[ad404b8a372f2b9]

This is larger than publishers, this is every artist, film-maker, photographer, every writer, every engineer, anybody who has ever written or created something and shared it publicly is liable to have their work assimilated and an infinite amount of derivatives produced with no control over how they're used and by whom.

Comment generated with gpt-neox prompt: Comment about AI and data collection and generation and its pitfalls, expressing concern, emphasis on professions, emphasis on automation, written by Stephen King, creative writing, award winning, trending on reddit, trending on hacker news, written by Greg Rutkowski, written by Zola, written by Voltaire, written by authpor, written by moyix.

(Just kidding, it wasn't AI generated but you see my point.)

[mkaic]

> anybody who has ever written or created something and shared it publicly is liable to have their work assimilated and an infinite amount of derivatives produced with no control over how they're used and by whom.

This has been the case ever since people started putting their art on the Internet publicly. The only difference is that now it's algorithms creating the derivatives, not people.

[harry8]

Yeah before the internet it never happened and nobody knew just how damn cliched Bill Shakespeare's plays are. Every line of Hamlet's soliloquy! It's insane!

[ROTMetro]

Would we have Shakespeare's plays if he didn't make money? Which encourages better plays:

I write a play, and I can license theater companies to be able to perform it. Therefor better writers are attracted to the industry (instead of to say Ad Copywriting) and because of a higher level product, the industry thrives.

I can write a passion play that the local theater will perform. I will not generate enough income to live from my product. I will not generate income from licensing my production because there is no copyright and my scripts would just get stolen/distributed freely. The industry has less quality productions. The majority of productions have no reputation of quality.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

This is not remotely the same, scale and barrier to entry matter. With stable diffusion I can pick any artist right now and create over 1000 derivative works by tomorrow morning in his style to the same degree of expertise with no training involved and no work required.

[jstanley]

That's good!

Acting like it's a bad thing is just ludditery.

[heavyset_go]

The Luddites weren't some cult of ignorant technophobes, they were highly-skilled middle class craftsmen and small business owners who went from being able to provide for their families to dying in utter destitution. The remainder of them were tried for machine breaking and were either executed by the state or exiled to penal colonies. They risked everything because everything was at stake, I have a hard time saying that their situation and outcomes were "good", and I have a hard time saying the same about similar situations that are playing out today.

[knome]

Certainly, but automation is what allows for improvement to the whole.

Today, clothing is cheap and plentiful, along with bedding, curtains, towels and other cloth materials. Clothing would be outrageously expensive if everything were still hand spun, hand loomed, hand cut, hand sewn, and hand screened.

If the human computers[1] that predated the rise of the machine computer had done the same and won, it would have certainly been a boon for them at the time as well, but to the loss of all information technology developed hence.

The lack of a social safety net lent desperation to the luddites. Had they not faced imminent ruin and starvation as the machines eclipsed their occupation, they may not have had need to rebel against the newly emerging textiles mechanization.

AI may eventually replace traditional artists in many situations. Surely with simple images today, we can expect video examples in the future, and interactive AI generated simulations some time after that.

Do we smash the data centers now to save the artists' livelihoods and thereby avoid a future where anyone that wants can talk a computer through creating entire interactive fictional worlds via the synthesis of AI generation with feedback from their imagination?

[1] referring here to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

[trention]

>Do we smash the data centers now

Yes, the sooner, the better.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

I wouldn't be so confident one way or another, this is too new. I think it's going to make a lot of things way more accessible and enable people to express their creative voice who couldn't before. On the other hand you're looking at the destruction of a lot of professions, and possibly overnight with the speed things are moving at. I think if we told every software engineer their skills were entirely obsolete and they had change career tomorrow the reception would be much colder.

I remember when I started working on generative models in 2015, you could barely generate a picture of a blurry 40x40 pixels face. Two years later 1024x1024 almost indistinguishable from reality. Now every week we have a new revolutionary application coming out.

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

I think that the argument, overall, is that there are questions as to the legality of certain applications of the technology.

