[brookst]

Your lack of empathy for factory workers is hurting your case. They are real, and train for their jobs, and care about the families they provide for.

“technical disruption is hard on people” is a much more sympathetic position than “artists should be exempt because they’re special”.

We all face risks. We all have to adapt. We all have opportunities from adapting to the world rather than clinging to the past. Artists are no different from factory workers (or programmers, or bus drivers)

[Riverheart]

No a lack of empathy here. OP was saying there is little difference between automating art and automating a bank teller. For factory workers, I'm not saying its a job that requires no training but it doesn't requires years of college and 40/60k in debt. Clearly the ceiling for getting a decent paid job to raise a family without massive time/money/education investments is skyrocketing but I didn't point that out in my post so obviously I don't care.

Honestly this whole "adapt" thing is a load of nonsense parroted by people who aren't immediately under threat and have nothing to fear. Who is going to adapt at 30/40/50 years old? How about people who just graduated art school? Go right back into college? Please.

Edit: For the record, I care about anyone getting displaced but not all displacement is of equal level. If highly educated/skilled labor is now at risk this world isn't prepared for what's about to come.

Edit2: Removed my mischaracterization comment. Was wrong to assume bad faith in this response.

[Zababa]

Maybe not as big as what's happening with AI, but I can see my parents constantly having to adapt to Microsoft's new redisign of Windows, or <software> having a new version, or laws changing. And that's for jobs considered relatively safe and boring (accounting).

As for art school, I've always heard that it was more fun than IT/computer science/accounting but way more dangerous, as in you weren't guaranteed a job at all. Not everyone has heard that, of course, not everyone has the time/skills/resources to plan their career. I don't really know what to say except that it sucks for them. On the other hand the lower bar of entry may bring way more art in general, like it did with digital art.

[Riverheart]

Well here's another thing, replacing horse carriages with cars was a major boon for civilization that sped up industrialization, led to more jobs (car builders, mechanics, drivers, gas station attendants, road builders, traffic lights and sign manufacturers), enabled shipping of goods cross country, increase tourism, and allow more flexibility in work and living area. It was worth the trade off. And cars were simpler back in the day whereas now they're all computerized. Cars were also expensive enough that they took a while to spread to the public.

We know why rote labor is being automated. Not just to squeeze as much money out as possible but to reduce failures and liability and increase productivity. If a factory pumps out more medicine to save more lives who can judge maybe automation was worth the tradeoff.

But art? Is this something civilization needed to try automating? It's not going to create more jobs than it replaces. It's not going to advance society to the next industrial level. It's not filling a demand because we're already flooded with more media than we could ever consume.

Stability is important for society and tossing golden apples around "because" and telling people to "adapt" to senseless chaos is awful. People will get squeezed out and career change is a bigger deal than adapting from paper to digital.

They're not guaranteed jobs so why make it harder to get them? So failed artists can compete for jobs with the factory, fast food and coal workers whose time is written on the wall? Even Social Workers need a degree and they get paid nothing.

All automation and credentialed professions reduce the pool of low barrier to entry jobs available and forces people into higher education brackets to stay competitive but, at least in the US, that comes with massive debt to pay off and you start at an entry level salary. There is no UBI or safety net short of your parent's basement. This is not long term sustainable.

You could argue that general AI will be worth the tradeoff in the end. That may be true but it seems the tech is outpacing social policy and we'll be scrambling to fix the issues instead of preparing for them.