics of Bitcoin are one-op-one-vote rather than one-man-one-vote, but it's still there, and it's still mutable if enough of them cast their votes in any given way.

Sure, but I'd reckon on average, the rate of change at time T has never before been experienced at any time < T.

I am a human, alive and sentient. I can be held responsible if my “inspirations” stray into theft. A machine cannot, and it’s increasingly looking like the companies that operate the machines can’t either.

I also can’t churn out my inspired works at a rate that displaces potentially everyone who has ever influenced me.

> It's made creative pursuits accessible to billions who previously didn't have the skill or time to do them well, or the money to hire others. As a random example, I have friends using ChatGPT to compose creative and personalized poems and notes about each other. Not something they were doing before

How on earth is using a machine to spit out a poem a creative pursuit? There’s no more creativity there than watching a movie someone else made. It’s entertaining, yes, but it’s not creativity.

> The camera lessened the need of people to go to plays and pay for tickets to see things in person. Just like records, CDs, and mp3s lessened the need to go to concerts and shows

This doesn’t hold water. Cinema did not eliminate theatre just as records did not eliminate live music. In fact, both are arguably as big now as they have ever been. The technology here filled a new space, it didn’t threaten to throw everyone out of an existing one.

For those unaware the vast majority of graphic artists start their projects with assets and base images that they themselves don’t create. With generative ai you’re simply going one step further and have another new tool create a more polished version that you can edit to remove extra fingers, etc. It’s simply moving the baseline from 20% done to 60% done, which will result in artists producing even higher fidelity and more detailed art.

For example an artist could generate a bunch of scenes using Sora and create a collage of them for a larger piece of art, something that is prohibitively time consuming right now.

My recommendation: zoom out a little bit. Every step in history is so brief and nothing is normal for long. Even humanity is a blink.

Comments like: “how is using a machine to spit out a poem creative”. Really? How is using a digital camera creative compared to painting. How is a painting creative compared to etching? And on and on evolution goes..

Please don't try to profile other HN users.

150 years ago, Bertha Benz wasn't allowed to own property or patents in her own right, because the law said so.

The specific reason a machine cannot be held responsible today is because the law says so.

Also, dead humans' copyright is respected in law, so "alive" isn't adding value to your argument here.

> I also can’t churn out my inspired works at a rate that displaces potentially everyone who has ever influenced me.

I can't run faster than every athlete who has ever inspired me, this argument does not prevent motor cars.

I can't write notes faster than the world record holder in shorthand, this argument does not prevent the printing press.

I can't play chess or go at even a mediocre level, this argument does not prevent Stockfish or Alpha Go.

I can't hear the tonal differences in Chinese well enough to distinguish "hello" from "mud trench", 这个论点并没有阻止谷歌翻译学习 “你好” 和 “泥壕” 之间的区别。

I can't do arithmetic in my head faster than literally all other humans combined even if they hadn't been trained to the level of the current world record holder, this argument does not prevent the original model of the Raspberry Pi Zero.

"The machine is 'better', in one or more senses of the word, than a human" is, in fact, a reason to use the machine. It's the reason to use a machine. It's why the machine is an economic threat — but you can't just use "my income is threatened by this machine" as a reason to prevent other people using the machine, just as I as a software developer can't use that argument to stop other people using LLMs to write code without hiring me.

> Cinema did not eliminate theatre just as records did not eliminate live music. In fact, both are arguably as big now as they have ever been.

You can argue that, but you'd be wrong.

Shakespeare wrote for normal everyday people, his stuff fit into the category that today would be "TV soap opera", where the audience was everyone rather than just the well-off, where the only other public entertainment was options were bear-baiting and public executions, where the actors have very little time to rehearse, and where "you're ripping off my ideas" was handled by rapidly churning out new content.

Live music, without amplification, used to be the only way to listen to music. Now, even if you see a live performance, you can have 10k people in a single venue listening to a single band… and if you want music in a pub or a dance club, the most likely performance is from a DJ rather than a band, and the "D" stands for "disk" because the actual content is pre-recorded — and that's not to say I would deny that DJ work is "creative", but rather that it makes DJing exactly what critics accuse GenAI of being, remixing of other people's work.

Which, now I think about it, is a description that would also apply to all the modern performances of Shakespeare: simply reusing someone else's creation without paying any compensation to the estate.

But I know that will tickle you the wrong way, I know that art is the peacock's tail of humans: the struggle, the difficulty, is the point, and it has to be because that's how we find people to start families with. Because of that, GenAI is like being caught wearing a fake Rolex watch, and you can't actually defend that with logical reasons such as "real Rolex watches aren't very good at keeping time compared to even a Casio F-91W let alone the atomic clock synchronising with my phone", because logic isn't the point, and never was the point.

