[pinkmuffinere]

I think you’re arguing against continued development of AI? (Apologies if I’ve misunderstood)

I won’t use the word “Luddite”, but your argument could be applied word-for-word to automatic looms:

“[The automatic loom] is best stated as a tool to permit wealth to access skill without skill being permitted to access wealth… how in a world where your labor is required in order for you to earn a living these entire reams of people are meant to continue living…“

Historically, automatic looms were a net benefit to society. I think this indicates that your argument against development of AI is insufficient.

[dmonitor]

Perhaps we need to differentiate between "end products" and "intermediate products". Cloth/fabric is an intermediate product. You use it to make things to sell, so increasing its production while decreasing human labor input is net beneficial, since it increases demand for jobs downstream of the supply chain. Music and art are enjoyed as end products, though. There hasn't been an industry-wide supply chain shortage of music since the invention of the record player (an invention that took music to the consumers, increasing demand from artists).

[ToucanLoucan]

Truthfully, I don't give a shit about AI. It's a tool to generate mediocre garbage, be that writing, be that images, be that music, whatever, and in those tasks, it can largely succeed. If you want a lifetime of generated Lo-Fi to listen to, it will do that. If you want a lifetime of generated hentai to fap to, it will do that too, and the outputs meet your standards, congrats, you are an average consumer of mediocre art, one among millions, perhaps billions. I wish you personally no ill will.

What I care about is all the musicians, the designers, the artists, the writers, who to be clear, are already and have been for many years struggling to earn a living plying their craft, who are in for even more torment for trying to just... live. For trying to turn their given and practiced talents into money so they can not freeze to death.

And I'm frustrated that they need to go without a means to live because billionaires, apparently, need more billions. And I'm angry that our society has allocated power solely to those billionaires to make those decisions. And I'm nursing a visceral hatred of every single one of them who are preparing to break the social contract to millions of people so they can have another, and I can't stress this enough, absolutely meaningless massive amount of money, to go with their already massive amounts of money...

For. Doing. Nothing.

So yes, I am a Luddite. I see monied classes financially backing new technology that will allow them to generate more products of lower quality using fewer (if any) human laborers so they can pocket even more money while fucking over working class people.

[genewitch]

I started writing music in the mid-90s, did 7-8 albums with intrepid demise, and a few solo albums as well.

My latest and possibly last track is called "I ain't even writing music anymore byeeee" because AI can take the shit I hear in my skull and translate it pretty good to an mp3.

I'm done. I made so much $0 that I'm set for life from my music.

https://m.soundcloud.com/djoutcold/i-aint-even-writing-music...

You can peruse my older tracks. My soundcloud is hotlinks and esoteria, not my collected works.

edit: i should explain that track. It was conceived, "written", "mastered", "cut", and then published by me within about 30 minutes of the news of the South Korean Coup attempt. The lyrics are in Lojban. about 5-8 minutes of that 30 was arguing with chatgpt-4o about the proper Lojban transliteration of coup d'etat, i put my foot down, and the lojban translation of that specific word is mine, everything else is from an online translation site. So i wrote the lyrics, managed the translation, and udio or whatever did the music. it took ~12 minutes to re-run the generation and extend it to find the correct "sound".

This is almost exactly what i heard in my head when i heard about the coup attempt. Oh also i don't know how to write "metal" or "djent", so this is what djent sounds like to me; i hope this helps clear up any confusion about why that specific song "sucks" or whatever.

[ta8645]

Money flows to the things people want. The real housewives, the view, twilight, etc. Hell people make millions simply playing video games on twitch. But nobody is owed an income for doing something they love.

The question you should be asking, is how do you increase demand for the things you value? How do you make people want the thing you have to offer. Musicians, comedians, and other artists who figure out that answer (or luck into it), get very wealthy indeed.

> For. Doing. Nothing.

That's obviously not true. I've tried doing nothing for a long time, and am not anywhere close to a billionaire.

[ToucanLoucan]

> Money flows to the things people want. The real housewives, the view, twilight, etc. Hell people make millions simply playing video games on twitch. But nobody is owed an income for doing something they love.

It's not about love. Tons of creatives work jobs they loathe just as much as any other profession, but it's what they're trained to do. It's their specialization, one honed over their entire lives, which can be like 25 years, or 50, or 70. What are those people supposed to do when the job market for the skill they're in rapidly shrinks?

And, in a larger view: what do you think is going to happen to the society you live in when thousands, millions of workers who work these jobs, now no longer can make rent? Can't pay their bills? Can't buy food? Like this is one of the better arguments against socialized medicine is that we have millions of people in the USA who work in the insurance industry, both for insurers, and for doctors offices. Medical billing is an entire job description and skillset, and like, I don't think that should be a thing, I think we should get rid of it, but I'm also cognizant that we'll have tons of white collar professionals who will need financial support and job training as part of that because I'm not a heartless monster and don't want to send millions of people to die on the streets.

> The question you should be asking, is how do you increase demand for the things you value? How do you make people want the thing you have to offer. Musicians, comedians, and other artists who figure out that answer (or luck into it), get very wealthy indeed.

A tiny, tiny minority get wealthy. Most creatives, even successful ones, earn like... a middling middle class income, in good times. But that income also comes with a lot of it's own issues: having to arrange their own insurance, their taxes are a nightmare, and the income stream isn't steady like a paycheck, it's gig-based.

And a whole lot more do it, indeed, for the love of their craft and oftentimes have other jobs to make enough to get by.

[ta8645]

> It's their specialization.

As others have mentioned, we have gone through this in human history before, say when looms became automated and huge employers disappeared overnight. Things change, and those that come after us, wont miss the things that disappeared; nobody is calling for the destruction of automated looms today in order to restore those manual jobs.

To my mind, the problem is one of expectations, and wildly out of control governments which empower corporate monopolies. It has disempowered small, local communities to trade and lift each other up, in small and simple ways.

[pixl97]

The key to doing nearly nothing and getting rich is to start out rich and then invest.

The problem is not being 'owed' an income. The problem comes in when there end up being a class of people that can't make a living doing anything. When this class becomes too large bad things tend to happen. Be it government enabled purges or the masses breaking out guillotines or riots burning entire cities down.

I, an invested member in the continuation of society, would like a rather non-violent world to be in our future.

[ta8645]

> I, an invested member in the continuation of society, would like a rather non-violent world to be in our future.

Of course, but we don't get there following fantasies. The truth is, through most of human history, most people were peasants eking out the most meager of lives. Often dying of disease in childhood, or at least well before their 30th birthday.

The problem is not poverty today.

By all realistic measures, nearly every single person in America (even those living on the street) is wealthier than most of our ancestors. The problem isn't even wealth inequality, since that's always existed as well, (and probably always will since it seems impossible to devise a political system that is durable and corruption proof).

The problem is unrealistic desires and a fantasy that everyone can live a rich life unconstrained by material limitations. The incredible wealth that Americans had enjoyed post WWII (arguably at the expense of much of the rest of the world) has set up unattainable expectations in people.

That's not to say we can't do better, but we need to reframe the entire problem and set it in the context of human history, not the last few hundred years of unsustainable growth.