[Brushfire]

Imagine you are a startup business owner and you have developed a unique product or service.

And then someone comes along and competes with you?

—

No one is bothered by competition in markets.

Why do we have more or less empathy of this type for some professions?

[onetrickwolf]

To quote another comment but "Instead of replacing crappy jobs and freeing up peoples time to enjoy their life, we’re actually automating enjoyable pursuits."

I think this isn't just a simple discussion on competition and copyright, I think it's a much larger question on humanity. It just seems like potentially a bleak future if enjoyable and creative pursuits are buried and even surpassed by automation.

[mtrower]

If the pursuit is enjoyable, it should continue to be enjoyable as a hobby, no?

Meanwhile, where is my levy of custom artists willing to do free commission work for me? It’s enjoyable, right?

I see a lot of discussion about money and copyright, and little to no discussion about the individual whose life is enriched by access to these tools and technologies.

As for your bleak future… will that even come to pass? I don’t know. Maybe it depends on your notion of “surpass”, and what that looks like.

[onetrickwolf]

> If the pursuit is enjoyable, it should continue to be enjoyable as a hobby, no?

I think for most people the enjoyable and fulfilling part of life is feeling useful or having some expression and connection through their work. There's definitely some people who can create in a vacuum with no witness and be fulfilled, but I think there's a deep need for human appreciation for most people.

> As for your bleak future… will that even come to pass? I don’t know. Maybe it depends on your notion of “surpass”, and what that looks like.

I don't know either, maybe it will be fine. Maybe this will pass like the transition from traditional to digital. But something about this feels different...like it's actually stealing the creative process rather than just a paradigm shift.

[BeFlatXIII]

Some people enjoy looking at images more than creating them.

[onetrickwolf]

Yeah maybe, but I think we also already have a problem with overconsumption of media though. I am not sure this is helping.

It seems inevitable and I don't think we can stop it, but I just am kind of worried about the collective mental health of humanity. What does a world look like where people have no jobs and even creative outlets are dominated by AI? Are people really just happy only consuming? What even is the point of humanity existing at that point?

[BeFlatXIII]

People could always work on higher-order creation: stitch together AI paintings into collages, try styles the AI has not mastered, etc…

[bigbacaloa]

In most markets everyone is bothered by competition and tries to eliminate it.

[MomoXenosaga]

The appeal of art is the artist. Unless computers gain sentience they cannot replace the humanity and ego of artists.

Ever wondered why artists have to show up at gallery parties to sell their stuff?

[BeFlatXIII]

> The appeal of art is the artist.

To some. To others, the artistic object is all that all that matters.

[MomoXenosaga]

That must be why every piece of painting is signed. Artists are selling a brand- Rembrandt already understood that 400 years ago.

[BeFlatXIII]

The only signature and branding for a artist when they solicit commissions and clients for future work than for selling completed paintings (unless their dead)

[mtrower]

No, the appeal of the artist is the artist. The art does offer a means to connect with the artist. It does not follow that the art may not offer its own appeal besides.

[Taywee]

If they competed with me by throwing my product through a decompiler, fed it into an AI model, and selling the generated output, I'd be pretty upset about it.

Which is pretty close to the actual issue here, that artists did not give their permission to use their own work to generate their competition.

[mtrower]

Wouldn’t that say more about the client than the competitor?