full image - Repost: Hot Take: We're Wrong about AI, and it's Going to Hurt Us (from Reddit.com, Hot Take: We're Wrong about AI, and it's Going to Hurt Us)
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No, I don't think AI should replace artists, writers, and musicians. And before your roast me, as I so richly deserved, at least consider whether this post consider AI (for good AND evil) and its impact in greater nuance.This not about how typing text in a prompt to generate text or images doesn't make you a real artist. This is about how fundamental misunderstandings about what art is, how we consume it, and how to build a business off of it are fundamentally wrong and AI will accelerate that. The "AI is evil" perspective is a problem because is distracting you from more foundational fixes that you need, and cutting you off from opportunities.Yes, opportunities even for you, the person who writes and edits their entire manual by hand in a notebook, because using computers is cheating and digital art is not "real" art.1) We're focused on the wrong problems, we're overblowing them, and because of this, we'll...2) Miss the long-term dangers, including one that is a virtual certainty and I don't hear people talking about3) Completely miss the short-term opportunities (no, I'm not counting spamming the internet with AI slop)4) Fail to take advantage of the long-term opportunities that will get it in the hands of more people.I know this is not going to be popular, but it's going to help some people. And that's worth all the reflexive vitriol. Please, if you are a rational human being, feel free to criticize my points respectfully. If you're a troll... well, trolls gonna troll.This should be good for my karma.1. We are focused on all the wrong things and blowing them out of proportion:AI is stealing!If it is, artists steal all the time, and produce videos about how artists SHOULD steal. If you're using IP law as your basis, Antrhopic vs Authors ruled that AI is transformative (And it is, any human doing the same thing would get the same ruling). Plus, you have same recourse if AI happened to exactly reproduce your IP as you do if someone copied and pasted it. In fact, we already have better, faster, and more exact methods of piracy on your computer that you never complain about (copy/paste, download).But it will compete with artists and put creatives out of business!Yes, we should be worried about this, butit might be wrong (see upsides below, andIt's almost certainly overblownYOU don't care about this as much as you think youit distracts us from more fundamental issues of our business- So first off, yes, this is a risk. All technologies have risk, and almost all significant ones have put people out of business. BUT, technologies often generate opportunities. You should at least be curious about how the costs and benefits stack up, and there are both costs and benefits I NEVER hear anyone talking about.- It's not as big a risk as you think, at least right now. AI art, for example, is mostly replacing stock photos, or allowing people who don't have the budget for art to add it in. AI text (as auto mod says) is not suitable for the books people kind of want to read, so it's replacing the bad marketing text of people who can't afford a real marketer. And there's actually a very real, long-term opportunity from AI generating a bigger base of people working on creative projects. More that later. And yes, some companies that can afford artist are replacing them with AI art, or writers with AI writing... BUT- Almost no one REALLY cares about competition in industries outside ones that directly affect theirs. For instance, Brandon Sanderson in a video about AI talked about how, whether or not training AI was legal/ethical, we still have legal protections for people that we don't have for machines. A photographer taking a photo owns that photo, but the same protections are not given to non-humans who take pictures (i.e. the monkey selfie, look it up). But even Sanderson said AI should be doing scientific research...But wait... research can be protected by law too. There are humans, deserving of dignity, for whom research is not only a living but a noble pursuit. It's a human pursuit driven by human curiosity and priorities, and replacing it with machines would take the soul of it!But Brando Sando doesn't really believe in protections for HUMANS, he believes in protections for HIM. And chances are, if you believe AI has any legitimate function (even spell-check), you are putting someone out of a business. Sure, some of them were punching a clock, but for some it was a craft with a deep, human dimension. AND YOU DON'T CARE. You horrible person. Because that thing is a commodity for you. You don't have a relationship with the creator, and if something meets your needs better/faster/cheaper, sucks to be them.And we know this. The same arguments have been trotted out with various computer developments and digital art. It's not "real" art, it's soulless, it competes with "real artists." Authors who talk about the experience of writing by hand, or writing off grid on a typewriter because the energy grid is evil. There are still a few people like that. But are you really one of them? No, for you, there's a lot of jobs you were happy to replace with machines.And this gets to the last bullet: understanding the ways in which your art is a commodity and the ways in which it is not. A lot of arguments about the "soullessness" of AI are essentially arguing that art is an aesthetic relationship between creator and reader/viewer/listener, etc. And it is, for some. But for a lot of people, it's a commodity.Don't get distracted by the AI. Even before AI, books, pictures, games, movies, etc were a commodity for most people. Understanding your different audiences dramatically changes your business model (or just your readership as a hobbyist). AI will not replace the aesthetic/relationship dimension of your work, it will affect your art as a commodity. But if you're not clear on that distinction and taking advantage of it, you were probably struggling anyway.2) There are long term risks, not just immediate piracy, competition, and spam concerns.There are seriously long-term concerns that no one is talking about. Even if we kept AI completely out of the creative realm, it will still probably replace Google for example.That means AI will be how people find you and your work. That will have huge repercussions. Some good: it will break the advertising-led business model of the internet that opens up a chance for connections that aren't mediated by the needs of advertisers. Some bad. All those billions in ad