Society needs to change the laws regarding the preservation of value of intellectual labor, as has long been suggested.

Acting like the law doesn’t matter is a bad thing, if we are making value judgements.

[natch]

So if a particular convolution appears often, how would you assign value to that? Any ideas?

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

Indeed, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33194623 for some initial thoughts on how this problem (and others) could be rectified

[bigiain]

> The only difference is that now it's algorithms creating the derivatives, not people.

I see more of a difference than that.

I really don't care if a person makes a meme out of one of my Flickr photos I've shared publicly.

I'm much more grumpy at the idea that Facebook/Google/Microsoft using my Flickr photos and "giving away the AI automemes" as a way to further lock people into their walled gardens of surveillance capitalism.

(Not enough that I actually care enough to do anything about it. I have my Flickr account set to default to CC BY 2.0 for uploads, and I try reasonably hard to remember to lock that down to All Rights Reserved is I'm uploading pics of family or friends. But I don't lose sleep over any of it. I do sometime come across this pic of mine, which took on a life of it's own and is all over the internet, at least in coffee-related places, and wistfully wonder if I could have gotten more credit for it... https://flic.kr/p/sVHP9 )

[authpor]

this is larger than the arts. anybody has ever participated creatively in our culture understands that it's absolute bullshit to pretend we need money in order to want to contribute artistically.

we need money because food is for sale, because most of us do not own where we live hence we are forced (a priori) to come up with a whole lot of money every month or else you're out in the streets.

[ksidudwbw]

Learn to code! Oh wait...

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

Sure but unless you bring down capitalism people will still need to work to eat and most will want to use their hard-earned creative skills to make a living.

Not only that but being able to dedicate 8 to 10 hours a day to your craft for 40 years bring it to a level that you can't reach with casual practice.

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

> Sure but unless you bring down capitalism people will still need to work to eat and most will want to use their hard-earned creative skills to make a living.

The concept of a UBI (universal basic income) isn’t inherently in conflict with capitalism. I believe that it is actually in coherence with the idea of Universal Human Rights, as defined by the UN in the 1940s.

Perhaps that would be the culmination of anything good about capitalism.

[nine_k]

The problem is that UBI is in conflict with arithmetics. Short of near-total redistribution, it's impossible to provide a decent level of UBI for everyone. Total redistribution doesn't work, because economy needs markers as ways of price / demand discovery, and markets apparently lead to power-law distribution, not flat.

IMHO, the realistic option is a thick enough safety net for those who is going through a rough spot, for the disabled, etc, via both taxes and charity. But the vast majority will have to work, in one way or another, until machines completely take over, like in the Culture books by Ian Banks.

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

I’m not an economist, but I would suggest that human ingenuity can find a way to make something along those lines work.

In the United States, for example, there are so many different welfare programs, might there not be a way to consolidate under a new set of rules?

Similarly, with regards to charity, has any economist modeled a hypothetical of transiting charity into voluntary taxes for welfare?

[boppo1]

The sum of all welfare isn't half of what UBI would cost.

[int_19h]

Between unemployment insurance and minimum wage, we already have something like UBI, just mismanaged and with a lot of overhead.

Full-fledged UBI that provides decent living would require highly progressive taxes with the top bracket being in the ballpark of 70%. We could deal that down quite a bit if we start taxing capital gains properly, but even without that, it's neither impossible nor unprecedented.

[authpor]

just make sure basic necessities (housing, education, medicine) stay out of the market economy.

the 'market economy' (capitalism) is good at some things, but terrible at others. we need to stop collectively using this social-technology (a kind of market super optimizer) in the wrong places.

[dleslie]

Housing will always be a competitive market so long as location matters. Access to education and health care are themselves some of reasons why location matters, and a home in an urban core is priced higher than one in a far remote community.

Even in communist countries you find competition for housing as a result of the intrinsic value of location.

[authpor]

capitalism cannot be brought down. this one must fall on its own.

I consider France one of the best examples of capitalism https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1683661/paris-protests-...