[thisisnotauser]

I think there's a big question in there about AI that breaks a lot of my preexisting worldviews about how economics works: if anyone can do this at home, who are you going to sell it to?

Maybe today only a few people can do this, but five years from now? Ten? What sucker would pay for any TV shows or books or video games or anything if there's a comfy UI workflow or whatever I can download for free to make my own?

[fixprix]

It breaks economics in a good way. Less resources spent on all kinds of media and other things is deflationary. Prices go down, a single person can provide for a family working less hours.

[yfw]

How is this good in any way for the creative workers? Do you think there's a sustainable source of innovative and interesting experiences being generated if no people wrote anymore?

[fixprix]

It's good for everybody. We have to work less to survive. Everyone is more productive at whatever they do. The value is in the ideas not the medium. You might write a book and I'll take it and use AI to turn it into audio, or a tv series, or a movie, or a video game.

The bottleneck is no longer on labor to turn ideas into reality, the bottleneck is imagination itself. It's incredible. The cost to produce/consume going down along with many other facets of the economy translates into deflation.

If you make less money, or work less hours, or only have a single person in your family work - that's ok because money will go further. That's the whole idea behind Star Trek, the first step though was intelligent computers, automation and robots. Harnessed in a way that doesn't backfire on us.

[yfw]

We are all supposed to have less work with all the innovation and automation but look at us now with all the households where two adults are required to have jobs.

[fixprix]

We produce/consume a lot of things like media and other goods/services that we don't really need. When productivity is channeled into low value things, we all end up having to work more.

[_carbyau_]

The vision is nice. I don't see it playing out practically.

It's the human competition. Every human in the world is competing - on some level - with every other human.

Your described widespread "benefits" to society just change the playing field all humans are competing on. The money will go from that to something else - to pick something topical say, housing.

[fixprix]

Competition and the value of a dollar are not related. If a dollar can go far then that's great. You can compete in business, or sports, or video games whatever. That's great.

[_carbyau_]

> Competition and the value of a dollar are not related.

Precisely. Being able to more easily produce and consume just means more production and consumption. The "rat race" competition will continue. No one will work less.

[renerick]

Ideas are worthless. There are billions of ideas born and dying every day. It is the execution that gives idea value, it is quality of the execution that determines amount of value

[fixprix]

And AI/robotics is what is turbo charging execution.

[robotresearcher]

You're correct but all that is true on average. There will be specific people - maybe a large number of them - for whom this is extremely painful. We can celebrate the former but let's not sweep the latter under the rug.

[numpad0]

> the bottleneck is imagination itself. It's incredible.

You don't understand what that means. That means your soul's worth is measured with more precision and accuracy. That conjoined to free market economy implicates that individuals and groups of people producing less can be more openly considered to be objectively less human.

I don't personally care, but that's not... It seem to me that vast majority of people around here already don't exactly like what the Internet had always rewarded, nor how fast it's evolving, nor where it's headed. I think that accelerating that only accelerates that, and I suspect it might not exactly be what you would reflect on positively later.

[treyd]

This would be true if it was doing it with essentials like food, healthcare, housing, transit, but it's not.

[CamperBob2]

What sucker would pay for any TV shows or books or video games or anything if there's a comfy UI workflow or whatever I can download for free to make my own?

I think it's about time the industry faced that risk. They have it coming in spades.

For example, LOST wouldn't have been such a galactic waste of time if I could have asked an AI to rewrite the last half of the series. Current-generation AI is almost sufficient to do a better job than the actual writers, as far as the screenplay itself is concerned, and eventually the technology will be able to render what it writes.

Call it... severance.

[numpad0]

Only few are both capable and willing to take on creative tasks, with AIs or not. Boring people cannot form strong enough cohesive thoughts that can drive an AI, even if AI output itself were not as boring as they are.