dollars are not likely to disappear. As ad execs see their work tanking, they are going to start offering them to AI companies to train their AIs with a little product placement, and it will be very hard to catch them doing so.In the long term, figuring out how people are going to find you with AI will have 100x the impact on your readership than worrying whether AI was trained on your work.3) Before advertising companies take control of the AI, you have a short window of opportunity for unmediated connection.Right now, there is so much noise on the internet, because the internet is not designed for you connect with audience, or do your business and get out, it's designed to keep you scrolling while someone advertises to you. This is why there is so much noise, and it finding peers and audiences more difficult.Until advertisers take over the AI, right now, you have AMAZING tools for finding people to collaborate with, or audiences who are looking for your carefully crafted prose and unique sensibility (not just AI slop).Specifically, you can and should be using Perplexity AI to help you with networking and finding audience. Perplexity is a search-focused tool (i.e. very few hallucinations). It's free, and you're going to find more interesting people to connect with in you there then perusing all the angry comments in this thread, or all the others like it on all the platforms, all promoting outrage because outrage sells.You can also use it to help you develop critical business skills, like marketing. Like me, most of you are probably not marketers, and your marketing sucks. AI's marketing is mediocre. It's an average of the marketing on the internet, some good some bad. But average is better than sucky. Even if you never use AI to develop a single asset, learning a few pointers and helping you organize your marketing as a creative will likely launch you dramatically ahead.And unlike Reddit or YouTube, there won't even be any sponsored ads while you learn!...yet.4) If you're focused on the short term evils of AI, you're missing out on the long term benefits.Once you understand that AI could replace art-as-a-commodity, but not art-as-relationship, it will change the way you share your stories with people. And opening yourself up to the idea that AI *might* have legitimate uses will help you see the long term opportunities.One, the art as a commodity business model *always* sucked. Books are horrible undervalued. I mean, an artist can do a painting in 80 hours (2 weeks, full time) and charge $40 for print. Even fairly prolific, full-time authors do one book a YEAR, for $10-$12. If you work with a publisher, maybe you're getting $1.50 of that. It's a terrible business selling books to people who just consume it as a commodity. Every year, you've got to find tens of thousands of people to read your books, and start over the next year. So yes, it will be sad if AI eats your $1.50, or lowers it to 25 cents due to competition. But it was a crappy business model before AI.Communities of people for whom art is a relationship (like Patreon) is a much better model anyway. Even without IP laws, patronage was how artists survived and there's a reason. Continued income for someone who has a relationship with you and your work is just more stable than constantly finding consumers for an underpriced novel. So AI was risk, but it's also an opportunity for you finally quit your crappy business model and focusing on the people who will pay just to support you.But AI is not just an opportunity for reflection. It will change the market in positive ways. The idea that more people are starting (and finishing) creative projects with AI will likely increase the demand for creative professionals to help people polish their projects.How AI will BUILD demand for creativesOne example from my life. I went on a FB group a few years ago specifically to connect artists with authors. I admitted that I was a hobbyist, but I would be happy to both writing, and hosting, and promoting the webcomic if there was an hobbyist artist who would like to collab. I got 50% encouragement along the lines of "Good luck, not interest" and 50% outrage that I would ask someone to do unpaid labor along with me.I don't blame them. It's a very risky proposition. Chances are good that I could be some exploitative cretin (I'm not saying I'm not!), or simple that we both work on a project without ever getting traction.So, my options were:1) Forget the project.2) Learn to draw myself.3) Become independently wealthy, and hire artists at a lossNotice, how in neither of first two situations do I hire an artist. The third, the artists wet dream, is just bad business. You want to make a business out of selling to people who are losing money? You're going to have a problem with repeat business3) Use AI-generated art.If I took the third option, I could actually get to a point where I make enough money to support an artists, but without the personal skills to take the art to the next level myself. If I never get any real money from the project, the artist dodges a bullet of working a dead-end project. If I just continue making money and using AI art, the artists never lost anything. There were no opportunities they wanted in the first place.Regardless of whether YOU are puritanical about AI art, other people are going to do this. Writers getting by on generated art, artists with generated writing, etc, etc. This means there will be more people building creative projects, who don't personally have all the necessary skills. This means there will be MORE demand for people who can articulate why their creative work will help, why working with them is a better relationship, and why they are a good fit for the community of relationship-driven fans that you are thinking.So basically, if we can’t get past “AI = stealing” we’re going to march right past how people are going to find our work in the future, one brief, shining opportunity for connecting with peers and audiences, and miss a huge swell of DEMAND for creative professionals that AI is going to create in the long term.Long enough for you?TL;DR If you shout anyone down at the mention of AI, you will run face-first into risks of AI that you never considered while missing all the short and long-term opportunities. And I'm not counting using AI in your own creative process.Now go ahead. Shout me down, you angry, angry people. Unleash your thought-terminating cliches about AI on full auto. I'm a bad, bad man for considering how AI will impact the creative community, and suggesting it's not all downside. I've been naughty, and I need to be punished.
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