I'm with you, man. I'm still trying to find a lawyer who will sue Kubota and John Deere for moving dirt at a rate far superior to me and a shovel, but nobody will take my case.

> How on earth is using a machine to spit out a poem a creative pursuit?

100%, man. Nobody is mentioning the magical fairy dust in human brains that makes us superior to these models. When I really like fantasy novels, and then train my neurons on thousands of hours of reading Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Brandon Sanderson, etc, and then I get the idea to write my own fantasy series, my creative process doesn't draw on my own model's training data at all. It's 100% "creative", and I would produce exactly the same content if I were illiterate. But these goddamned machines, man. They don't have our special human fairy dust.

When we discovered the universal law of gravitation, and realized that the laws of physics are omnipresent in our universe, we put a giant asterisk to note that the laws of physics are different inside humans. The epidermis is a sort of barrier to physics, and within its confines, magic happens, that these pro-AI people conveniently "forget".

To paraphrase the eminent Human Unique Creative Person Roger Penrose: "There's magical quantum shit goin down in the microtubules. It's gotta be the microtubules. I think, right? I can't prove it, but as a scientist, we don't need proof. Making sure we think we are superior is more important."

The camera did enable painters to pretend they were, for hours, at a scene they painted, but instead they painted photographs from others. Artists are not angels, they do the same "bad" things than OpenAI

He was not able to create a monopoly on the creation of paintings across the entire world and undercut the price and ability of all other painters.

It’s not a sensible comparisons.

You can make your argument validly against DALL•E or Midjourney families, but we've also got the Stable Diffusion family of models that anyone can just grab a copy of.

What does not remain to be seen though is that generative ai is going to put a lot of artists out of work.

You can argue about the good and bad of that but it’s defo happening.

What if da Vinci had been superhuman and could take on 1,000,000 commissions per day and had also taught himself every style of art and would do each commission for 0.001x the cost of anyone else.

Yes society as a whole benefit from a fantastic amount of super high quality art.

But the other artists are not gonna be so happy with the situation are they?

There isn’t a human right to make money from art.

People make decisions based on what society deems valuable. That changes over time and has for the entirety of human history.

Maybe there’s a demand for more customized art. Maybe spite patronage will make a comeback.

Anyone telling you they know how it will shake out is a fraud. But the incentives we’ve set up have a natural push and pull to get people to do what society values.

Within a few mon the or years there will be open source implementations anyway, running locally or in a data center. Most of the technology is published.

Thing is, anyway, as soon as one model is open there will be copies of it, fine-tune implementations. People don't care that much about ownership of data I would say if they actually have access to the models that are produced by gathering this data.

Ultimately, to me, an open source model for this tool makes a lot of sense. They use publicly available data and the models become publicly available.

I for one am quite excited for this tooling to become better and better so I can make the adaptation of a book I love into a movie I imagine it can be. At least I can have a lot of fun trying.

Sure.

Who do we send the compensation to for Leonardo da Vinci? Or Shakespeare, for a text-based example?

Do you want them to compensate me for the stuff I uploaded to Wikipedia and licensed as public domain, or what I've uploaded to GitHub with an MIT license?

A model trained only on licensed data is still an existential threat to the incomes of people whose works were never included in the model, precisely because they're only useful to the extent that they generalise beyond their own examples.

> The camera enabled something that was not possible before, and I wasn’t built by taking the work of sketch artists and painters. It was an entirely new form of art and media.

A new form of art that was (a) initially decried as "not art", and (b) which almost completely ended the economic value of portraiture.

Those authors aren't alive and their works are in the public domain. Bringing them up is irrelevant and a diversion from the actual problem, which is that creators alive today whose work is under copyright today and who need to make a living from their art are having it taken with zero compensation and had it fed into AI, stealing their effort.

> A model trained only on licensed data is still an existential threat to the incomes of people whose works were never included in the model, precisely because they're only useful to the extent that they generalise beyond their own examples.

Again, a diversion. We can debate how much AI trained on properly-licensed AI should be controlled, but it's pretty clear that the bare minimum is for all AI training data to require explicit permission from the creator of that data.

Because that's the only way that what I wrote could be a diversion or irrelevant.

[0] actually all work where copyright applies, not just art.

Or don't. I'm not your boss. But if you don't, I'll never know what you meant.

There's no point to arguing this further because you're clearly not acting in good faith. It is impossible to have a reasonable conversation with someone who randomly (and falsely) claims that others said things that they did not.