We were close to your viewpoint being the popular one, but sadly many (most?) independent content creators are so overtaken by fear of AI that they've done a 180. The same people who learned by tracing references to sell fanart of a copyrighted franchise (not complaining, I spend thousands on such things) accuse AI of stealing when it glances at their own work. We're entering a new golden age of creative opportunity and they respond by switching sides to the philosophy of intellectual property championed by Disney and Oracle (except for those companies' ironic use of AI themselves..).
We would prefer a world where we can use the skills we have spent a lifetime honing without having to compete with some asshole taking everything we’ve shared and stuffing it into a machine that spits out soulless clones of our work without any acknowledgment of our existence.
This could a be verbatim quote from a seamstress talking about looms.
Yes. The Luddites had some pretty good ideas about resisting the centralization of profits into the hands of the people who owned the machines who took over their jobs, really. So did the French Revolution.
Not really, the machines these days are owned by everyone, the type of labor is not the same as it was, as anyone can own a laptop as a means of production. As an aside, I have seen your comments quite a bit on AI art related threads over the past few years, especially while I see close to none on ones related to AI code related ones, and I always thought there was some hypocrisy there, which actually led me to the theory that it is not the tech that threatens people so, but the economic incentives behind them, as you state in this comment.
That is why I would advocate for people to support open source AI that at least does not drive profits to any one entity, but people have been so knee-jerk reactive to anything AI over the years that they do not understand that more regulation only means that big tech, with the means to buy licenses to content, would essentially be the arbiters to new popular culture, ironically screwing creators even more in the process; think Disney, but 10x more powerful.
I'm an artist, not a programmer. I'm not gonna be trying to use AI to code anything. I don't see any hypocrisy here.
I do however greatly enjoy pointing and laughing when I see programmers expressing unhappiness with the prospect of their life shifting from "actually programming" to "endless review of AI slopcode". Does that sound like fun? Is that related in any way to the joy of creation that made you decide to be a programmer? Probably not! But you'll be so productive! You'll be able to work four times harder in the same time, for the same pay! Or less, since obviously the real work is being done by the AI now. Does that possibility make you feel unhappy and sad? Good. Now you know how I feel.
Open-source AI isn't gonna do shit to keep from devaluing my craft. It'll just make it worse. I am no fan of the Mouse but if I can get them to fight all these motherfuckers with a ton of VC investment who want to eliminate every creative job and leave me with no way to scrape out a living then I'm cheering for Disney.
> we were close
Maybe. In my microcosm even before big AI, 100% of my tech acquaintances were against IP laws, 0% of my art acquaintances were, and authors I know had varied opinions based on their other backgrounds.
Artists do seem to have had a mindset shift. Previously they supported IP protection because it was "right" (or they'd at least concede that in practice it's not helping them personally), but with the AI boom most of them are pro-IP laws because of more visceral livelihood fears.